Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

[VorZakone]

Strike in Odesa.

 

[stefan92]

Thanks a lot, that shed some light on it. A 25% increase in long range artillery seems very significant but I wonder how the absolute comparison does look like. I mean, I'm no military expert but I imagine there is a huge difference between +25% on a far too small number to begin with and +25% in a roughly even situation. If Russia now has 250 of those systems available, are they outnumbering Ukraine's now? And is there any information how many more NK could contribute?

I don't know anything for sure, but as I see it there should be a roughly equal number of this kind of long range artillery on each side (203mm/155mm for Ukraine and 203mm/170mm for Russia), but far superior numbers in 152mm for Russia, as well as even smaller systems (including Russian tanks that fulfill a second role as auxiliary light artillery - something Western tanks were never considered and equipped for). So in itself it is not a game changer, but when concentrated locally (like now in Kursk) it surely will have an impact.

Regarding potential numbers it's probably difficult to get exact data, but North Korea definitely has one of the largest artillery troops in the world, they have thousands of systems, both guns and missile artillery. And actually a lot of them might be not really needed anymore by North Korea, so might be available to be effectively sold to Russia. In past decades NK had stationed a lot of artillery on the border, especially around Seoul, to guarantee some kind of MAD-doctrine of their own, just by artillery. In case of war, they would have been able to completely destroy Seoul in some minutes by using conventional artillery fire. But now they have the nuclear option and don't need their artillery for that role, so they can move systems away from Seoul.

So right now NK has numbers and Russia has technology NK doesn't have, especially around nuclear armament. It could prove smart business for NK to send their old junk to Ukraine and in return improve the quality of their first strike capabilities (and second - think of nuclear submarines), which frees more numbers to be send away to Ukraine...

 

[Max_United]

I don't know about that. Obviously the reports that Russia would implode fairly quickly have been wrong but it's not as if 2.5 years is an extraordinary long time for such a war to run and if the inflation rates for food that were quoted a bit higher up on this page are anything to go by, that's quite impactful I imagine. Even if the Russian population is used to make due, people are getting used to better living standards quicker than worsening conditions.

And from a purely logical standpoint, Russia is investing so much workforce into war stuff that creates no economic value at all on top of losing human capital in the six digit range, this has top have severe consequences for the population. And this is not even factoring in the sanctions.

Inflation rate quoted was a cherry-picked number for a single product. You could easily find and cherry-pick comparable numbers for single products in many (if not most) European countries in a post-covid inflationary period.

The general inflation in Russia is about 9%. A recent survey of consumer inflation expectations came at 13%. At the same time, the wages are growing at a faster rate (so that real wages are increasing - by like 8-9% on annual basis). Those numbers are nothing unusual for Russia historically and a lot better than in the 90s.

Yes, it is driven by war economy and labor shortages, and yes, the wages growth will likely stop in the coming years as war-induced economic growth reaches its limits.

But Russia’s economy basically mostly stagnated for more than a decade now anyway. The problem is that it has been stagnating on a very high level of living standards and economic efficiency compared to Russia’s history.

Not a super high bar and of course not enough to have any chance in winning an all-out conflict with the west. But alas possibly enough to eventually win a war of attrition with Ukraine having lukewarm military support from the west.

We can hope that Either the west wakes up (unlikely) or putin dies and someone more pragmatic ageees to freeze the conflict and does not care about the rest of Ukraine fully integrating with the west (unlikely that ceding territories would be possible even by his successor). Other realistic scenarios are grim. But I will be all over the moon if Russia suddenly and spectacularly collapses somehow.

 

[Helder-Carvalho]

It seems that the only fiber optic connecting Finland to central europe has been cut

 

[NotThatSoph]

Inflation rate quoted was a cherry-picked number for a single product. [...]

That's really funny. Also, in Feb 2022, the month Russia invaded, the interest rate was already 20 %. Now it's 21. What a tweet.

 

[Balljy]

That's really funny. Also, in Feb 2022, the month Russia invaded, the interest rate was already 20 %. Now it's 21. What a tweet.

They had hyper-inflation for a lot of the 90's of over 200% too, so they're nothing if not resilient.

 

[VorZakone]

 

[Redplane]

Now think about how much wealthier it probably made some people who are profiting off the production of said weapons.