Armchair analysis: Germany is preparing for war and all of Europe is asking them.
Well, this won't end well for Russia. Germany is one of the biggest industrial producers in the world.
Well, this won't end well for Russia. Germany is one of the biggest industrial producers in the world.
Russia is boxing way beyond it's weight.
It will collapse like in 1991 if we would even just put some tanks at the border ( eg. At Finland, Poland).
( Russia's banks are pretty vulnerable atm. )
So there are signs that the war helped Russia to resolve its "dutch disease" (a situation where a state relying on natural resource such as oil stunts its economic growth in other areas).
That is not a good thing. Nobody can eat a tank. You can't plow a field with a howitzer. Your economy suffers when you can make more money being a frontline soldier than you can being a skilled worker. Every single Shahed they build is a waste!
And Russia's demographics are fundamentally broken, even before they got hundreds of thousands of Russian young men killed.
They can't keep it going forever. Even if they won the war today, there would be serious repercussions. Russia is lucky they have a good central bank to manage these problems but that isn't magic.
Russia is burning dollars and real human lives for very little gain, again, even if Ukraine capitulated today. Putin already lost the war. Even gaining all of Ukraine, with a pacified populace, would be somewhat Pyrrhic, and just stave off problems.
Meanwhile, Russia's weapons export market, which was significant and meaningful, is just gone. Nobody wants what they sell anymore, and they can't make enough to export some of it anyway.
Also meanwhile, they have not fixed their "dutch disease" since Russia's economy is still entirely reliant on selling gas to people, and what little trade they had other than that is gone.
Instead, EU wants to embrace the same kind of (they call it) "military keynesianism". They think military spending will fix their economies. (In fact, attempt to use war as a way to prop up the economy was suggested as a reason why Putin started the war.)
It's also bad because longterm, it puts Russia on the same path the U.S. has been - a big weapons manufacturer that is looking to export a war somewhere.
Put tanks on the border and Russia will collapse on it's own.
Giving Russia what it wants will just create more problems in a couple of years.
All the wages were up, but are now coming down. They tried supporting the economy ( to not hit deflation), but that is crumbling soon
Note: I don't live there. But the central bank of Russia really has a competent head ( Elvira Sakhipzadovna Nabiullina ) that's worth listening too. She's so competent that Putin won't block/silence her too much.
Her latest statements are more grim: https://kyivindependent.com/russias-war-fueled-economy-is-ru...