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Endgame: Russia’s war economy hits its limits (www.kielinstitut.de)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/world@lemmy.world
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[–] 132 points 3 months ago (116 children)

I’ll believe it when I see it. I have been hearing this since 2022 and they’re unleashing more and more ballistic missiles on Kyiv every week

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  • [–] 41 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Man I dont know about the missiles. But yeah I feel we read this article every week. "Sanctions are about to grind russian economy to a halt", "Russias oil industry about to implode", "Russian war industry about to hit its limit".

    It just never really seems to do so.

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  • [–] 21 points 3 months ago

    The media tend to oversensationalize things, the Russian oil industry imploding isn't happening yet, but it has gone down to the point that nearly all of Russia is struggling to find enough fuel.

    Killing off an economy takes forever, the effects of sanctions are slow, especially if an economy propped up by war time spending. But no amount of financial propping up can save an economy if its energy demands can't be met. To be fair, Ukraine isn't even close to disabling Russia's energy infrastructure, they're only seriously hitting one aspect of it.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I feel we read this article every week

    No you haven't, for 2-3 years it was predicted, difference now is that it's actually happening.
    Most of us thought Russia would collapse sooner, but now it's actually here. The Russian economy and infrastructure is collapsing, with widespread fuel-shortages despite heavy rationing, and fuel so expensive farmers can't afford to harvest.
    The Russian federal economy is out of money, their wealth fund is used up, and they've sold gold reserves to get by beginning already months ago.

    “Russian war industry about to hit its limit”

    Where did you see that claim? Seems a lot like a straw man to me, because everybody have said all the time that the Russian war industry will be the last to be affected by the economic collapse. Because it has the highest priority.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    No you haven't, for 2-3 years it was predicted, difference now is that it's actually happening.

    yes we have. lemmy was basically flooded with garbage tier articles for the past years not predicting it but claiming it as current fact.

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  • [–] 25 points 3 months ago* (81 children)

    It was predicted for more than 2 years, and it's happening now.
    The Russian economy is collapsing, The Russian wealth fund is empty, and Russia has been selling gold reserves to prop up the economy, oil exports are dwindling, and they have to import refined oil products now at inflated prices.
    The Russian infrastructure is collapsing too, and farmers can't get the harvest done, because fuel is either not available or too expensive so it will cost more to harvest than to let the crops rot in the field.

    The fact that you are not seeing it, is not because it isn't happening.
    I have no idea why so many upvote you not knowing what's going on.

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  • [–] 21 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    It happens slowly, then all at once

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago

    Absolutely, Putin has used extreme measures of kicking the can down the road, so it has been happening more slowly than expected. But now Putin and Russia are out of tricks, and things seems to be accelerating a lot now.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago

    Part of the reason this happens is these changes take a lot longer than anyone would really like.

    But, there are widespread fuel shortages in Russia, most of the country is facing some type of rationing, and that's something that hasn't happened before.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    The number of missiles and drones launched by Russia has been fairly steady since last year, sure there are some peaks here and there, but on average the numbers don't go up, rather they've been going down slightly for the past few months. Ukraine's countermeasures have become much more effective though with less than 10% of drones making it through.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    I specifically said ballistic missile attacks, which have gone up drastically

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  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    From a previous comment, I understand that they are being forced to use the significantly more expensive ballistic missiles, which use up fuel they can't afford to use, specifically because their drone success ratio is so far down lately.

    All other military options they have are removed: artillery, infantry and armor get killed by drones. Russian drones get shot down before reaching target. They are hoping they can force a better settlement with the current terror bombings before they run out of fuel entirely

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    It's not quite "more every week"; the numbers seem to be roughly stable since April. Of course it's still a lot.

    One question that occurs to me is whether they can actually sustain this. Missiles aren't that cheap or fast to produce so it's possible that they're throwing out more than they can sustain in an attempt to wear down Ukraine at the last moment.

    I'm not an expert on the weapon systems involved so maybe I'm way off base.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago*

    the numbers seem to be roughly stable since April.

    The past week we've seen 2 massive attacks on Kyiv, the first was the biggest yet for the whole war, and the 2nd was almost as big.
    But my guess is they were panic attacks by Putin, because he has nothing else he can do. And he wanted to retaliate for the attacks on refineries in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. That were both a very strong demonstration of power from Ukraine.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    We've been hearing the same idiots saying "sanctions didn't work immediately therefore they don't work" since 2022. Those of us with higher than room temperature IQs realised that Russia planned for the war and sanctions to the tune of a $600 billion savings fund.

    I still find it hilarious that Russia left about half of this in hostile countries that confiscated it immediately. Imagine Russia had that extra cash? They probably would have had a chance of winning this war without that blunder.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    I never said that sanctions don’t work to hurt a country’s economy. That part is evident.

    However, very few wars have been ended by sanctions alone. So in that sense, no, they do not work anywhere near as well as everyone thinks they do.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    You would have a point if it was sanctions alone that Russia was facing.

    It is fortunate in this case that Russia is also up against a well motivated Ukrainian army whose attacks have been increasing in sophistication as the war has progressed. Russia on the other hand has been on the back foot recently, they have appeared unable to adjust to Ukraine's drone strikes on logistics behind the front lines and have had a net loss in square km gained the last 4 months in a row.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I wouldn’t say the Russian side is doing well, I completely agree with all of that.

    But if someone has “hit their limits” like the article claims it means they can’t go on anymore. The fact that they can still ramp up attacks and aren’t losing ground massively means that hasn’t happened yet.

    The war is at an impasse right now and I don’t think the next few months of the war are going to be very pretty…

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    But if someone has “hit their limits” like the article claims it means they can’t go on anymore.

    When somebody "hits their limit" that means they are stagnating and not falling or collapsing. It is also important to be clear that this is about the economy.

    If the Russian war economy would not be able to increase overall production(not necessarily production of specific weapons, but overall), you would expect them to slow down their advance and take higher losses, as the soldiers lack weapons and whatever to make that happen. We also we see fewer air attacks against Ukraine.

    That seems to be the case. Russian personal casulties are generally pretty high and they are not taking a lot of land. At the same time Shahed attacks are 30% down in June compared to May.

    Big losses would happen, if Russias economy collapses and only some time after that. That might be the case given the current fuel situation in the country.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    First half of your sentence yes, second half of your sentence no. There are ebbs and flows of numbers of missiles launched, but compared to earlier in the war I'm pretty sure Russia is launching significantly fewer now, especially if you consider the destructive power of each missile used

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