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Comment by Juliate | Hacker News Reader

China can only support Russia in some specific, not too invasive ways. If structural points of a country break, there's no support recipe for that.

Financial and economic weaknesses are also working against Putin and his team from _within_ Russia.

> Just like we broke up the Soviet Union.

It was not entirely broken, since we have the living proof of it today in the Kremlin - same operating mode.

> Putin is going to send a million man

Why is he resorting to North Korean soldiers then? (which even then aren't infinite). Obviously, he has a problem at recruiting/training his own. Which puts him at odds with his own population.

So whose soldiers will it be next? China? not likely willing to deal with that. Iran? same. African countries? Not their war, they tell it themselves.

The issue is that Putin has cornered himself and his country, willingly, knowingly, into a no-way-out road. He had other options of both perspective and action.

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The word on the street is that he's using North Korean soldiers because he can get them and he prefers that they are killed and not Russians. But he'll send Russians too.

You're applying western thinking here. The same sort of western thinking that thought Putin wouldn't invade Ukraine because what's in it for him or imagine some red lines or whatever. Russians aren't western. They don't think like us. The west always does this.

There isn't such a thing of at odds with his own population in Russia. Again you're applying western thinking to Russians. Check out some Russian jokes.

Logistics is not a matter of culture. When you run out, you run out.

Russia's population is 140 million. They're not going to run out of people. 17% of those or about 24 million are fighting age males (18-44). If you really need to you can definitely recruit 15-60 and woman.

Not sure if this is what you meant by logistics.

If you're thinking about supplying and maintaining their physical presence in Ukraine it doesn't look like that's a problem either.

"As of 2024, Russia produces about 3 million artillery shells a year, nearly three times the quantity from the US and Europe." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry_of_Russia

They're also still exporting weapons though significantly less than they used to export.

Maybe they can't sustain 10 years of war with the west continuing or increasing their level of support, assuming Ukraine can, but they are nowhere near being forced to stop [the] war.

> Russia's population is 140 million.

Alledged population. Or are we also to believe their election results?

Population alone and artillery alone are the ingredients of logistics, not logistics itself.

The failure of the initial 3-days invasion was a demonstration that the « great Russian army », even with the support of Wagner and Tchetchenia, was unable to plan, execute and sustain a flash attack.

Yes, they may improve in the meantime. But that takes years of discipline and continuous training. So while that’s an option for them, that’s also a weakness that can be decisive.

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