Ukraine - Russia Conflict
- Thread starter randomradio
- Start date
EU stopped almost completely. This graphic is irrelevant and misleading.
Russia Fossil Tracker – Payments to Russia for fossil fuels since 24 February 2022
www.russiafossiltracker.com
They haven't yet stopped completely. EU imports from Jan 1st this year is still €30B, the same as Turkey's.
This is not counting round-tripping Russian oil via third parties.
Russia's national budget.
www.pbs.org
The budget foresees spending in 2024 of 36.6 trillion rubles ($415 billion) with an expected deficit of 1.595 trillion rubles ($9.5 billion).
Rub 36.6T ($415B) using the old exchange rate gives us $1T. That's their effective purchasing power, without a PPP deflator of 2, which means their actual spending is $2T versus America's $7T on a dollar-to-dollar basis.
If we assume 30% of their spending goes to the military, then we are talking $600B versus America's $900B.
www.reuters.com
Spending under the "national defence" section of Russia's budget will total 10.78 trillion roubles ($109 billion) next year, or 29.4% of total planned expenditure of 36.66 trillion roubles, according to the finance ministry's budget documents that outline the government's fiscal plans for 2024-2026.
So Rub 10.8T ($109B) = $300B = $600B PPP.
@Arctic Wolf
Putin signs Russia's largest national budget, bolstering military spending in 2024
Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin says the budget was developed specifically to fund the military and mitigate the impact of international sanctions imposed after Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
www.pbs.org
Rub 36.6T ($415B) using the old exchange rate gives us $1T. That's their effective purchasing power, without a PPP deflator of 2, which means their actual spending is $2T versus America's $7T on a dollar-to-dollar basis.
If we assume 30% of their spending goes to the military, then we are talking $600B versus America's $900B.
'Everything for the front': Russia allots a third of 2024 spending to defence
Defence spending will account for almost one third of Russia's total budget expenditure in 2024, the government's draft plans show, as Moscow diverts ever more resources towards prosecuting its war in Ukraine.
So Rub 10.8T ($109B) = $300B = $600B PPP.
@Arctic Wolf
Only by cooking the books. They couldn't even compete when they were the USSR. Now they have 15% interest rates on any borrowing. As more people are sent to Ukraine, they economy will suffer more and more. US defence spending is $831bn (just 3.1% of GDP) without having to spend most of it on a war gone wrong. As for Russia, $360bn is 1/6th of their entire GDP. Now given that revenue only a small portion of GDP comes back to the government as revenue... well you do the maths. What's paying for everything else? In fact, why guess, we have the figures right here.
Russia Tax Revenue, 1996 – 2024 | CEIC Data
Russia Tax Revenue was reported at 325.142 USD bn in Sep 2024. This records an increase from the previous number of 310.381 USD bn for Aug 2024.
So that's $260bn by end Sep 2023, so say 1.33x for th year, that's $347bn. At current exchange rate, 10.87tr Ruble = $118bn, $118bn/0.294 = $401bn, which is about 116% of projected annual revenue for 2023. Seems you've also read it wrong by my reckoning, the 10.78tr Ruble is the total defence spending (Say $236bn PPP, <30% of US military spending), which is 29.4% of total government spending. Either way, they're $54bn short in total + 15% per annum for interest. So no, no they cannot keep up. Thanks for playing,... then you have the rest of NATO spending of course. Only China can fund Russia, which leaves Russia in their pocket.
Only by cooking the books. They couldn't even compete when they were the USSR. Now they have 15% interest rates on any borrowing. As more people are sent to Ukraine, they economy will suffer more and more. US defence spending is $831bn (just 3.1% of GDP) without having to spend most of it on a war gone wrong. As for Russia, $360bn is 1/6th of their entire GDP. Now given that revenue only a small portion of GDP comes back to the government as revenue... well you do the maths. What's paying for everything else? In fact, why guess, we have the figures right here.
Russia Tax Revenue, 1996 – 2024 | CEIC Data
Russia Tax Revenue was reported at 325.142 USD bn in Sep 2024. This records an increase from the previous number of 310.381 USD bn for Aug 2024.www.ceicdata.com
So that's $260bn by end Sep 2023, so say 1.33x for th year, that's $347bn. At current exchange rate, 10.87tr Ruble = $118bn, $118bn/0.294 = $401bn, which is about 116% of projected annual revenue for 2023. Seems you've also read it wrong by my reckoning, the 10.78tr Ruble is the total defence spending (Say $236bn PPP, <30% of US military spending), which is 29.4% of total government spending. Either way, they're $54bn short in total + 15% per annum for interest. So no, no they cannot keep up. Thanks for playing,... then you have the rest of NATO spending of course. Only China can fund Russia, which leaves Russia in their pocket.
As usual you don't know what you're talking about.
I've just given you all the relevant figures. Even spending 30% of total government spending on defenceand adjusted for PPP, Russia is at just a fraction of US defence spending. Total US revenue for 2023 ( 2The 2023 fiscal year began on October 1, 2022, and ended September 30, 2023.) was $4.44tr, only 18-19% of that ($831bn was spent on defence).
The US isn't as extended on defence spending and is still outspending Russia by a factor of >3 PPP.
In your "relevent figures," you've skipped an entire quarter. Russian revenues you've posted are until September, whereas their fiscal year is Jan-Dec. You've basically skipped out on 25% of their revenues.
I've already posted the info necessary.
The budget foresees spending in 2024 of 36.6 trillion rubles ($415 billion) with an expected deficit of 1.595 trillion rubles ($9.5 billion).
That's a deficit of just 1.6T rub or about $10B.
And you didn't disprove my argument. Even though US spending is at $831B this year and is going to be $886B the next, the Russian budget is a very competitive $600B. It gets worse when you get into more details 'cause most of the Russian budget is for modernization whereas most of the US budget is for salaries and other revenue overheads. We can very easily say the Russian capex is almost twice that of both the US and Europe combined. China has the same advantage.
The only advantage NATO has is both Russia and China have some catching up to do technologically. But there's quite literally no bigger challenge to NATO than Russia, and within the next 10 years it's gonna get way worse 'cause they are gonna bridge the tech gap and spend even more money.
To make matters even worse, Russia is a land power and China is a sea power, which means the West has to be good at both with a capex 4 times smaller than Russia and China's.
When it comes to China, at least your policymakers are publicly talking about it.
But the West hasn't even begun to comprehend Russia, 'cause I haven't seen anybody talking about it. Even Western journos use ridiculous prices for Russian military equipment. At the very least Western policymakers are aware.
Custom data can't be forged, right?EU stopped almost completely. This graphic is irrelevant and misleading.
Russia Fossil Tracker – Payments to Russia for fossil fuels since 24 February 2022
What forging are you referring to? Use original source of the claims. This chart again is from last 11 months since ban start. Check the last quarter to see the difference. In the energy mix russia is less that 15%, meaning irrelevant. (Excluding round tripping ofcourse)
EU imports of energy products continued to drop in Q2 2023 - Products Eurostat News - Eurostat
DDN-20230925-1
The car market is BURNING in Russia
And yet they apparently only have a small deficit. I call BS on their numbers.It is very strange that so many assets in russia are burning....
That's why I multiplied by 1.33 to get from $260bn to $347bn, vs your figure of $415bn total expenditure.
Except the difference between $347bn and $415bn is not $10bn.
Where is your figure of $600bn from. Their total government expenditure is $415bn, which is $68bn over revenue (3+% deficit), the defence spending is only $118bn nominal, even a 2.5x correction factor for PPP only gives $295bn. And Russia is spending 30% of entire government spending on defence, the US is spending about 17%. NATO in total is spending $1.3tr on defence.
They've had the last 33 years to bridge the tech gap, it'll never happen because they have no parallel commercial development to drive it.
Where do you work out the Capex is 4x smaller
Gives the PPP value at $1.07tr, less than NATOs, which does not include Australia, Taiwan, ROK and Japan. The only concern with China is Taiwan and to prevent an invasion, the US just has to take out all shipping trying to support a landing over 100 miles of sea. Amphibious assault is hell on earth even when the enemy does not have guided missiles to blow your ships up. The US can buy 100 missiles for less than the cost of a single Chinese warship. It doesn't have to win a direct naval conflict, it has ample land bases, it just needs to impede Chinese naval support enough for Taiwan to murder them.
Maybe it's your sources that use ridiculous prices. They use cheap labour (nominal to PPP of ~2.5) but the electronics they use are western and they can only get them on the black market, which is going to price gouge the shit of Russia. The black marketeers must still pay full price and then they have smuggling costs, seizures etc. They lost en entire airfield worth of Ka-52s recently. They've lost bombers, fighters have been shot down, some have downed themselves due to poor maintenance. This is not cheap. Vietnam was expensive but nobody was blowing up US airfields, or blowing up bridges and buildings in the US during that and the casulaties were minimal by comparison. What Russia has is a Korean War-like situation, execept with damage to its own mainland.
The real cost will come when NATO gives Ukraine long-range cruise missiles and allows them to use them to target Russian military production facilities inside Russia. Russia says it has not even begun yet. No, it is us that have not even begun yet.
@randomradio - On casualties. This doesn't directly reference them, but it does talk about the near impossibility of staying alive as a Russian soldier.
Summary of a recently intercepted phone call from a Russian soldier to his brother at home:Note: I like the fact that "Baba Yaga" has made it into the vernacular of Russian nightmares."A Russian soldier calls his brother and says that they are held prisoner by Ukrainian drones. The AFU has already destroyed almost all the equipment and they are only able to move only on foot.However, moving on foot is very dangerous because the Ukrainians have so many drones that they even hit single targets with them.In addition, according the soldier, the Ukrainians use heavy drones - “Baba Yagas”, which drop artillery shells and anti-tank mines on the trenches and dugouts of the Russians.Because of this, the soldier is constantly in fear and does not feel safe anywhere.According to him, they are nothing more than guinea pigs on which NATO tests all its latest technologies, and they cannot do anything about it.The occupier doubts that he will be able to survive at least until spring." -- "Radio Operator"
Summary of a recently intercepted phone call from a Russian soldier to his brother at home:Note: I like the fact that "Baba Yaga" has made it into the vernacular of Russian nightmares."A Russian soldier calls his brother and says that they are held prisoner by Ukrainian drones. The AFU has already destroyed almost all the equipment and they are only able to move only on foot.However, moving on foot is very dangerous because the Ukrainians have so many drones that they even hit single targets with them.In addition, according the soldier, the Ukrainians use heavy drones - “Baba Yagas”, which drop artillery shells and anti-tank mines on the trenches and dugouts of the Russians.Because of this, the soldier is constantly in fear and does not feel safe anywhere.According to him, they are nothing more than guinea pigs on which NATO tests all its latest technologies, and they cannot do anything about it.The occupier doubts that he will be able to survive at least until spring." -- "Radio Operator"
That's why I multiplied by 1.33 to get from $260bn to $347bn, vs your figure of $415bn total expenditure.
Except the difference between $347bn and $415bn is not $10bn.
They are obviously using different exchange rates. Look up the rub value. Revenues are 35T rub and expenses are 36.6T rub, the difference is 1.6T rub.
Ruble has merely weakened, it's not due to any weakening of the economy.
So 118 x 2.5 = 295 x 2 (100% increase 'cause of exchange rate) = $590B. Basically all their stuff costs half of what they cost in the West.
In fact their exchange rate has pretty much dropped by 3 times since 2014, so it's even higher than what I've calculated.
No. 30 years ago they started with nuke tech, and now have better tech than the US, with new BMs and other types of nuclear delivery vehicles, like that endless range torpedo and cruise missile. And of course, they have managed to bridge the gap significantly with their new SSNs and SSBNs. Their conventional drive started only 15-20 years ago, so we will see the results over the next 10 years as it hits production, Su-57, Armata, S-500 etc.
US capex spending is $140B. Russia's capex spending is at least 60-70% of their budget, that's $360-420B. So 2 x (US + EU) should give you that much.
Before the war, their capex spending was closer to 80% of the budget.
How a war is prosecuted is a different topic. And it's not about Taiwan.
All we are discussing is the absolute spending. All it means is China's spending more, so that accrues over time.
Yes, having allies is a saving grace, but the allies aren't doing enough. For example, the French cannot even do 10% of the sortie rate required per day to defeat Russia with all their Rafales.
Anyway, the West has to deal with both China and Russia. So China with 2x the combines US and EU budget + the same with Russia. Your main enemies are effectively spending four times more.
Perhaps now you understand why India is so important to the US. Even we will achieve superpower spending levels by 2030. For one, the IAF plans to launch 100 military satellites by 2030, more or less matching the 3 main powers.
The West can't gouge the Russians since they are dealing with market prices. And the Russians are now making their own electronics.
Unless you can give them 10,000 such missiles, it's gonna be useless.
Numbers would show in Russian obituaries and social media.
I wonder if you know how many Ukrainian soldiers have shown up in Ukrainian social media and obituaries. You will have to find that out for yourself, it's not a very flattering number. I won't tell you 'cause you won't believe it anyway.
I think you're wrong to overestimate the Russian fighter fleet.
I think you're wrong to overestimate the Russian fighter fleet.
In 2022, before the attrition caused by the war with Ukraine, Russia only had 486 fighters and France 152, but a Rafale can easily fly 4 times as many hours as a Russian fighter, which means that our 152 Rafales are equivalent to 608 Russian fighters. So I think we could do a lot more than 10% of the flying hours needed to counter Russia.
You are severely underestimating Russian jets.
Here's the reality.
These are real world figures conducted in an exercise by the IAF.
We used 300 jets to generate 4000+ sorties in 3 days for air defense. The Russians, with 500, are capable of generating over 2000 sorties a day only for air defense. With 152 Rafales, France can only generate less than 800 sorties a day. Bring in strike jets, then Russia will be generating 4000-5000 sorties a day in total.
And you haven't considered the effect of their SAMs, which will really take away the attention of NATO's air assets, even the Rafales. They very easily have 300 batteries of SAMs, 100+ of those being S-400s. So even 10000 sorties a day for NATO is just a minimum. With 3000 jets, NATO will be able to generate 15000 sorties a day. An optimum number will be 20000 sorties, which means NATO really needs 4000 jets.
So when we are talking about such high numbers, France's 800 sorties are peanuts. So you can see how important the USAF is gonna be versus pretty much anybody else. France's contribution to requirements is just 5%.
It gets worse when we point out that the IAF's exercise wasn't conducted at 100% capacity. There was a significant spare capacity leftover for security reasons. Some have claimed what was demonstrated was half of what could actually be done. Primarily 'cause the jets only had to travel a short distance, especially the ones earmarked for air defense. So you could say the potential for air defense was actually 6000-7000 sorties over 3 days with 300 jets, if not more.
And we are only talking about Russia's pre-war inventory. What do you think's gonna happen by 2030, when their new budget accrues over the years? If India plans to operate almost 1000 jets, then Russia very easily has the money to build 2000, China as well. So there is potential for parity with NATO. And France's component will be a tiny fraction of that.