There is a crucial difference: Russia is directly committed to war, NATO is not. To say that this would be an equivalent situation is to ignore reality, since even if NATO starts directly sending its aircraft from its direct services to Ukraine, NATO's real military capacity has not even been touched. So, your statement that Russia is beating NATO is far from understandable reality.
NATO did not send 300 billion in two years. It didn't even reach that amount even considering the financial aid that is the majority of "this" shipment. Financial aid is the biggest assistance for Ukraine, from the US to the EU, the US contributes more to the military part of the assistance package, but has still sent billions of dollars, while the EU has also sent tens of billions of dollars for financial aid, the top contributor of financial assistance, with military assistance falling well below the previous category.
Even if this 300 billion in military aid were true, this is a small part of the entire military organization's GDP.
Even with Ukraine's countless inherent problems on the ground, the Russians are still far from sustaining an advance that would enable an operational gain, the last important city conquered was Adviivka, they have been trying to capture Chasov Yar for some time without even having passed through the canal that cuts through the city, suffering countless losses. The Russians only gained an area of 20 km2 in relation to Ukraine in this period of 1 year, this is still very little compared to the size of the advance that the Russians would have to achieve to reach Dnipro and this with all the superiority in air support with the FAB/KAB bombs destroying and supporting the Russian offensive.
This friction does not favor Russia, which depends on internal stability to keep this war ongoing. It is clearly evident that given all of Russia's efforts to keep the war going and keep the war relatively far from the daily lives of the Russian people is far from being a possibility, Putin already yesterday made declarations of complete mobilization of Russian society, according to Putin , is the only way to "achieve the proposed objectives". Some sources believe that speeches in this style, made with increasing frequency by senior Russian politicians, serve to prepare Russian society for what they see as the inevitable general mobilization for the invasion of Ukraine. With the war dragging on for a third year and the West putting more and more effort into Ukraine's defense, many believe it will have no alternative but to invoke general mobilization to have any chance of ending the war on terms it pleases. .
If Russians spending 8.7% of GDP cannot even have the financial resources to order simple shelters that cost less than US$15,000 each, leaving this burden for volunteers to donate, it means that things are worse than imagined. If you put in PPP(US$5 trillion), the expenses equivalent to US$435 billion, with this size of spending, 3x higher than pre-war Defense spending, it means that either the Russians are spending on the war far beyond what they are claiming or there is widespread corruption that is diverting most of the resources into the pockets of politicians and military personnel, because it is simply unimaginable to even consider that the Russians do not have the financial resources to build simple aircraft shelters to disguise the space surveillance of Kiev's allies .
Regarding shelters and NATO, NATO is not being attacked with drones by its enemies, losing several aircraft. This comparison is simply non-existent. Furthermore, considering Russia's poor strategic strike capability since the beginning of the war, I think NATO would be throwing money away by creating reinforced shelters for its aircraft when the Russian ISR is not even as capable as previously assumed.
And once again you are saying about reinforced shelters, which I made very clear that it is not reinforced shelters that the Russians need, but simple shelters that cost no more than a new car to nullify NATO's space surveillance on Russian airfields and make satellite BDA difficult. And it is from cheap drones that the Russians are being attacked at nearby bases and also at distant bases.
How is NATO real capability have not even been touched when 25% of artillery of 3 of the biggest NATO countries excluding the US (Germany, UK and France) have been destroyed?
About the numbers in military aid. US have provided like 175 billion, plus other 90 billion from the EU as organization, plus 44 billion as a sum of different members.
Additionally you have 15 billion credit from the FMI.
Even without counting the FMI is above 300k, the distinction between what is "civil and military" help is untraceable since the civil help is used later to buy more shells,fuel, etc.
So, Ukraine+NATO are losing the war while basically expending more than Russia.
Other thing, the GDP of NATO matters zero since most of it does not result in any kind of military capability. Just as a quick example 20% of US GDP is due to privatized health insurance. And other big chunk is FIRE sector.
Do you think finance bankers, brokers and doctors enormous salaries that contribute a lot to the GDP help to the war effort?
Same with the UK and other Europeans states.
And this even without entering in the purchasing parity.
Again you repeat the 8.7% that has just been approved a couple of months ago for this year and therefore have not have time to have any effect in the battlefield.
Previous number was 6% in 2023 and 4% in 2022. Russians clearly recognize that that 4% was insufficient and increased.
Also that 8.7% is far more sustainable than the spend of the Western countries since Russians are actually living better now than before the war. With higher real salaries (so real increase of salary when you discount inflation), industrial PMI expanding, and a superlow debt to GDP ratio
Compare this with a EU where literally everyone I know is angry by the reduction of salaries due to inflation, where the debt is enormous and the PMI of the full eurozone is contracting.
Or with US and their absurdly unsustainable deficit and whose debt is each time more financed by its own Federal Reserve and less by countries like China , Arabia saudi or Russia buying US treasury with their surpluses.
And one more point, NATO not being into conflict grant them some advantages that would not have in a real conflict like using airspace freely for spectral analysis, using satellites that would be destroyed in real conflict, etc etc.
About the uncountable losses trying to capture Chasov Yar, it is simply impossible to verify if there were loses there, but what we can monitore is the weekly deaths verified by Mediazona and they are some of the lowest in the conflict.
Reality is that Russians are taken fortress after fortress. Places that have been fortified for nearly a decade, and when you see the map there is no much more of those places before empty land until the Dniper.
There are lot of analysis about the Ukranian lines of defence in central Donbass, and currently they are almost in the last one. When they will loose Kramatorsk is basically free ride until the Dniper and the northern area like Kharkov became very difficult to sustain for Ukraine.
About shelters, again you presupone that Russians dont build shelters due to corruption or to lack of money, when the reason is simply that they dont provide the advantage you pretend.
Even the question of surveillance is not true, I was researching and if you really want to hide things from surveillance you cant use light shelters:
Basically any SAR western satellite like Sentinel 2 can apply (and for sure is applying) similar algorithims and see through the light shelters
