two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
Not sure how useful these are but somewhat interesting (for me at least as explanation of theoretical possibilities) I've linked to the comments, too but duplicated the map in case it's deleted from reddit.
eta: interesting comment, what do people think?
eta: interesting comment, what do people think?
At this point the damage to russia is so massive, I'm not sure even a "complete" victory wouldn't be pyrrhic in nature.
They've had basically no new orders for their military hardware (a major export item) in the last year and a half. I'm not talking about stuff that someone might want delivered now. Orders for things like aircraft, tanks, etc, are the sort of thing that you make 5-10 years in advance of when you think you need them.
Europe has been massively pushed towards finding alternative sources of fossil fuels, not to mention shifting towards renewables in a fairly massive way.
Even if russia randomly achieved a total-victory, Finland, Sweden, etc are not just going to go "Oh, now that that's over, I guess we should leave NATO.".
They've lost an absolutely staggering number of people, both in terms of deaths and severe injuries. Twenty years from now on whatever reddit-successor exists, people will be posting on the future r/DataIsBeautiful type locations graphs showing the huge dip in the population charts for russia.
Then there's the economic consequences of all of this. Even if they don't try to rebuild all their stocks of weapons back to pre-war levels (which would take decades at their current war-time production levels), their economy has taken a massive hit on par with named recessions, and it's unlikely that import/export bans will be lifted quickly following a cessation of hostilities (ESPECIALLY if they are allowed to win).
Even just looking at their air travel sector, you can see decades-long consequences. The way that airlines grow is that they lease aircraft for new routes. If after several years, the route seems sustainable and profitable, then they will purchase an aircraft (again, with a lead time of several years before delivery) to directly own it. All of russia's orders from Boeing and Airbus were functionally canceled by government order (even if not literally cancelled, they've been shoved to the back of the many-years-long queue). All those planes they seized at the outset of the war? They will never be allowed to fly to any modern nation, because the maintenance gaps mean no insurance company will issue a policy on the aircraft (not without a maintenance overhaul which will rival the cost of just buying new). And due to that same seizure, no leasing group is going to let russia lease their aircraft without an absolutely crippling set of leasing fees for the next decade or so.
So far all the territory they've temporarily seized from Ukraine has been pummeled into dust and has lost a lot of its economic value. The factories in those areas are completely scrap at this point, not to mention all the skilled laborers at them will have long since left. Sure, there's those various mines (like the big salt mines), but they'll have to completely rebuild the towns/cities that served the workforce in question at ridiculous expense before they can even support such activities.
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