Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24

[existentialist]

I wonder how the economic sanctions on Russia are going?

Better than Russia would have us believe, in my view.

 

[ska invita]

What I do want, though, is for the establishment here (government, opposition, media etc.) to stop being absolute hypocrites with regard to Ukraine and Palestine.

not hypocritical, steadfastly supporting their best interests on the global chessboard in both cases with no regard for the deathtoll - very consistent

*i know what you mean of course

 

[Chz]

I wonder how the economic sanctions on Russia are going?

Their economy has had a rough time, but it's not going to collapse or anything. They were running 12% inflation for most of 2022, though the prices have now levelled off. The most important part of the sanctions has been that it really limits how quickly they can produce new tanks, aircraft, etc. They can still get ahold of the bits and bobs they need, but it's through back channels/black market, etc. and they can't get the volume they'd like. (And it costs them an awful lot more)

 

[kabbes]

As well as suffering sanctions, Russia have had to roughly double spending on their military, which is now near enough to a fifth of their entire fiscal spend. That’s not sustainable in the long term, no matter how much it might be doable for a handful of years. But it’s often difficult to identify the effect of something like sanctions and having a war economy right up until the moment of collapse. The Soviet Union is a good example of that — it looked rock-solid right up to the point that it didn’t any more. Of course, Ukraine are suffering this to an even greater extent than Russia, but they currently get this cost subsidised by the rest of the world. Who runs out of funds first thus greatly relies on whether this subsidy is kept up, which potentially could be for many years to come.

 

[The39thStep]

Useful summary of the challenges faced by the US in trying to enforce sanctions to reduce Russia's arms industry capacity

Russia Overcomes Sanctions to Expand Missile Production, Officials Say (Published 2023)

Moscow’s missile production now exceeds prewar levels, officials say, leaving Ukraine especially vulnerable this coming winter.

www.nytimes.com

 

[TopCat]

Let's put it like this. If Russia prevails in Ukraine, one of the first things they are going to do is go through the place purging, torturing, and murdering everyone who fought (or they think fought) on the Ukraine side - and that will be the least of it. They lose all their people of fighting age if they lose, so they might as well go down fighting, regardless.

You think they should fight to the last soldier?

 

[gosub]

You think they should fight to the last soldier?

Should hang tough, whilst they work on air superiority

 

[editor]

When would you suggest the Palestinians accept the loss of their territory and stop fighting?

I don't expect he'll be answering that question any timer soon, at least not directly.

 

[TopCat]

Should hang tough, whilst they work on air superiority

So stick to their current tactics and wait for F16 deliveries?

 

[gosub]

So stick to their current tactics and wait for F16 deliveries?

Zalensky pretty much admitted Russia has air supremacy. So asymmetric warfare rather than counter offensive , coz even when you are fighting to retake land you've got to resupply it. When they have some type certified pilots that's their one shot being realistic. Competing demands and or politics mean they probably won't get another batch though. Can't see this particular meat grinder pausing til either Putin pops his clogs or the US election in a years time

 

[existentialist]

You think they should fight to the last soldier?

What I think they should do is neither here nor there.

But Russia has already given Ukrainians plenty of examples of how they treat them - whether military or civilian, male or female, adult or child - and military history is littered with examples of what people do when you leave them with nothing to lose. Many - most - Ukrainians will feel that a Russian occupation is very much a nothing-left-to-lose situation, and will respond accordingly.

 

[existentialist]

So stick to their current tactics and wait for F16 deliveries?

You ask a lot of questions for someone who seems to have some rather..."definite" views on the whole thing.

 

[TopCat]

When would you suggest the Palestinians accept the loss of their territory and stop fighting?

I think the two conflicts are very different. The one constant in both however is that Ukraine and Israel receive billions of dollars of military and financial aid from the US. Without the aid, neither could prosecute these conflicts. The US is a malign actor.

 

[TopCat]

Useful summary of the challenges faced by the US in trying to enforce sanctions to reduce Russia's arms industry capacity

Russia Overcomes Sanctions to Expand Missile Production, Officials Say (Published 2023)

Moscow’s missile production now exceeds prewar levels, officials say, leaving Ukraine especially vulnerable this coming winter.

www.nytimes.com

Is there a free to read version?

 

[nogojones]

Is there a free to read version?

Russia has managed to overcome sanctions and export controls imposed by the West to expand its missile production beyond prewar levels, according to U.S., European and Ukrainian officials, leaving Ukraine especially vulnerable to intensified attacks in the coming months.
In addition to spending more than $40 billion providing weapons for Ukraine, the United States has made curbing Russia’s military supply a key part of its strategy to support Kyiv.
As a result of the sanctions, American officials estimate that Russia was forced to dramatically slow its production of missiles and other weaponry at the start of the war in February 2022 for at least six months. But by the end of 2022, Moscow’s military industrial manufacturing began to pick up speed again, American officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose the sensitive assessment now concede.
Russia subverted American export controls using its intelligence services and ministry of defense to run illicit networks of people who smuggle key components by exporting them to other countries from which they can be shipped to Russia more easily. In less than a year since the war began, Russia rebuilt trade in critical components by routing them through countries like Armenia and Turkey. U.S. and European regulators have been trying to work together to curb the export of chips to Russia, but have struggled to stop the flow to pass through countries with ties to Moscow.

Russia’s re-energized military production is especially worrisome because Moscow has used artillery to pound Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines, and its missiles to attack the electric grid and other critical infrastructure, and to terrorize civilians in cities. Officials fear that increased missile stocks could mean an especially dark and cold winter for Ukrainian citizens.
In the meantime, the Pentagon is working to find ways to help Ukrainians better take down the missiles and drones fired by Russia at civilian targets in Kyiv and military targets around the country. The Pentagon has provided Patriot air defense systems and cajoled allies to provide S-300 air defense ammunition, both of which have proven effective. It has also provided other air defenses like the Avenger system and the Hawk air defense system.
But Ukraine does not have enough air defense systems to cover the entire country, and must pick the sites it defends. An increased barrage of missiles could overwhelm the country’s air defenses, Ukrainian officials said.
In October 2022, the United States gathered international officials in Washington in an effort to strengthen sanctions on the Russian economy. At the time, American officials said they believed the sanctions and export controls were working in part because they deterred countries from sending microchips, circuit boards, computer processors and other components needed for precision guided weaponry as well as necessary components for diesel engines, helicopters and tanks.
But Russia adapted quickly with its own efforts to secure supplies of the needed parts.
Today, Russian officials have remade their economy to focus on defense production. With revenue from high energy prices, Russia’s security services and ministry of defense have been able to smuggle in the microelectronics and other Western materials required for cruise missiles and other precision guided weaponry. As a result, military production has not only recovered but surged.

Before the war, one senior Western defense official said, Russia could make 100 tanks a year; now they are producing 200.

Western officials also believe Russia is on track to manufacture two million artillery shells a year — double the amount Western intelligence services had initially estimated Russia could manufacture before the war.


As a result of the push, Russia is now producing more ammunition than the United States and Europe. Overall, Kusti Salm, a senior Estonian defense ministry official, estimated that Russia’s current ammunition production is seven times greater than that of the West.

Russia’s production costs are also far lower than the West’s, in part because Moscow is sacrificing safety and quality in its effort to build weapons more cheaply, Mr. Salm said. For instance, it costs a Western country $5,000 to $6,000 to make a 155-millimeter artillery round, whereas it costs Russia about $600 to produce a comparable 152-millimeter artillery shell, he said.

Still, Russia faces some shortcomings. It does not have huge inventories of missiles, though they have more of some kinds — like the Kh-55 air-launched cruise missile — in stock now than they did at the beginning of the war, according to people briefed on intelligence reports.

“In certain areas, they’ve been able to significantly ramp up production,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, an international security expert and chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a Washington-based think tank.
In cases where Russia needs millions of one particular component, export controls can grind production to a halt. But the chips needed to make a couple of hundred cruise missiles would fit into a few backpacks, which makes evading sanctions relatively simple, Mr. Alperovitch said.

American officials said they can slow, but not stop Russia from smuggling the parts it needs for missile production and that it was unrealistic to think Moscow would not react to the American curbs. One way Russia has adapted is by shipping components to third countries then diverting them there back to Russia, according to the Commerce Department.
“Because the controls were having a real impact, the Russian government didn’t just throw up their hands and say, ‘You got us, we give up,’ ” said Matthew S. Axelrod, the Commerce Department’s assistance secretary for export enforcement. “They got more and more creative with their evasion attempts. And we have been really aggressively working a number of different ways to clamp down.”

Currently, the United States and the European Union have a joint list of 38 different categories of items whose export to Russia is restricted. American officials said nine of the 38, mostly microelectronics that power missiles and drones, are the highest priority to block.
American and European officials have been working with banks to develop a warning system to alert governments to possible sanctions violations. So far American banks have alerted the U.S. government to 400 suspicious transactions. The Commerce Department has been able to use a third of those suspicious activity reports in its investigations.
On Aug. 31, the Commerce Department accused three people of taking part in an illicit Russian procurement network. One of the three, Arthur Petrov, a Russian-German national, was arrested and charged by the Justice Department with export control violations.
Mr. Petrov is accused of acquiring microelectronics from U.S.-based exporters for the purpose of sending them to Cyprus, Latvia or Tajikistan. Once there, other companies helped send the components onward, eventually making their way to Russia.
One of the challenges for the U.S. government is that Russia does not need higher-end chips that are easier to track, but commoditized chips that can be used in a wide range of things, not just guided missiles.

“It makes our job harder because there are a lot of countries that it’s legal and totally fine to sell those chips to for legitimate commercial purposes,” Mr. Axelrod said. “The problem is when those chips then get diverted and shipped to Russia.”
American and Western officials say there is some good news. Russian production is still not keeping pace with how fast the military is burning through ammunition and wearing out equipment. For example, even though Russia is on pace to produce two million rounds of ammunition a year, it fired about 10 million rounds of artillery last year. That has led Moscow to desperately search for alternative sources to increase its stocks, most recently by trying to secure a weapons deal with North Korea, U.S. and Western officials said.
And although Moscow has been successful in smuggling processors and circuit boards, it is facing a shortage of rocket propellant and basic explosives, American officials said, material that can be harder to smuggle than circuit boards. Those shortages are likely to constrain Moscow if it tries to step up further production of ammunition, missiles or bombs.
Russia’s increased military production has also come at a great cost to the Russian economy, particularly as interest rates spike in the country. Sanctions have taken a toll on the Russian economy’s overall health, and overcoming Western export bans has not come cheaply, said American and Western officials. The senior Western defense official said that Russia had reallocated nearly a third of its commercial economy toward arms production. The country faces a labor shortage that could make further industrial gains harder to achieve too.
Russia cut back on its attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid during the summer. But as temperatures plunge, some Ukrainian and Western analysts and government officials think Russia could renew the terror campaign on Kyiv, in hopes that it will sap Ukrainians’ will to fight.

U.S. officials hope the steady supply of air defense ammunition and additional help to improve how Ukraine intercepts Russian attacks could help counter a reinforced barrage of missiles. And Ukrainian defenses have — in some situations — grown stronger.
“Ukrainians have become better in defending their infrastructure and building defenses around their power stations and critical power grids,” Mr. Salm said. “They have become better at fixing and making sure that the impact of the power outages and other utility outages are not as harsh.”

I use the "Bypass Paywalls Clean" browser add-on to get past most paywalls

 

[jeff_leigh]

So you think the Ukrainians should keep fighting? How will they replace the killed and injured soldiers?

It would have to be Mercenaries, There seems to be quite a few South Americans fighting in Ukraine, Wouldn’t surprise me if there’s an arrangement with the US where they fight in Ukraine in return for a Green Card

 

[tim]

It would have to be Mercenaries, There seems to be quite a few South Americans fighting in Ukraine, Wouldn’t surprise me if there’s an arrangement with the US where they fight in Ukraine in return for a Green Card

I love a newly minted conspiracy theory first thing in the morning.

 

[existentialist]

It would have to be Mercenaries, There seems to be quite a few South Americans fighting in Ukraine, Wouldn’t surprise me if there’s an arrangement with the US where they fight in Ukraine in return for a Green Card

That's not going to work. You can't recruit mercenaries on the same scale you conscript, and by the time Ukraine is "down to its last man" there isn't going to be the money or C&C to operate a mercenary army of the size required.

 

[tim]

I think the two conflicts are very different. The one constant in both however is that Ukraine and Israel receive billions of dollars of military and financial aid from the US. Without the aid, neither could prosecute these conflicts. The US is a malign actor.

There may be different between the two conflicts but there are lots of people in both places who don't like living under occupation and are willing to die fighting against it.

As to "malign actors" the USA stands alongside the British, the Iranians, the French, the Saudis, the Israelis, the Chinese, and the the Russians in that category.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Far better that Russia be left to prosecute its wars without NATO interference of course. Good home spun autarchy not like decadent western imperialism

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

The US is a malign actor.

The ying to Iran’s yang.

 

[Rob Ray]

I think the two conflicts are very different

Yes one wants to permanently occupy a weaker neighbour while wiping out its culture and language through grinding campaigns of violence, the other is Israel.

You do a good line in ignoring what Russia has already done to the areas and people taken under its control while banging on about the benefits of one side giving up. It's not the case that one outcome is the same as the other for Ukrainians, and hasn't been at any point in the conflict.

 

[teuchter]

Many - most - Ukrainians will feel that a Russian occupation is very much a nothing-left-to-lose situation, and will respond accordingly.

There may be different between the two conflicts but there are lots of people in both places who don't like living under occupation and are willing to die fighting against it.

I see a lot of statements that seem quite confident that the majority of Ukrainians want to keep fighting to the end. But what does that actually mean? Wanting your military to keep fighting is not the same thing as being willing to risk your own life, or those of your friends and family.

It's worth keeping an eye on opinion polls that try to capture what people actually feel.

This poll is headlined "Ukrainians Stand Behind War Effort Despite Some Fatigue" but the proportion of people who want a negotiated ending is substantial and growing.

Of note is that the support for continuation of fighting is the greatest, the furthest people are from where the on-the-ground fighting is taking place. This doesn't really tally with the statements I've quoted above.

 

[Chz]

It seems obvious that the people currently getting the shit bombed out of them the most are more in favour of peace, but it's really good to see the numbers around it. The one thing that probably needs to be added to the map is just how depopulated east/south Ukraine is now. The west was always more heavily populated, but now the imbalance is quite stark.

 

[Pickman's model]

It seems obvious that the people currently getting the shit bombed out of them the most are more in favour of peace, but it's really good to see the numbers around it. The one thing that probably needs to be added to the map is just how depopulated east/south Ukraine is now. The west was always more heavily populated, but now the imbalance is quite stark.

Both responses tend toward peace tho. Peace if negotiated v peace through victory on the battlefield.

 

[tim]

I see a lot of statements that seem quite confident that the majority of Ukrainians want to keep fighting to the end. But what does that actually mean? Wanting your military to keep fighting is not the same thing as being willing to risk your own life, or those of your friends and family.

It's worth keeping an eye on opinion polls that try to capture what people actually feel.

This poll is headlined "Ukrainians Stand Behind War Effort Despite Some Fatigue" but the proportion of people who want a negotiated ending is substantial and growing.

Of note is that the support for continuation of fighting is the greatest, the furthest people are from where the on-the-ground fighting is taking place. This doesn't really tally with the statements I've quoted above.

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For me it means sitting in class with students saying they want to kill Russians.

 

[teuchter]

For me it means sitting in class with students saying they want to kill Russians.

They actually want to go to the front and kill Russians?

 

[tim]

They actually want to go to the front and kill Russians?

Yes.

 

[teuchter]

Yes.

Why are they not fighting, are they too young? Who are these students - are they school students? Are they in the UK or Ukraine or somewhere else?

 

[two sheds]

What are their names?