Ukraine - Russia Conflict
- Thread starter randomradio
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yes rafales will be cheaper if the price is same and rupee does not depreciate ( which is not the case). Again if some components are sourced from outside especially US than the price will increase.
Problem comes not from rafales but with things which ppl purchase quite often like cheese,wine,clothes..etc, exports of these commodities will increase due to depreciated currency it will lead to price rise locally as there are buyers who are ready to pay more.
If you are pensioner, these 20% depreciation will be devastating.
EXCLUSIVE | Battle for Donbas | Situation on the ground | Interview with field commander
On episode 3 of the show we are joined by Alexander Khodakovsky, commander of the Donetsk People's Republic's «Vostok» Battalion. Former commander of Ukraine's Alpha special unit of the Security Service of Ukraine
The French inflation rate is about 1/3rd of Russia's, so based on your assessment of French inflation being 'devastating for pensioners', Russian pensioners must be about suicidal by now.
France Inflation Rate
Inflation Rate in France increased to 1.20 percent in October from 1.10 percent in September of 2024. This page provides the latest reported value for - France Inflation Rate - plus previous releases, historical high and low, short-term forecast and long-term prediction, economic calendar...
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Russia Inflation Rate
Inflation Rate in Russia decreased to 8.60 percent in September from 9.10 percent in August of 2024. This page provides - Russia Inflation Rate - actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news.
tradingeconomics.com
Wow, Russia are doing really well lately.
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«Кремль закончить войну не может, он может ее только проиграть». Россия увязла в Украине и теряет много людей и техники. Но даже возможные последствия войны не вразумляют Москву. Интервью военного эксперта Павла Лузина — Новая газета Европа
Потери Вооруженных сил РФ в Украине, по оценкам Пентагона, могут достигать до 80 тысяч убитыми и ранеными, потери в технике сравнимы с результатами работы ВПК за 5 лет. Восполнить их невозможно. Как в этих условиях будет дальше идти война, объясняет эксперт по российской внешней и оборонной...
"The Kremlin cannot end the war, it can only lose it."
Russia is bogged down in Ukraine and is losing a lot of people and equipment. But even the possible consequences of the war do not give Moscow any sense. Interview with military expert Pavel Luzin
According to Pentagon estimates, losses of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine may reach up to 80,000 killed and wounded, losses in equipment are comparable to the results of the military-industrial complex for 5 years. It is impossible to replace them. How the war will go on under these conditions, explains expert on Russian foreign and defense policy, candidate of political sciences Pavel Luzin.
- How do you assess Russian army losses in Ukraine?
Pavel Luzin
Candidate of Political Sciences, Expert on Russian Foreign and Defense Policy
- I don't have my own estimates, I follow what the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine gives out, what the Americans give out - the Pentagon and the CIA, what the British give out, because they have much more opportunities to collect data on casualties.
- Plus, I guess, the Russian Defense Ministry?
- The Russian Defense Ministry doesn't provide any data. They had leaks to the media in the spring - even to Komsomolskaya Pravda, they talked about more than ten thousand people dead, and that was interesting. But since then they have apparently been cut off from such leaks.
- This is why I ask about your estimates: all the sources that you cited give figures with a difference of tens of thousands of deaths.
- But these figures do not contradict each other. The Pentagon announces the losses of 70-80 thousand killed and wounded, and this is quite a conservative estimate, they themselves say that they are not sure. At the same time the General Staff of the AFU says about 42-43 thousand killed at the same time.
- This data, if I'm not mistaken, is from as far back as July.
- Yes, yes, now it is already under 50 thousand. The AFU speaks about "eliminated personnel", this may include those killed and seriously wounded, and they specify that they mean those killed. So, 80 thousand killed and wounded and 40 thousand killed - this does not contradict each other. Russia has not only armed forces at war, but a lot of other rabble as well. Tens of thousands of people have been mobilized from the DNR, which Russia has controlled in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions since 2014. Russia has mercenaries fighting, the Rosgvardia is fighting, and so on.
- There are also volunteers in "named" battalions and convicts.
- Regional battalions still sign contracts with the Defense Ministry. How they are counted there is a separate question, but these dead are in any case counted as losses of the Defense Ministry. Some count the killed and wounded, others only the killed, hence the difference by a factor of two.
- It is considered that the "standard" ratio of killed and wounded is one to three, and here we have about equal.
- That's true, but when you have a lot of wounded, especially heavy ones, with shrapnel wounds, for example, because artillery is working there, it becomes especially important how quickly the wounded get to the operating table, and how many doctors will be able to help them.
- And what is happening with our military medicine?
- There were a total of 23,000 military medics in Russia. This is not a small number; it is quite a normal number. Another thing is that not all of them are surgeons, not all of them are qualified. Usually when the country was preparing to go to war, they chose the most experienced recruits for medical training. This was the case, for example, during the first and second Chechen campaigns. That is to say, the young man could hold a sub-machine gun and be a battlefield attendant, so that the wounded could make it to the operating table. And it seems that this time there was no such training. So not every unit has someone who knows how to put a tourniquet on the battlefield.
- All medics regardless of gender are enlisted, can't civilian surgeons be mobilized to participate in a "special operation" without us knowing about it?
- No, it is not possible for us not to know. To do this, war must be declared, and then medics, including surgeons, will be drafted. Now the shortage of surgeons is compensated by the Federal Medical and Biological Agency (FMBA). The agency has medical units and hospitals all over the country that service all kinds of FSUEs, military facilities, research institutes, nuclear power plants, CATFs, and so on. The people they could recruit from there were recruited.
- So this is the process of quietly mobilizing medical personnel.
- But this is a voluntary process, these medical units do not force their personnel to go somewhere to the south, to Rostov, to receive the wounded from the front. Those who were enticed went.
- Do you know the number of "enticed" people?
- I do not remember the full number in the Federal Medical and Biological Agency, may be several tens of thousands of doctors and nurses, there were few people willing to go.
- The "standard" ratio of killed to wounded is more than one to three, because of this state of military medicine? Is it causing more deaths than it could?
- That's probably true. In order to remain one in three, there must be a normal medical service. Okay, field hospitals are now inflatable, modern, and so on. But during six months of meat-grinding, for example, hospital-acquired infections, which killed many people in Russia back in the covid times, appear in them. Because of this, too, losses are on the rise.
- Look, penicillin was invented in the 1940s...
- Penicillin hasn't even been used for a long time.
- I understand that there are more modern antibiotics. But certainly an increase in combat casualties due to sepsis is something quite savage.
- If antibiotics are used incorrectly, incompletely, illiterately, then people do die because of sepsis, but this is just an assumption. Of course, everything has to be studied deeper, but we don't have the materials for that. We know for a fact that FMBA sent surgeons "to the south" and that not everyone agreed to go, even at great extra cost. And we know for sure that the military medical service in Russia is not at a very high level; it can do some basic things, but not many good doctors come out of the Military Medical Academy.
- That's what I can't believe: the VMA was once considered the best medical education in the country.
- Yes, you could say that about twenty years ago. It was a priority in the USSR; a militarized country had to have a well-organized medical service.
- The USSR was not the point. Basically, military field surgery and all the military medical "logistics" were something Russia could be proud of. Pirogov, a Russian doctor, invented it and then it was adopted by the whole world...
- Today in Russia in general the quality of medical education has declined. And it is not rare that people who could not get into a civil medical university are enrolled into the Military Medical Academy. And this is the case with the entire system of military education: if you look at the average entrance exam score to military academies, not only medical ones, it is not even close to the minimum entrance score to civilian academies for similar specialties.
- You say that before the Chechen campaigns soldiers were taught first aid skills. But these people who were planning the "special operation" in Ukraine, did they not suspect that there might be wounded people there too?
- Apparently they didn't. This "operation" was not prepared by the military, but by Chekists, who did not ask the military for their opinion. Most likely, they were not sent to study.
- Really, if you go to war with parade uniforms and the Rosgvardiya, why do you need medics.
- I think they decided to make do with the full-time medical service. They did not calculate that each unit had to have someone who could apply a tourniquet or inject painkillers. And most importantly, they apparently did not understand that it was necessary to also provide each unit with certain medical supplies.
- We will talk about supplies later. But if we go back to the casualties, the number of which is named by various Western sources, why do you trust them in principle? How can those who do not keep personnel records know this at all? What tools does intelligence have for this? They don't count the killed by their heads, do they?
- And they count them too, if, for example, there is a close contact battle, and by the load of hospitals, and by radio intercepts. That's why there's such a scatter in the numbers. The Ukrainians, I think, count "two-hundredths" [deceased] and "three-hundredths" [wounded] mostly by radio intercepts.
- All kinds of "radio intercepts" of conversations between the Russian military appear from time to time even in social networks, but to be honest, I don't really believe them. How is it possible that in war one can so easily intercept enemy conversations?
- Most of the military communicates on cellular phones. There are no radio stations for medics. They just don't have them.
- Why not?
- And why provide them with radios? The Kremlin is guided by a completely cynical view of reality. And the officers still communicate by cell phone. Now, of course, they have reduced its use, because a lot of activity of cell phones in a particular area began to come in the shell. But in general, they continue to use cell phones because they have a shortage of communications equipment. They don't have satellite phones, but they need to communicate with each other somehow. The unit commander may have a radio station, but it's easier for him to call Vasya on the phone and tell him that he should coordinate the interaction.
- Even if we believe the figures of 70-80 thousand dead and wounded, then, as cynical as it may sound, against the background of the total number of about 750,000 men in the Russian army, this does not seem to be much. To what extent can these losses be compensated?
- The army is not all at war. In the war we are dealing with, 134,000 to 168,000 soldiers are ready to fight. I am talking about the readiness to fight, not to march on parade. The rest are busy doing other things. For example the Strategic Missile Forces (Strategic Missile Forces): who will guard missile silos otherwise? It is a large officer corps, battalions or guard companies, depending on the size of the base. They would be of no use on the battlefield either, because a guard battalion is, of course, people with enhanced training, but it is training for specific tasks. The fleet cannot be redirected, the bulk of the fleet is not at war, it is in Murmansk, in Severodvinsk, in Kaliningrad, in St. Petersburg, on the Caspian Sea, and most importantly in Vladivostok and Kamchatka.
- Apparently, it's easier to say who can be redirected?
- You can send ground troops, the Airborne Forces, and the Marines.
- And all of them, you mean, consist of 130,000-160,000 men?
- No, their combined strength is somewhere between 350,000 and 360,000, but you have to take into account how many of them are combat-ready.
One group - it is from 800 to 1,000 people. But these are the ones who could fight. Plus, let's say there are motorized rifle brigades of constant readiness, then they have three BTGs each. And there are usual brigades or divisions, where one motorized infantry brigade is combat-ready, another one is half-ready, it takes several weeks to make it combat-ready, and the third one is conscripts, low-quality men, on whom nobody pin hopes much. The quality of human material in the army is not good.
- In the military unit near Pechenga in Murmansk region an officer told me that they try to recruit as many conscripts as possible because there is a plan for it and they are punished for failure to execute it. How much are the figures on the number of contract employees inflated?
- They are absolutely inflated. Because the number of draftees and the number of contract servicemen are overlapping sets. If you have secondary education, you can join the army in the third month of service, in the sixth, and so on, but in other words, a draftee can join the army the whole year of his service. And it turns out that every year, out of the 260,000 conscripts, some how many (which one, we do not know) are transformed into contract servicemen, but are still listed as draftees.
In general, the contract service is standard two years and then they leave, very few of them stay for long contracts. There are sergeants and non-commissioned officers who serve longer, but as a rule they are absolutely unsuitable for any civilian work. They can do nothing and do not want anything, they went into the army with a rather cynical calculation: they can earn some money, doing nothing at all.
- In the first months of the war I talked a lot with the families of young men who found themselves in the war zone. The picture is such that young men go for contract work for three reasons: either the region is poor and you simply can't find work there, or the family is very poor, or the boy is basically unable to study, so he can't get another profession. Or all three factors together.
- All of those are true.
- And it turns out that half of this army, in this state, is now left in Ukraine. Where can the military be recruited to continue the "special military operation"?
- That's where the Kremlin is now thinking, where they would recruit the army. The draft last spring did not work out either. They planned to draft 134,000 conscripts, and in the end they announced that they had drafted as many as they wanted. But the last figures for three days before the end of the draft were 89 thousand people.
- And technically the draftees don't have to go to war.
- They can be sent there after four months of service.
- Provided they signed a contract?
- No. There is a provision on military service, signed by the president of Russia in 1995, and it says clearly: a draftee can be sent to a combat zone after four months of training.
- But this is in the case of war, and we know that there is no war here, but there is a special operation.
- The statute says: to a combat zone. The combatants are paid for, so there is a combat zone, and they can be sent.
- Why then, at the very beginning of the war, did the president assure us that no conscripts would be present during special operations?
- I have not seen any officially published document to this effect. The president was lying. There is a law on military service, there is a provision on military service, and no one has cancelled them.
- Do you mean to say that even now, six months after the beginning of the war, the conscripts can still be there?
- Spring conscripts cannot still be there because their enlistment only began on May 23. But in the fall, they can. Unless the army listens to what Putin says, and though the law says otherwise, they will not send conscripts there for "just in case. Or they will persuade the rural boys to sign a contract and send them there immediately. They can cover their own asses, but legally nothing prevents them from sending a conscript after four months of training to a combat zone. Do you know of anyone who was threatened with punishment in the spring for sending conscripts to Ukraine who has actually been punished? I don't know of any such cases.
- Is Putin's decree to increase the number of military personnel by 137,000 a way to increase the number of participants in the war?
- I don't think so. I mean, we'll have to see what the result will be, what other decisions will be made, but I think that in these new staffing units will hide payments to the maimed, the families of the dead, survivor's pensions.
- How's that? Will they be "dead souls"?
- Exactly. Otherwise, in the statistics of people receiving disability and survivor pensions, a large mass of disabled and bereaved will come out. And if you run them on the Defense Department payroll, nothing will ever come out. In any case, there were no other decrees after that. And this decree will only take effect on January 1, 2023, when the bulk of pensions will already be assigned. We shall see. And maybe this way they want to ensure the workers at repair plants subordinated to the Defense Ministry. There is also a deficit of human resources there, how else to attract them.
- At the factories in Leningrad Oblast, for example, the workers have already started to receive legal summons with the requirement to come to the military registration and enlistment office with their belongings within 24 hours. Only they are sent not to the zone of military operations, but to the nearest regions of Russia to repair the damaged equipment. At least, that's what they are told in the military registration and enlistment offices.
- But in order to attract workers to these "field workshops", they have to be paid something else besides their wages, they have to be provided with some kind of temporary housing. The summons with an order is for those who do not know their rights, who are intimidated by their superiors, although the superiors are not interested in losing workers. The personnel deficit at factories is large, at military-industrial complex factories - even larger, and simply to summon a man within 24 hours - so he will send the conscripts, and he will not get anything for it.
- How can the Russian army make up for the losses?
- These losses are irreplaceable. And how can they be replaced? An engineering unit could be "reassigned" to a combat unit and sent off to fight. Maybe communications officers could be sent. But how they will fight is the question.
- In the regions, "name regiments" are being assembled...
- Do you realize that this is all rabble, social scum?
- I'm not so sure.
- A man at 40 suddenly wants to go to war. And not to defend his country, his family, but to fight to make money. What other motivation could he have?
- He loves his homeland.
- This "love his country" in practice means, first of all, that no one needs him, including his wife, children and elderly parents. Secondly, he has achieved nothing in life, and so he wants to prove to everyone that he is still capable of something. Thirdly, he is a man who also suffers from material problems and thinks that he will solve them in the war.
- But such people are needed in the war we are now talking about.
- Such people do not live in a war, such people can not win.
- And they don't have to, that's how they're called over there - "cannon fodder".
- "Cannon fodder" does not live long, and besides, such people are few in number, not a single region, in fact, has been able to recruit these "battalions" properly. The war can't be won by such numbers.
- Novaya Gazeta Europe wrote recently that they can't even get the necessary number of convicts: in the "ex-servicemen" zone, convicts with training and experience of service in special forces and other units won't fight.
- Convicts from ordinary zones don't really go either. And then, so you took a convict from there, gave him a machine gun. Who will command him?
- And who guarantees that he won't run away with that machine gun to the nearest Russian town?
- No one. If you put two or three of those mercenaries in a unit, after the first night there will either be a total loss of discipline, or someone will kill someone. The commander, who has to give these convicts orders, better not turn his back on them, otherwise his own people will shoot him and say it was a stray bullet.
- So there's no way to make up for the losses?
- No way. That is, they could only be compensated by mobilization, but it is politically and technically unfeasible.
- Politically, I understand, but why not technically?
- And where would you mobilize them? We need cadre units, units which will receive these mobilized people, train them, conduct combat readjustment, and only then send them off to fight. But mobilization in Russia can only be carried out by force. In general there are two types of mobilization. The first is republican, voluntary.
- Is that how it is now in Ukraine?
- Absolutely right, as in Ukraine, when there is motivation. They mobilized a million people in such a way, but not all of a million people go to war at once. The second type is violent mobilization: Stalin's, Maoist, Pol Pot's, Ho Chi Minh's. First, a commissar comes to a village with two armed soldiers, brings all the men together and says, "If you don't come with us, we will shoot you. He takes them to another region, where they are complete strangers, and only then gives them weapons.
After the first fight, when they've already shot and killed a man, they are already a cohesive unit. From that point on, they can feed each other, they can rob each other - it doesn't matter, the main thing is that they have complete consolidation, like a mass that is not rooted anywhere, so it won't run away and will follow orders. It is also driven by the Stockholm syndrome.
- The contract soldiers who were able to escape told how those who stayed behind could explain their reluctance to write a refusal report: they wanted "to avenge their killed comrades. The same motive was mentioned by the Afghan veterans.
- This, I think, is an exaggeration. Often such explanations are self-justification, but in reality they don't leave because they can't do anything in civilian life. Moreover, they are afraid of being punished for refusing to fight.
- What kind of equipment suffers there the most and in the first place?
- Absolutely everything. It doesn't matter if a helicopter was hit by man-portable air defense systems or TURS - everything suffers, everything is broken. Soviet equipment, all these BMPs, BMDs and others, are designed for another war, they were all made for the Soviet offensive to La Manche. Not for modern warfare, not for maneuver defense. Not for a war in which you have to use your brain.
- Can Russia make up for these losses in equipment? Now, given the sanctions and the lack of imports, are there any companies capable of replacing a broken tank with a new one?
- No, there are not. We almost never make new tanks, we mostly modernize old tanks. And what is produced uses imported equipment and imported components. For a year, two or three years, this equipment will still work, then it will start breaking down.
- So this equipment is still working now, new weapons are going to war?
- It can go there, the whole question is the quantity: it is very limited, because the labor productivity, not just at one plant, but all along the chain, is very low, and it's impossible to increase it. For example, Russian factories can produce 30 helicopters a year, and you can't go over the top.
- Isn't it normal to have "disposable" airplanes in time of war? I read that this was the case during World War II: military aircraft engines had a very short lifespan.
- The situation is better now, only the Su-25s have a shorter engine life - 500 hours. But they don't fly that much either. Each unit flies for an hour or an hour and a half a day. One or two combat sorties at most. This is not the American army, when a pilot could get 400-500 sorties during a combat mission in Iraq.
- And to buy? In Iran, over there, in India?
- Iran does not have its own helicopters. India has helicopters of its own, and somewhere they produce Russian ones under license, but they do not sell them back, the Indians do not want to.
- To what extent are Russia's losses in equipment compensated for in this war?
- Not at all. The work of the factories in five to seven years has been spent in half a year, for some types of armament ten years have been spent. That's if you judge the losses by the statements of the Ukrainians and Western intelligence.
- Did I understand you correctly that all the military factories, the entire Russian military-industrial complex is not able to make up for the loss of equipment in Ukraine?
- No, it is not. Besides, there are types of equipment that are no longer produced, for example, the Su-25. They run out of their engine capacity, and that's it. It is still possible to change the engine on the Su-25s, but not on the Su-24s, this will be their last war. And the more modern planes are too difficult to produce, they are produced in 15-20 of each type per year.
- In the war that is going on in Ukraine now, the main expendable material is missiles and shells. Are there enough of them?
- It is more difficult here, because with aerial bombs, for example, we do not know the rate of production.
- Do we know the rate of consumption?
- We do not know either. There are some estimates only for artillery.
- I am not an expert, but I have a feeling that this war on the destruction of cities is just a consequence of the understanding that it is more and more difficult to fight with people and other equipment. It is easier to pelt the enemy with everything that can be launched and flown.
- You have the right feeling. That is the point of artillery and missile terror.
- Does the Russian army have enough resources for such a war?
- If the Russian army reduces the intensity of shelling, there will be enough for a while. But the Russian army itself, by its modus vivendi and modus operandi, will turn into an unruly mob. But it will suffice for an irregular war, for an asymmetric war.
Another thing is whether the opponent will allow it to wage such a war. The Ukrainian Armed Forces already oppose it, they simply grind the Russian army. That is, the Russian army is still capable of causing trouble, but the further it goes, the more it ceases to be an army, turning into a morally decomposed collection. Many of the survivors have been there for six months, and that's the time limit, it's high time for rotation. Otherwise, those who come back in a month or two will no longer be servicemen.
And moral decay is half the trouble, these people will not be able in principle to carry out any combat tasks, it cannot be recovered. The standard rotation is three or four months, and then the man needs to rest, he needs to come to his senses. He needs to be torn out of this environment, which acts as a trap for him. The army starts criminalizing them, they need somewhere to get booze, somewhere to get drugs. They want to at least somehow justify their stay there in their own eyes - so they start robbing. Then they lose all value as soldiers, because they can no longer perform any combat tasks. And even after resting.
- I have seen the work of volunteers who help the army. They collect practically everything for the army: from pasta and drinking water to radios and uniforms. Is it really impossible for the Defense Ministry to provide all these things to the troops?
- The uniforms issued to servicemen in the field wear out in a week or two. The boots live a week or two too. The Defense Ministry has some stocks, but they are not endless.
- And pasta, why pasta? Lighters, cigarettes, cans with water, pampers for the wounded - it is impossible to provide soldiers with all these things too? And this is not the initiative of the volunteers themselves: they receive the lists of what they need "from behind the tape", as they say, and the soldiers come from there to collect the supplies themselves.
- If the Defense Ministry were to provide itself with pasta and water, it would be long and expensive. Besides, it is a long bureaucratic chain, we need at least a deputy minister to sign documents: we have to buy pasta. And how do you distribute it in a war zone?
- When a country sends people to war, doesn't it know that it will have to buy and distribute water, pasta, uniforms, boots?
- You want too much from the Department of Defense and think too highly of it.
The boots will come off a dead enemy. Or from a murdered comrade. Or stolen from the local population. He'll put on sneakers instead of boots.
- I have seen the clothes and ammunition of NATO soldiers at the base in Hohenfels, Germany. It's hard for me to imagine that their boots would only last a week. Why can't the Russian Defense Ministry provide the same for its soldiers?
- The quality of production is completely different, there all the provision of the army works within the framework of private economic activity. If a NATO soldier needs boots, a private company will make them in the right quantity and quality. Do you know who makes army boots in Russia? All military uniforms in Russia are made by the Federal Penitentiary Service.
- Are they convicts?
- Of course. The standard shoes are made in the colonies. Hence the quality. There are, of course, private firms that make better shoes, they are sold in stores for hunters and some strikeball players, but the volume is not what the army needs, especially during the war.
- This is exactly the kind of boots volunteers buy.
- With volunteers, the situation is also interesting: there is not much enthusiasm in society for this war, and to raise money for the army is a problem. People do not want to donate. There is no rise and unity around the flag, which the Kremlin hoped for.
- Everything you're talking about was known before the war. Okay - Putin, he was deceived. But how could the military command not know that our army could not fight?
- That is why the General Staff protested against the war. By all available means the military was screaming through the mass media: we can't fight, we can't fight. All the problems were known. But the war was planned by the Chekists, and they said: we need the army only to raise our prestige, and this way we can rely on our agents and do everything ourselves, the Ukrainian society is ready to return to Mother Russia, we only need to kill some unhappy nationalists. Besides, the political and economic system of Russia is out of balance by 2020, that is also the reason why they had to start the war.
- At the same time, the Russian army has achievements, one fifth of Ukraine's territory is under its control, and Kherson has been "liberated.
- It is clear that there were traitors and collaborators on the Ukrainian side, which is why they managed to capture Kherson. But what to do with it afterwards?
- How - what? Hold a referendum, at which 98.7% of the population will vote for the proclamation of Kherson.
- And then what? What will it change?
- There will be another "people's republic" with conditions that are impossible to live in. Do you think that Ukraine will feel comfortable that Russia will not be able to establish anything there, just as it could not do so in the DNR and LNR?
- Well, you will proclaim these republics. What good would that do? The Ukrainians could have wiped Donetsk off the face of the earth over the years, with their troops standing nearby, but they didn't do it because the Minsk agreements were in effect, giving it all some kind of status. And now there are no agreements, there is no negotiation process. Putin would very much like to start negotiations, but they won't let him. The world has stopped playing by his rules, stopped giving in to his blackmail. After all, Minsk-1 was signed in 2014 after the Ilovaysk battle, when Ukraine suffered a heavy defeat. Then the Ukrainian government itself was ready to freeze the conflict. Then there was Debaltsevo - and Minsk-2, and then the Ukrainian government also understood that it needed negotiations.
- And it took 15 hours of negotiations, during which Germany and France pressured Poroshenko as hard as they could.
- Yes, yes, yes. And now there's nothing like that. If you declare a Kherson People's Republic, what will you do with it? You don't control anything there, by and large. There is no economic activity there and will never be. In the DNR - or in the "DPR" and "LPR" - there were remnants of economic activity, but they have run out. Even the coal ran out there.
- They ran out, first of all, of miners who could extract this coal, of equipment at the mines and money for subsidies for these mines, because Donetsk coal has always been very subsidized.
- That's what we're talking about. It is an inevitable process, and it is already impossible to restore any economic activity in ORDLO. In the Kherson region, what was the economic activity? Farmers? But they have already been robbed once, they are unlikely to continue working there. A farmer without equipment, a farmer without seed or money is not a farmer.
Control over the seized territories will cost Russia many times more than giving them up.
- With all this in mind, how long do you estimate the war could last?
- If the Russian armed forces reduce the intensity of the conflict and the Ukrainians don't counterattack, it could last a long time. The Russian army will slowly decay. But it's dangerous for the Kremlin to bring it home now, too.
- Yes. These are armed people, angry at the government.
- Exactly. And then this turmoil can go on for years. And with the parallel criminalization of the Crimea, the Belgorod region, the Kursk region - it will all go there. But that's if the Ukrainians don't push hard.
- And the Ukrainians are getting more and more weapons from the West, and they are going to pressurize.
- If the Ukrainians continue to grind down the Russian army, then we can't predict anything, it's a "fog of war". But the Russian army will not be able to fight. Organizationally it will simply collapse at some point. So far it retains some kind of organizational structure, although individual formations have already begun to disintegrate. If things continue like this, by winter the Russian army as an organizational force will cease to exist.
This will give Ukraine the opportunity to win the war. But at the same time it will pose the problem of how to restore its territories after the war. How to incorporate them back from the criminalized state into a normal society. I think Ukraine understands this.
- What are the ways for Russia to get out of this, to avoid such a development?
- If we think rationally, we should stop the war, say that it was a mistake. "My dear father had an apoplectic stroke."
- Rationally, that's how it could be in reality, not fantasy.
- That's the problem: the word "rational" itself is already fantastic here. In the current configuration, the Kremlin itself cannot end the war, it can only lose it.
all the best, there will more damage in densely populated area by a 6.0 earth quake than by a 8.0 in a sparsely populated area. As I have said earlier eu has more to lose, just a matter of time eu will be comparable economically with russia.The French inflation rate is about 1/3rd of Russia's, so based on your assessment of French inflation being 'devastating for pensioners', Russian pensioners must be about suicidal by now.
France Inflation Rate
Inflation Rate in France increased to 1.20 percent in October from 1.10 percent in September of 2024. This page provides the latest reported value for - France Inflation Rate - plus previous releases, historical high and low, short-term forecast and long-term prediction, economic calendar...
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Russia Inflation Rate
Inflation Rate in Russia decreased to 8.60 percent in September from 9.10 percent in August of 2024. This page provides - Russia Inflation Rate - actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news.
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Wow, Russia are doing really well lately.
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Its like India comparing with pakistan, it makes no difference whether they go bankrupt or not but we dont want to go down.
Thread on Russian people not getting paid their wages. No, we're not talking about the soldiers this time:
Quoting just a few excerpts from the end, after a long list of examples :
Quoting just a few excerpts from the end, after a long list of examples :
Soldiers of PMC Wagner told about some episodes of fighting in Ukraine near Artemovsk. Video with subtitles youtube
The Ukrainian army has begun to mark its military equipment with new identification marks, with a distinctly white cross on the videos that have appeared. It is not yet known whether all military equipment of Ukraine will be marked this way, or whether the equipment of one of the groupings of troops is designated this way.
A Ukrainian soldier spoke about the battle in Ukraine and the defeat of his ambushed squad. Video with subtitles youtube
Attack of PMC Wagner, soldiers of Ukraine were ambushed. A video of a real battle in Ukraine was filmed by soldiers of the Ukrainian army, on the way to their stronghold near the city of Bakhmut, Ukrainian soldiers were ambushed by Wagner PMCs. The video was taken from the phone of a deceased soldier of the Ukrainian army. Video with youtube subtitles
The Ukrainian army has begun to mark its military equipment with new identification marks, with a distinctly white cross on the videos that have appeared. It is not yet known whether all military equipment of Ukraine will be marked this way, or whether the equipment of one of the groupings of troops is designated this way.
A Ukrainian soldier spoke about the battle in Ukraine and the defeat of his ambushed squad. Video with subtitles youtube
Attack of PMC Wagner, soldiers of Ukraine were ambushed. A video of a real battle in Ukraine was filmed by soldiers of the Ukrainian army, on the way to their stronghold near the city of Bakhmut, Ukrainian soldiers were ambushed by Wagner PMCs. The video was taken from the phone of a deceased soldier of the Ukrainian army. Video with youtube subtitles
Russia has a lot to lose to, at this rate it won't be long before the queues at shops start again.
But it's good that you see how bad Russia is and that Ukraine is therefore not better off with them.
So in Europe people are complaining about wage rises not matching inflation, but in Russia there are people not getting paid their wages at all.
Two third of EU population supports Ukraine. The only outliers are Greece, Cyprus, and Bulgaria -- countries that traditionally have seen Russia as their ally against the Ottoman Empire...
Ukrainian population in occupied territories are getting unruly -- including in Crimea!
"Meanwhile, the populations in the occupied areas are suffering.
In Yalta, Crimea, there were demonstrations against the Russian occupation (which has lasted since 2014), following the release of a notorious collaborator accused of killing a man in the street."