111–120 of 205 posts
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> Sanctions only affects the people, not the governments, Western sanctions have demonstrably prevented the Russians from obtaining equipment vital for their military-industrial complex. Right now there were supposed to be hundreds of Armatas and SU-57s, but all the Russians have are a dozen prototypes of each.
Worse, they formed a new economic alliance called BRICS
The real losers are Europe.
Everyone involved in a war is a loser. It really shows how immature humanity is that we still start new wars.
To be specific, don't blame Ukraine for this war, or humanity in general. Blame Russia, and specifically Putin.
> Everyone involved in a war is a loser.
I agree with you on that point.
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That doesn't actually debunk the point; it potentially implies they've already ripped through the older ones in the stockpiles and are down to just the new, recently-produced ones. They don't have the production capacity to produce at a fast enough rate to keep the pace of cruise missile strikes in Ukraine.
The argument made by the West, including the US Secretary of Defense, was that Russian missile production would be significantly curtailed due to trade restrictions on advanced technology like microchips. If they are using missiles produced in recent months then that argument seems debunked to me. What basis is there to assume that Russia lacks the ability to mass produce the less sophisticated components of these mi…
Or they had a bit of a chip stockpile; the NYT cites "significant stockpiles of the components before the war began" as a possibility. (They've also apparently been canibalizing consumer devices; https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/05/11/russia-...)
> What basis is there to assume that Russia lacks the ability to mass produce the less sophisticated components of these missiles?
Historical. Iskanders have been produced in the dozens-per-year quantities pre-war, Kalibr in the ~100 range. They're using that many cruise missiles in a single day's attacks now; that isn't be sustainable long-term for anyone.
You should re-read the NYT article (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/05/us/politics/cruise-missil...) you cite; it openly states it's not debunking what you claim it debunks.
> Whether Russia has depleted its inventory of older cruise missiles is unclear. But militaries often use older munitions first in combat because they typically make up a majority of a nation’s stockpile.
The real losers are Europe.
Hello from Europe! While I agree that there really aren't any winners in a war from a humanitarian perspective, it really doesn't feel here like we are losing. I'm happy to pay a lot for electricity and gas if that means the Russian government will fall and their army will be reduced to shreds (although the gas prices right now are almost the same as they used to be before the war... ) Also to the US, this is an incr…
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Russia seems to be throwing it's entire war machine at Ukraine. It deployed units, and conscripts, from all over Russia, including the Far East (in fact sourcing conscripts predominantly from poorer regions, and preferentially not ethnic Russians). Chop that machine into 4 or 5 pieces and it's far less scary. Even the nukes, scary as they could be, are less of a threat when the individual actors are smaller and weake…
> Even the nukes, scary as they could be, are less of a threat when the individual actors are smaller and weaker. They may not even be able to maintain these nukes. And even if they are capable of using them, they are at a more precarious position than eg. Putin at the helm of Mighty Russia. I'm not sure "the people with nukes would be in a precarious position" is the comforting statement you intended it to be.
If nothing else, these post-Russias would struggle to afford even more to upkeep and upgrade the stash of nukes. And would be easier to neutralize too...
Call it what you want. Russia is switching from export to internal consumption. Getting something like 30 years mortgage on house, was unheard of until recently. If West can run quantitative easing for 15 years, why not Russia?
Who did that? US did 6 years starting in 2008 due to the Great Recession and less than 2 starting in 2020 in response to the unusually deep, if quite short, pandemic recession, and the latter of those, because it wasn’t tapered quickly enough for the circumstances, triggered the highest inflation seen in a long time.
> why not Russia?
Russia can do QE as long as it wants, but QE is just self-inflicted inflation. It is a band-aid for incipient deflation, which isn’t a problem Russia has.
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Because you cannot eat money, or live in money. A country can QE forever, but this will not put food on the table or shoes on people's feet. If people want those things, they must either be produced or imported. QE doesn't help with either of those. Production is a physical act, not a monetary one. And if you want to import from somewhere, then you need that nation's currency to do so. Which means that in turn you mu…
Not to devil's advocate, but this sounds like an argument which might apply at least as well to the USA as it does to Russia.
It would, if USA was pursuing QE with already-high inflation.
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I will reiterate. Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, are constantly harassed and reminded that Russia doesn't really see them as sovereign states. They fly bombers into their airspaces (oops), deploys military manoeuvres at their borders, rambles about aiming their nukes at the capital cities. It actually invaded Ukraine for the second time in a decade! And even as this is all going on, Russia happily says, "he…
> They fly bombers into their airspaces (oops), deploys military manoeuvres at their borders, rambles about aiming their nukes at the capital cities. Your argument would be valid, if this was something exclusive to Russia, and not a common mutual thing between Russia and NATO. NATO bombers just as well fly into Russian airspace, NATO deploys military manoeuvres at Russian borders, and NATO states politicians are just…
Even now, if only those pesky Ukrainians would stop shooting back at them, peace could be introduced overnight.
The real losers are Europe.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hello from Europe! While I agree that there really aren't any winners in a war from a humanitarian perspective, it really doesn't feel here like we are losing. I'm happy to pay a lot for electricity and gas if that means the Russian government will fall and their army will be reduced to shreds (although the gas prices right now are almost the same as they used to be before the war... ) Also to the US, this is an incr…
You may be happy to pay more (sounds a lot like "the bread is expensive ? let them have brioche"), but that's not the case for business owners of small restaurant, bakeries, etc, that have an electricity bill which has doubled, tripled, or even more in some cases, not even talking about the state of mortgages.
Really, talking to people here - even random ones, like a taxi driver, I've literally never ran into anyone that does not want to keep supporting Ukraine.
Because we know that if Russia wins in Ukraine, we are next. What's money against your life and the feeling of safety?