Ukrainian War Developments

Richard Santos said:

If Ukraine can operate without interference from the non partnering side, then there is no doubt ukraine will do better partnering with the EU than with russia. EU provides a market 10 times bigger and offer many different examples of how to solve many of ukrainian’s internal problems which russia also have but have not managed to solved herself.

Russia can only offer ukraine a marginally brighter future because russia’s own future is not that much brighter, while EU can decline quite a lot and still be brighter than Russia.

the main barrier for Ukraine partnering with the EU, beside the difficulty of imagining russia would not interfere, is would the EU have a basket case like Ukraine?

But, if Ukraine were to partner with Russia, it will remain forever unknown whether EU would have had ukraine farther down the line. So ukraine will never ever be grateful to russia for the slightly brighter future russia might give her because it would always be resentful that Russia robbed Ukraine of a much brighter future.

the fundamental problem for russia is it has not solved the problem to be an effective competitive value added economy despite having a number of not insubstantial advantages for achieving that goal.

Click to expand...

I agree with you. That's pretty much what I have been saying.

reservior dogs said:

For a small country like Ukraine, the primary concern should be, "who is our biggest security threat and how do we avoid it". Money is secondary if your country will not exist.

Click to expand...

I doubt that is the primary concern of a "small country" like Ukraine. Why would they host Russian navy in Crimea for decades after the fall of USSR?
I doubt even that their primary security starts with a question of "who". Because there are many other things that can make a country cease to exist that is NOT categorically conceptualized as a "who". Things like natural disaster, internal strife, poverty, climate-change-induced destruction of habitable living spaces, etc.

Overbom said:

Interesting

"U.S Defense and Intelligence Officials are reporting that the Russia Military is now Mobilizing more than 60,000 Reservists to send into Combat Operations in Ukraine in the next few weeks, though the number of Reservist could be Increased quite rapidly if the Need Arises."

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1512491179794964480

Click to expand...

Don't know how many they can support on the front but I would see a lot more in reinforcement than 60 000. It look like the minimum just to keep the ground manned with reservist to be able to advance with the main forces. They need to keep these in check against poisonning and stupid acts.

With the fog of war, it's quite hard to calculate true lost but lost of equipment look massive, will be interesting to see which types of troop these reservists are. Only infantry to keep ground or mixed units ? It's hard to draft reservists from everywhere to have a cohesive strike group in an instant.


''Historically, only 10 percent of reservists receive refresher training after completing their initial term of service. Russia lacks the administrative and financial capacity to train reservists on an ongoing basis. According to a 2019 RAND analysis, Russia only had 4,000 to 5,000 troops in what would be considered an active reserve in the Western sense''

russia is not in the business of providing cakes. Russia economically can only give ukraine back something roughly in proportion to what incremental value an integrated ukraine-russia gives to russia. Since russia suffers from many of the same problems which blight the ukrainian economy, and in grand scheme of things ukraine does not add that much to russia’s cash generating natural resources, the net effect is a combined Ukraine-russia economic entity is unlikely to give russia a lot incremental value, which means russia also won’t have a whole lot to give back to ukraine.

Jingle Bells said:

Like I said, Russia would have to provide big enough economic cake

Click to expand...

Cake do not work. Russia was subsidizing Ukraine economy with basically free gas for long time. Issue is without control of government you cannot control how effective those resources being spent. And Ukraine was always corrupt. Billions and billions were just wasted.

And do not forget that before Euromaidan. There was Orange revolution in 2004, which ruined Ukraine economy and alienated Russia(things like providing BUK air defense systems with Ukrainian officers from combat duty for Georgia offensive in 2008 are definitely not friendly act, not to mention attempt at block of use of Sevastopol). After this Orange revolution plans for Crimea solution were started to being created.

Atomicfrog said:

Don't know how many they can support on the front but I would see a lot more in reinforcement than 60 000. It look like the minimum just to keep the ground manned with reservist to be able to advance with the main forces. They need to keep these in check against poisonning and stupid acts.

With the fog of war, it's quite hard to calculate true lost but lost of equipment look massive, will be interesting to see which types of troop these reservists are. Only infantry to keep ground or mixed units ? It's hard to draft reservists from everywhere to have a cohesive strike group in an instant.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

''Historically, only 10 percent of reservists receive refresher training after completing their initial term of service. Russia lacks the administrative and financial capacity to train reservists on an ongoing basis. According to a 2019 RAND analysis, Russia only had 4,000 to 5,000 troops in what would be considered an active reserve in the Western sense''

Click to expand...

I also doubt how combat capable these reservists would be.

In any case, 60k extra troops are going to be a good help for the Ukraine campaign.

Richard Santos said:

russia is not in the business of providing cakes. Russia economically can only give ukraine back something roughly in proportion to what incremental value an integrated ukraine-russia gives to russia. Since russia suffers from many of the same problems which blight the ukrainian economy, and in grand scheme of things ukraine does not add that much to russia’s cash generating natural resources, the net effect is a combined Ukraine-russia economic entity is unlikely to give russia a lot incremental value, which means russia also won’t have a whole lot to give back to ukraine.

Click to expand...

That's because Russia is poor.
If Russia's economy is at a level where their per capita GDP is on par with EU. I doubt there is any reason why they can't or won't provide cakes for Ukraine, Belarus, central Asian countries, or even Finland.

Of course, in order for Russia to even have such a high per capita GDP levels, their economic structure would have been a lot different. Their competitiveness would need to have been a lot more. Realistically speaking, I don't see how they could ever be that rich.

I can try to imagine:
First, they would need to have never attempted "shock therapy", and attracted 10s of millions of Indian and Chinese immigrants into Russia while still able to maintain social cohesion and relative harmony between the citizens and immigrants.
They will most likely need to be an export giant and an Eurasian transportation hub. This would mean they somehow became a "China" (low-cost manufacture base) to the EU/Germany, like how China was like to the US before they split up in the second half of Obama presidency and Trump presidency.

This would mean that the Russia would need to secure only the element of cheap abundant labor, which I think they can get from China, Vietnam, India and NK; under the condition that the Russian public security capability can still maintain public order and societal harmony with an influx of huge amount of immigrant labor.

The Russia already have cheap energy, cheap land, and (possibly) German/EU capital investments and market. Germany could have moved a lot of lower end manufacture to Russia.

The above is just my own imagination, based on a naivety of "historical nihilism". Just food for thought, please don't be offended.

tank3487 said:

Cake do not work. Russia was subsidizing Ukraine economy with basically free gas for long time. Issue is without control of government you cannot control how effective those resources being spent. And Ukraine was always corrupt. Billions and billions were just wasted.

And do not forget that before Euromaidan. There was Orange revolution in 2004, which ruined Ukraine economy and alienated Russia(things like providing BUK air defense systems with Ukrainian officers from combat duty for Georgia offensive in 2008 are definitely not friendly act, not to mention attempt at block of use of Sevastopol). After this Orange revolution plans for Crimea solution were started to being created.

Click to expand...

Like I said, those are measly small sums for 40 million people on a land mass bigger than 600000 sq kms, far from big enough.
If it's big enough, Ukraine's per-capita GDP wouldn't get stuck in the 3000's for decades.

Jingle Bells said:

It is about money. I replied to you in private chat on this, because I don't want to get banned talking about the US.

Like I said, Russia would have to provide big enough economic cake for both Russia and the other neighboring non-aligned former-USSR/Warsaw-Pact state to really alleviate them out of poverty and into steadily and visibly building wealth. Ukraine would not had to been forced to choose between Russia and EU back at Yanukovych's time, there would have been no need for Euro-maidan. and Ukraine won't be stuck with abysmally low per-capita GDP for more than two decades with literally no growth. Without Euro-maidan and Yanukovych's ousting, there would have been no Donbass secession. Without these situations, there will be no need to kick Russian navy out of Crimea, and thus Russia would not need to take Crimea by force.

We have to remember all of these actually started more a decade ago. And the biggest root cause has always been poverty: aka. Ukraine's inability to get rich.

Click to expand...

The EU model isn't sustainable though. Having your young working population emigrate so they can clean toilets or pick strawberries in Germany or Sweden is very bad for the country long term. Developing countries can manage with high emigration ok as they have high birth rates to replace the lost population, Ukraine has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. People talk about China having demographic problems, Ukraine's population was decreasing >1% a year before this war. Imagine how high emigration would be with EU membership.

The only industry they had was whatever was left from the USSR that they didn't plunder post break up, and their only source of income was EU funding and Russian gas transit fees. Ukraine is the definition of a failed state.

Jingle Bells said:

Like I said, those are measly small sums for 40 million people on a land mass bigger than 600000 sq kms, far from big enough.
If it's big enough, Ukraine's per-capita GDP wouldn't get stuck in the 3000's for decades.

Click to expand...

It was not small sums. Especially considering as long it had dragged. Plus Russian market. Plus oil. Main reason of Ukraine poverty is corruption.

Plus, cake do not work if guys that actually make decisions in Ukraine(oligarchs) store all the capital in the west. US always can blackmail by threat to steal the assets. This is why there was never a proRussian government in Ukraine. In the best case, there were episodes of government that are neutral to Russia. It is actually why the whole point of "Russia had alienated Ukraine with Crimea move" are pointless, Russia never had any foothold in Ukraine despite massive waste of resources.

Jingle Bells said:

That's because Russia is poor.
If Russia's economy is at a level where their per capita GDP is on par with EU. I doubt there is any reason why they can't or won't provide cakes for Ukraine, Belarus, central Asian countries, or even Finland.

Click to expand...

How exactly is Russia poor when it managed FIFA world Cup, Winter Olympics, Formula 1, University Games without creating much debt?
Russia provide huge remittances and reasonable cheap energy with interconnecting electric grid, transport, grain to all CIS countries. this in addition to people from those countries residing there.

Trillionaires of Arab world deal with Russia differently than they deal with poor souls in Europe. similar case will be with India. India want to expand its financial markets globally. it will further integrate into Middleast and Russia.