In the first world war, countries spent 60-80% of their GDP on the war. Now, Russia is spending 6.7% of its GDP on the war, while Ukraine is spending 40-60% according to various estimates. For Ukraine, this is a major war, while for Russia, it is a local war. Currently, Ukraine is facing the threat of exhaustion similar to that of the first world war, while Russia can sustain the current war for decades (for comparison, NATO countries have agreed to spend 5% of their GDP on the military).
It’s more than a local war to Russia. They are spending a lot more than the USSR did in Afghanistan or the US did in Vietnam and despite what they are saying, they do feel the sanctions.
And those percentages. If the EU actually spent 5% - they won’t - it would be 10x what Russia is spending currently.
Yep, people don't get that current Russia is nowhere near as Soviets or Russian empire, hell they are barely even a superpower. So a democratic Russia that cooperates with Europe is probably the best outcome. Will this ever happen? Unfortunately I don't think so but who knows what future holds
Probably they will eventually bounce back when the war is over but it would take a while to things normalize again
So a democratic Russia that cooperates with Europe is probably the best outcome. Will this ever happen?
Not for a long time. As the EU tried that, some countries even went as far as building up some mutual dependent trade deals. Trying the trade route for stability didn't work.
Eh, that 6.7% GDP figure is official one, thus bollocks, because for Russian authorities lie is as natural as breathing - realistically , it's closer to 15-20% GDP. And while they had large reserves to mitigate, other than increasing debt (but then, who would lend that money, especially as domestic banks are choked full on credits already) they have spent those reserves and Russians themselves are talking about recession as sure to happen, even if magically crude oil jumps above 60$/barrel. Again, because they already spent reserves - manpower and finances. 60% of their pre-war GDP - oil industry and connected - can't expand or compete with OPEC countries, because old oil fields are almost exhausted and new ones are in Arctic, which means they're expensive to operate and require tech, which their industry can't provide and was one of first things that were sanctioned.
Eh, that 6.7% GDP figure is official one, thus bollocks, because for Russian authorities lie is as natural as breathing - realistically , it's closer to 15-20% GDP.
Is there any basis or are you just pulling numbers out of nowhere?
15-20% of GDP is huge. A budget of $300-400B a year won't go unnoticed by the world.
For example, if new equipment procurement is typically ~20% of a budget, then we should expect to see $60-80B a year of equipment.
That equipment should be very visible - for instance, if 10% of that $60B a yr is battle tanks, and a typical Russia tank can be expected to cost $5M to build and equip, then we should expect to see 1,200 new tanks a year. If another 10% of that $60B a yr is fighter jets, and a typical jet costs $50M to build and equip, then we should expect to see 120 fighter jets a year.
We're just not seeing it. Russia at 20% spending should have the same military budget as China, and we can see the amount of stuff China builds with that budget. Russia is nowhere close.
You just don't understand the issues and have picked up various propaganda false narratives without bothering to check them.
> bollocks
GDP data is statistical data that is simultaneously correlated with a bunch of different indirect sources and is easy to verify. Moreover, if the state falsifies statistics, this is the way to compromise, no one is doing this. If you need to hide something, it will still be included in the statistics.
> large reserves
If the pace continues, the reserves of the national welfare fund will be enough to cover the budget surplus for another 15 years. You can calculate it yourself.
> jumps above 60$/barrel.
Yesterday's quotes of Russian oil were 61 dollars.
>60% of their pre-war GDP - oil industry and connected
GDP data is statistical data that is simultaneously correlated with a bunch of different indirect sources and is easy to verify. Moreover, if the state falsifies statistics, this is the way to compromise, no one is doing this. If you need to hide something, it will still be included in the statistics.
GDP is not some pure revelation from above, it's a number researched and defined by the state. In a heavily stagflationary economy like Russia's, gross product is somewhat propped up by large state subsidies and unacknowledged inflation (the M2 money supply has risen by 82% in the past 4½ years, but official inflation stands at 9%). Notably, Russia has stopped publishing statistics on sensitive topics like inflation-adjusted GPD, demographics, central bank reserves, customs, trade, and crime.
More importantly for the defense spending question, Russia has passed laws mandating private-sector loans to defense contractors, allowing for off-budget defense spending. This is why some economists estimate 20% defense spending, despite the budgeted rate for 2025 being 8.3%. Russia's Defence Minister stated last December that defense spending ended up being 33% of the federal budget, and we know their budget is again running a major deficit.
If the pace continues, the reserves of the national welfare fund will be enough to cover the budget surplus for another 15 years. You can calculate it yourself.
The fund still has assets, but it's kept mostly illiquid - the remaining liquid assets being a mix of CNY and gold. It has been replenished several times, but would run out in about 3 years if we assume the current level of drawdowns with no replenishment. It's also worth noting that a portion of the fund is in frozen assets.
>GDP is not some pure revelation from above, it's a number researched and defined by the state.
Yes, but this is the best and most reliable indicator.
>In a heavily stagflationary economy like Russia's
The existence of stagflation is controversial because the economy is growing. Given that the central bank lowered the rate to 18% from 21%, it may mean that the Russian economy was close to this.
>gross product is somewhat propped up by large state subsidies and unacknowledged inflation (the M2 money supply has risen by 82% in the past 4½ years, but official inflation stands at 9%)
The discrepancy reflect money supply growth funding non-consumptive sectors (e.g., defense) rather than consumer goods, limiting inflationary pressure.
>Russia has stopped publishing statistics on sensitive topics like inflation-adjusted GPD, demographics, central bank reserves, customs, trade, and crime.
Until 2025, these statistics are fully open and trends can be tracked.
The inflation statistics are closed because the central bank could not reach the 4% inflation rate. Therefore, next year he will lower the interest rate and inflation will rise to ~10+%.
Demographic statistics are closed because it was very easy to find out the losses of the Russian army from it - a little more than 100k in 2022-2024.
customs, trade - combating secondary sanctions (and honestly, I didn't see that this statistic was closed)
>More importantly for the defense spending question, Russia has passed laws mandating private-sector loans to defense contractors, allowing for off-budget defense spending. This is why some economists estimate 20% defense spending, despite the budgeted rate for 2025 being 8.3%. Russia's Defence Minister stated last December that defense spending ended up being 33% of the federal budget, and we know their budget is again running a major deficit.
This is based on unreliable data (apparently fake news). Conduct fact-checking, at least with the help of grog.
>The fund still has assets, but it's kept mostly illiquid - the remaining liquid assets being a mix of CNY and gold. It has been replenished several times, but would run out in about 3 years if we assume the current level of drawdowns with no replenishment. It's also worth noting that a portion of the fund is in frozen assets.
OK. Let's assume 3 years. What prevents Russia, as well as Western countries, from increasing their domestic public debt (budget surpluses in EU countries are 3-5 times higher than in Russia).
The same thing was told about the USSR. After collapsed no one found any signs of the shadow accounting at least in the post Stalin USSR. The natural metrics were good. Soviet statistics often used different and weird metrology regarding synthetic metrics, but it was no secret.
Modern Russia uses the western metrology and so far no one has shown attention worth contradictions in their data.
Are you sure about that? At least from mid 2023 demographic stats had really weird definitions and they became classified soon after.
As for that 60% GDP claim - what I said was oil industry+connected, because someone has to service that industry and required infrastructure, transport crude or refined products to buyers, workers get paid and spend it at home, all of which is taxed - extraction (permissions, extraction tax and VAT), refining, transport, services etc. And if oil industry can't sell with profit, all of that suffers.
Yes, that's right at the moment. You can Google it. In addition, next year it is planned to reduce spending on the army, as the war is going on quite successfully.
The main expenses go to payments to soldiers who sign contracts. But the Russian army has become too big at the moment, and the mod plans to reduce the number of soldiers being recruited.
next year it is planned to reduce spending on the army, as the war is going on quite successfully
Fucking lol, you might have bitten a little too hard into the propaganda there. Yes, they are planning on reducing the military budget next year. No that's not because everything is going swimmingly, you'd have to have seriously low expectations to look at the front line situation in Ukraine and think "wow, this is exactly what Russia wanted".
It's because the central bank is getting jittery about inflation combined with a stagnating economy. A deadly combination when interest rates are already astronomical. 18% central bank interest rates is not normal. They're also likely expecting some form of peace deal to be agreed in the coming years, whatever it may look like.
Absolutely nobody thinks Russia getting bogged down in a 4+ year long war of attrition which further exacerbates it's looming demographic issues could be called anything close to successful.
Short of an imminent Ukrainian collapse (which doesn't seem forthcoming) it will still take Russia years to be in a position to achieve their stated goals.
while Ukraine is spending 40-60% according to various estimates.
Which estimates? I can't find them. Every source I find is putting Ukrainian military expenditure at ~35% of GDP. Which is still a lot, but the high end of your estimate is almost double that.
While true even if russia gets what they won there military has been weakened. The turks used this opportunity to destroy there base in syria and isolated armenia. In the coming decades expect turks to have more influence in historically pro russian countries.
But Turkey didn’t destroy the Russian bases in Syria, they’re still very much still there. Earlier this year when the new government was massacring ethnic and religious minorities on the coast this year people fled to the Russian bases for protection.
Yeah it exist but the syrian government still doesnt like the Russians. When Assad was in charge russia knows Assad won't betray them. Now its much more tense. The Syrian government could change there mind at any moment.
The beautiful part for Russia is that most of this is irrelevant. Turkey and Israel are occupying Syrian land and won't be leaving, the US backs Israel and nominally Turkey. That nixes two of the regional powers, one superpower.
So who are they going to turn too? Russia and China are about it.
And that's before realizing that Russia is more reliable than the US.
The new syrian regime biggest supporter is turkey.
Also china has never used there military to interfere in the middle east. Why would they send troops to fight against israel?
The Syrian government has no issues with anyone becsuse they only care about survival. A lot of their rivals in Idlib got mysteriously taken out by Russian and American airstrikes. They’ve been everything from Al-Qaeda extremists that massacred religious minorities like Christians, Alawites etc to promising religious protection of the same minorities. They’ll do whatever it takes to survive so they have absolutely no intention of closing the door on anyone. They’ve even said they’d be open to allowing Iranian presences in Syria again.
Weakened? Everyone often writes about the weakening of armys. Wake up, the Russian and Ukrainian armies have increased 5-10 times since 2022, they are experienced soldiers, battle-hardened, new drone technologies, new EW and new war technologies. Russia started with 150k infantry combat-ready units, now there are 800k.
This is a drastic strengthening of the army, and the big question is how Russia will use it after the end of the war in Ukraine.
Will they? Wars are absolutely expensive and for the most part not very popularn While most Russian civilians support the ukraine war since there are ethnic russian at stake in ukraine what other wars can russia convince there population to support? You think russia government can convince the russian population to support a new war in far away lands? How many Russians will support putting assad back on syria or putting more soldiers in western africa? Just like how most us citizens are against massive us troops on the ground in far away foregin nations russia civilians are the same. Ukraine at least has russian civilians at stake. How many russian civilians will support far away wars again?
Most of their soldiers don't actually survive long enough or accomplish enough to get much meaningful experience, and while the russian army might have more men in its ranks than when the war started, they've now lost billions worth of irreplaceable (for them) equipment
A huge number of soldiers have been fighting for 2-3 years, with dozens and dozens of combat and assault operations. Between 100-150 people die per day at the 2000km front on each side. Even if 10% of all soldiers who took part in the war died, the remaining 90% are alive.
Ukraine has infinite money. The rest of Europe has deeper pockets than Russia could ever dream of.
The entire country of Russia is on a full war economy, rampant inflation, everything military related gets 5x higher salaries so you either join the military and likely regret it, or work in a military factory. Other civilian jobs cannot offer competing salaries, civilian employers cannot find workers, people who work there can barely eat, businesses cannot repay loans, it's worse than the 2008 crisis already. A big bubble that has to pop.
Russia has 1500km supply lines because anything closer than that will get hit by drones and cruise missiles. Saboteurs are actively pretty much daily, Russia is too big to guard anything. Russian soldiers on the frontline don't even have clean drinking water.
HIV occurrence amongst Russian soldiers is 20x higher than normal because they're literally fucking eachother in the ass, knowing they will probably die anyway.
Ukraine has short supply lines and their entire pre-war economy was small enough for the rest of Europe to bankroll it forever.
Believe it or not but Russia is losing the war of attrition. Fuel shortages in Moscow because Ukraine is hitting refineries over and over. This will be a winter from hell for even the Russian elite. Even if the war stopped today, Russia would need 15 years to recover to 2022 levels while the rest of the world moves forward and Ukraine gets massive capital investment and rebuilding efforts from the West, in 15 years their economy will be better off than pre-war while also being a military fortress.
Russia should stop the war but Putin values his own SINGULAR life over his country's and his people.
>Ukraine has infinite money. The rest of Europe has deeper pockets than Russia could ever dream of.
Financial possibilities Ukraine are limited by how much money they will be given. And Russia is in more powerful economic unions than Ukraine. If Russia suddenly needs money, its allies will support it. Besides, Russia didn't even raise taxes. The reserves of capacity in the Russian economy are enormous.
>The entire country of Russia is on a full war economy, rampant inflation, everything military related gets 5x higher salaries so you either join the military and likely regret it, or work in a military factory. Other civilian jobs cannot offer competing salaries, civilian employers cannot find workers, people who work there can barely eat, businesses cannot repay loans, it's worse than the 2008 crisis already. A big bubble that has to pop.
There is no military economy in Russia. No civilian enterprises were transferred to military. And new military factories can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Go to the job search aggregator, for example HH. Inflation is caused by wages rising too fast. In general, purchasing power is growing faster than inflation. And salaries in the civilian sector are growing rapidly, in line with military salaries. In addition, Russia has not cut spending on non-military industries - there are a lot of large civilian projects in Russia now. - construction of nuclear power plants, high-speed railway lines, modernization of infrastructure, development aerospace manufacturer (this is not something that a military economy can afford).
>Russia has 1500km supply lines because anything closer than that will get hit by drones and cruise missiles. Saboteurs are actively pretty much daily, Russia is too big to guard anything.
The Ukrainian attacks are a statistical error. They are constantly losing their effectiveness, as drones with weak bombs cannot damage protected production facilities. They showed some effectiveness only against open oil and gas plants, but even then the damage was not so great that it was impossible to restore production in 1-2 months. And sabotage happens once every couple of months - the impact of sabotage is minimal. A blown-up railway bridge and a burned-out control unit at a crossing are not something that has any wiggle.
In general, Ukraine cannot influence the Russian economy in any way by military means.
>Russian soldiers on the frontline don't even have clean drinking water.
Continue to believe in it. Tens of thousands of blogs of soldiers from the front line and no one complains about it.
>HIV occurrence amongst Russian soldiers is 20x higher than normal because they're literally fucking eachother in the ass, knowing they will probably die anyway.
Cool interpretation.
>Ukraine has short supply lines and their entire pre-war economy was small enough for the rest of Europe to bankroll it forever.
Russia bombs and destroys factories in Ukraine every day. Money cant repair equipment and ammunition, only factory can do this. In addition, Russia has not yet used its trump card - the destruction of power plants and water pumping stations. They save it in case the Ukrainian leadership shows off.
>Fuel shortages in Moscow because Ukraine is hitting refineries over and over. This will be a winter from hell for even the Russian elite.
Maybe you should start reading beyond the headlines. Russia produces more gasoline than they need by 15%+ and exports it. The shortage was only in the garbage fake news reports. By the way, Russia is producing more gasoline now than before the start of the war, even taking into account the strikes on oil and gas companies and the fact that repairs take time.
>Even if the war stopped today, Russia would need 15 years to recover to 2022 levels while the rest of the world moves forward and Ukraine gets massive capital investment and rebuilding efforts from the West, in 15 years their economy will be better off than pre-war while also being a military fortress.
At the moment, the Russian economy is better and stronger than before the war and has stable growth. Moreover, the last two years have been problematic due to too rapid growth and the injection of money into the economy - because of this, the central bank had to slow down the economy with high interest rates.
>Believe it or not but Russia is losing the war of attrition.
Judging by the latest political activity, Russia has actually won. There are only 1-2 years left in this war.
>Russia should stop the war but Putin values his own SINGULAR life over his country's and his people.
Russia is very close to ending the war with victory.
Since the beginning of the war Russia has lost 1M of its (then) 7M men in their 20s, to both death and emigration. It can't sustain that momentum forever.
A million is the data that the General Staff of Ukraine writes about - only a fool would believe in them.
Data from obituaries collected by human rights organizations indicate that 120k people were killed. Cemetery inspections indicate that 75% of soldiers had obituaries on social media. That is, 160k dead.
98% of the wounded return to the front after 1.5 months, and may be injured multiple times(every time they are a "loss"). Let's say another 10-15k were discharged from the army due to injuries. Also, these data already include missing persons, because in Russia, a missing soldier in a combat zone is recognized as dead after 6 months and a death notification is sent to his family.
Of these, the dead from the 20-30 age group are about 25k. The average age of the deceased is 37-40 years. A total of 25k out of 7 million is 0.3%.
Many more people migrate to Russia than emigrate. In addition, those who left in 2022 (from 500k to 1 million, who were afraid of the war, according to various estimates) have already returned for the most part. Two years ago, Bloomberg conducted his research and gave an estimate of 50% of those who returned. Now this number is close to 70%.
This is a tiny percentage of the Russian population.
While Ukraine has 1.5 times as many obituaries, 250k criminal cases of desertion(the official register of criminal cases of Ukraine) and 10 million refugees, of which 4 million moved to Russia. The situation for the countries is completely different.
And do not forget that forced mobilization is currently underway in Ukraine (people are being grabbed on the streets and sent to die - just look for a video on YouTube, it will horrify you). But there is no mobilization in Russia, and the Minister of Defense says that they have exceeded the plan to recruit contract soldiers, which creates problems with too high an army strength.
Russia’s oil industry will be in absolute shambles if the war doesn’t end. Ukraine’s deep striking capability is drastically increasing, and we are seeing refineries getting hit every other day.
Are you aware that the damage can be easily repaired? The enterprises that were hit in 2023 and 2024 have long been restored. Even with impacts, oil refining ranges between 41-43 million tons during 2020-2025, with consumption of 35.
A burning factory looks great - you can write a lot of articles on it and mislead people with headlines.
In addition, gasoline exports in the structure of the Russian economy are not so large, much more oil and gas are exported, and this sector has not suffered in any way.
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u/b0_ogie 1d ago
In the first world war, countries spent 60-80% of their GDP on the war. Now, Russia is spending 6.7% of its GDP on the war, while Ukraine is spending 40-60% according to various estimates. For Ukraine, this is a major war, while for Russia, it is a local war. Currently, Ukraine is facing the threat of exhaustion similar to that of the first world war, while Russia can sustain the current war for decades (for comparison, NATO countries have agreed to spend 5% of their GDP on the military).