Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/9438338
Military pay, ammunition, tanks, planes, and compensation for dead and wounded soldiers, all contribute to the GDP figures. Put simply, the war against Ukraine is now the main driver of Russia’s economic growth.
And it is a war that Russia cannot afford to win. The cost of rebuilding and maintaining security in a conquered Ukraine would be too great, and an isolated Russia could at best hope to become a junior partner entirely dependent on China.
It isn’t good news for Russia either.
It’s much worse news for Russia. Total war is impossible to sustain for a people, as attacker: If the home front is completely mobilised for war there’s nothing left to fight for in terms of home and culture and even politics, the only source of morale left is survival, and as the attacker Russia doesn’t have that, on the contrary it plays against them as they’d all get to survive splendidly by simply retreating to their borders.
OTOH, from the fascist’s POV it’s all so very inviting: Only war? How splendid! Then we don’t actually have to have a culture or politics, that’s nice, we don’t like that degeneracy anyway.
It seems that Putin read his Clausewitz and then thought “Oh that silly old Prussian goose, what does he know, Hitler knew better he just got too greedy”.
Also have you any idea what it would look like if the EU switched to a war economy. Fully, that is, not like into 1/2th gear (which we’re getting close to). Germany+France+Italy alone have 10x Russia’s GDP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oZF8653vL4&t=105s
It’s pretty good for China and India. Eastern Russia will be Northern China in a few years. With all ressources. Until 2038 maybe.
On the other hand, China had access to those resources already, and are now much more exposed internationally, as evidenced by recent Western efforts to “de-risk” economic relations.
India are making a lot of money but they’ve also lost their main weapons supplier and are now forced to turn to Western countries to fill the gap. A position they most definitely didn’t want to be in.