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Russia's economy has entered the death zone

economist.com

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Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#191

Post by trymas »

pointlessone wrote: post #185
pavel_lishin wrote: post #43

> If your competitors are also weakening—and if you believe you can tolerate the pain longer than they can—the calculus flips. Economic pressure that should drive compromise instead reinforces the logic of persistence. I think everyone underestimates just how much misery Russia, and Russian citizens, can endure.

Is it so? They had changed form of government twice in less than a century. Not just head of state or ruling party, form of government. You assume that because their baseline is miserable they can tolerate a lot but there’s a big difference between living a miserable life unter a totalitarian regime barely affording basic necessities, and all the same but starving.

> They had changed form of government twice in less than a century.

IMHO ruzzia hasn't changed in ~450-500 years since Ivan the Terrible. No matter how they sell their way of governing to international scene - it's always a tzar rulling with iron fist. There were optimistic glimpses that they will grow out of it, but it always returns back to tzar.

Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#192

Post by clort »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #150
majewsky wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I have said many times that the Russian and Ukrainian people are one nation, in fact. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours [...] But you know we have an old parable, an old rule: wherever a Russian soldier steps, it is ours." https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/6/27/putin-confirms-...

I’m well aware of this quote. It does not imply that there was at any moment of time a goal to seize the entire Ukraine or to restore USSR.

That they sent special forces to Kyiv to take over the government on the first days of the invasion is not implication?

Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#193

Post by red-iron-pine »

rich_sasha wrote: post #180
k_bx wrote: post #3

As a Ukrainian at war since day 1 – I don't buy it. They will sell their gas at discount to China until the very end. Military force is the only way to get them to the death zone.

Some interesting entangled thoughts. As per Clausevitz, wars end either when you kill every last soldier or the ones who are still alive decide not to fight. I can't see the former happening. So it's about ratcheting the pain of continuing to something unbearable. To the level where Russia can't make enough cash selling resources to make more tanks and bombs and also feed people. The issue is of course that Russians…

they are not happy, they are distracted and vaguely know it's not going well.

the "russian firehose" approach and vryanyo (institutional lying) means they're bombarded with info but also know most of it is BS, but not necessarily how or why.

they know it's not going well but at this point much of the economy is on war-footing and if they're not drafted they're probably getting paid okay. STFU and keep your head down and you won't get drafted.

Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#194

Post by pseudohadamard »

ericmay wrote: post #114
shevy-java wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sanctions can and will work against Russia. We hear this mantra since almost 5 years. I am not saying there should not be sanctions, but at some point the strategic lies need to end.

I don't think there are strategic lies here. Russia's war machine and their economy have taken a massive hit from sanctions. The news/media cycle and "experts" obviously want to make money and recycle the same stories and "any day now" kind of rhetoric, but that doesn't make sanctions any less of a great option. It takes time.

It's also possible to run an economy on empty for a long, long time provided there's a war on. Look at Germany, who literally ran the country on empty throughout all of WWII, books like Adam Tooze's "Wages of Destruction" cover this in great detail. There was a saying in the last few years, "enjoy the war, the peace will be terrible", and it was, because once you took the wartime tourniquet off all the toxins flooded your body. It wasn't until the Marshall Plan that the bare subsistence life was slowly eradicated.

Now, can you see anyone giving Putin's kleptocracy a few trillion dollars to rebuild Рашка? The Marshall Plan rebuilt Germany because the US realised that without that as the economic powerhouse of Europe the place would be a basket case in need of US support for decades, but when you're just a gas station masquerading as a country (McCain) no-one's going to bail you out except insofar as it keeps the gas flowing, and if you look at places like Nigeria you don't need much to keep the gas flowing.

Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#195

Post by drysine »

TiredOfLife wrote: post #171
Haven880 wrote: post #160

The only way is just to cede the land and move on. Keep the people alive. 100 years later one can renegotiate. This kind of copium hope wishing the economy collapse or something like Mongol collapse is just not practical. The longer this drag on, the lesser fertile men exist in Ukraine and the population recovery will take even longer while Russian outbirth in the long run. Sometime to win one has to abide by time. J…

They already ceded huge amount of land in 2014. And 8 years later russia invaded again.

No, the Ukraine didn't cede anything. They cut water and electricity to Crimea to punish Crimeans and they were building up the army with Western help.

Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#196

Post by drysine »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #184
drysine wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It‘s a nuclear war without nukes No, it's not. Even Ukrainians rarely target civilians.

A few days ago Ukraine knocked out central heating infrastructure in Belgorod, a regional capital with 350k people, which is unlikely to be repaired until spring. Two civilians repairing it from previous strikes were killed. Whether this is rare or not, it doesn’t change anything about what I said about changing character of the war: both sides largely gave up on trying to win on the battlefield and now attack energy…

Targeting dual-purpose infrastructure is not the same as targeting civilians. The infra can be repaired, people cannot be resurrected.

Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#197

Post by ivan_gammel »

clort wrote: post #192
ivan_gammel wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m well aware of this quote. It does not imply that there was at any moment of time a goal to seize the entire Ukraine or to restore USSR.

That they sent special forces to Kyiv to take over the government on the first days of the invasion is not implication?

Is Venezuela US state now or not?

Also, looking at Russian track record specifically, is Georgia, which was militarily defeated in 2008, part of Russia? Did they formally annex Abkhazia or Transnistria? Does Lukashenko report to Putin?

Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#198

Post by benterix »

esseph wrote: post #101
neocron wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bad thing is, they always did this and it worked. The good thing is, those russians stopped growing back with birthrates being one of the lowest in the world. We might just see a world without any russians in a few decades. What a dream

What the fuck did I just read

Probably the parent lives in one of the countries neighboring with Russia and unfortunately Russia is very unfriendly towards its neighbors, invading them when it wants, so you live in constant fear. From that perspective, this is just a variation of "I want to live in peace" expressed in an extreme way.

Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#199

Post by benterix »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #93
Etherlord87 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should update your epistemology and stop listening to the guys that said so; I listen to the experts who say (since 2022) sanctions hurt, but russia is like a big tree - even if you poison it, it won't fall on the next day; it doesn't help that russia has disproportionately big spy network - people will take more abuse before they rebel against their government.

I think shevy was pointing out that some experts have assured us since before the war that sanctions can and will cripple Russia any day now. Their epistemology doesn't need updating; the politicians fibbing need to be ridiculed.

It is a known strawman argument. The sanctions weren't introduced because someone was convinced they will make Russia fail or what not, they were introduced because this was the only thing we could do barring military action that nobody was ready for. We knew they will have a negative impact on Russian economy but nobody was hoping for a miracle. Countries like Iran or North Korea were living under sanctions for years and they are much smaller. I haven't seen anybody arguing otherwise, barring YouTube clickbaity "Russia is falling" videos.

Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#200

Post by ivan_gammel »

drysine wrote: post #196
ivan_gammel wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few days ago Ukraine knocked out central heating infrastructure in Belgorod, a regional capital with 350k people, which is unlikely to be repaired until spring. Two civilians repairing it from previous strikes were killed. Whether this is rare or not, it doesn’t change anything about what I said about changing character of the war: both sides largely gave up on trying to win on the battlefield and now attack energy…

Targeting dual-purpose infrastructure is not the same as targeting civilians. The infra can be repaired, people cannot be resurrected.

When you knock out primary energy source in a large city instead of attacking military consumers, it has one goal - terror. Most people suffering from it will be civilians. There will likely be deaths. Look at the recent terrorist attack in Berlin by far left extremists: blackout of a single district resulted in at least one known direct casualty. How many people will die of hypothermia or inability to get help being locked in a high rise residential building? This is happening now in many places in Ukraine as well as in border regions of Russia. I do think it’s the same as targeting civilians directly.
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