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Whatever else Russia's Victory Day parade is supposed to represent, it won't be any sort of victory over Ukraine, regardless of the spin President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin will try to put on it, writes defence analyst Michael Clarke.
This war is one that Russia cannot win in any meaningful sense.
Putin's foreign military successes around the world after 2008 were all achieved by using small units of elite forces, mercenaries and local militia groups alongside Russian air power.
This gave Moscow considerable leverage at low cost during interventions in Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Syria, Libya, Mali and twice in Ukraine during 2014, first in illegally annexing Crimea and then in creating self-declared Russian statelets in Luhansk and Donetsk.
In every case, Russia moved swiftly and ruthlessly in ways the western world was unable to counter except through graduated sanctions regimes - nothing that could reverse the reality. Putin was adept at creating "new facts on the ground".
In February he tried the same again on the grandest possible scale in Ukraine - to grab governmental power within about 72 hours in a country of 45 million people occupying the second biggest land area in Europe. It was an astonishing and reckless gamble and it failed completely in the first crucial week.
Why 9 May is so important for Russia
How has Moscow changed with war in Ukraine?
Putin now has few options but to keep going forward to make this war bigger - either bigger in Ukraine or bigger by advancing beyond its borders. Escalation is built into the current situation and Europe has reached a very dangerous moment in its recent history.
Having failed with Plan A to seize the government in Kyiv before President Zelensky's forces, or the outside world, could react, Moscow then switched to a Plan B. This was a more "manoeuvrist" military approach to surround Kyiv and move in on other Ukrainian cities - Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Mariupol and Mykolaiv and simply snuff out Ukrainian armed resistance while Kyiv itself would be threatened with capitulation or destruction.
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[url]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61348287[/url]
Putin has ruined his legacy with this action , no one was ever going to say he was a peace maker but prior to this year he was heading for the title of Russian strong man who put his nation first etc
Its that or he ramps things up to an unprecedented degree and then he promotes himself to the bracket of histories worst dictators , hopefully he just gets recorded as a dictator who stole a tonne of his nations wealth and made a massive strategic blunder by invading Ukraine
It is just going to get worse for Russia, despite the continued downward adjustments to Putin's ambitions.
Russia is going through their stock of weapons and troops at far faster than a possible replacement rate, and at the rate they are plodding along combined with the territory they are losing near Kharkiv their military is going to fold before they reach any of their goals. Meanwhile Ukraine will keep growing stronger with the endless supply of weapons from wealthy western countries, and the first groups of the hundreds of thousands of new soldiers they started training when the war started will start entering the fray in June. Putin will also have to deal with war-weariness, armed conflicts have a very predictable pattern of initial surge of support and patriotism followed by a slow fade as casualties mound and the exuberance abates. He'll have a harder and harder time concealing the casualties and strategic failures, which will exacerbate domestic negative opinions.
The only way I can imagine Russia gaining anything here is if they can grab enough land to annex it as part of Russia then declare any attack on Russian soil will merit a tactical nuclear response. Obviously any annexation would be rejected by the world community but trying to do so while the front lines are still fluid and nowhere near where Russia wants them to be just ain't happening.
even a nuclear strike wont bring victory as if someone dump a nuke on you , whats the point in showing restraint anymore in terms of this taboo ?
Russia could not defeat Nato in an all out nuclear exchange , there would be no winners but Russia would loose completely
If Putin remains on as leader , It will be as head of a big North Korea in terms of isolation
Even with NATO devoting so much resources to defeat Russia,, it won't do much at the present to weaken Russia in economics still has strong trade relations with China, India, much of Africa, and much of the Middle EAst.
India has always had strong trade relations with Russia and the former Soviet Union. China which has already tense relations with certain NATO countries will not back away from their trade, and their economic aid to Russia.
Anyway it is expected in 10 years China will be the country with the worlds biggest economy. So China role is a big factor too with the economics with Russia too.
Plus an oil boycott on Russia by the EU will surely bring in a economic recession in Western Europe as they still especially Germany, Hungary and Poland heavily depend on their oil and gas supplies. Already gas prices are very high, and a boycott of russia will make it worse.
So it is unlikely that PUtin will be internationally isolated just like the North Korean leader, unless there is a border dispute between Russia and China, and if India abandons their trade with Russia.
If NATO countries tone down their Singophobia, maybe they can influence China to abandon their economic aid to Russia.
Quite doubtful that China will continue to grow and be the "world's largest economy" in a decade, with its declining population, cratered real estate industry, and terrible mismanagement which shows no side of abating in the coming years.
I don't think Russia will end up like NK - definitely not - though it will remain a pariah to much of the world for some years to come. The nations who are still willing to trade with them will not be enough to make up what they lose from the EU - replacing the investment from the world's wealthiest nations with a collection of developing ones? Good luck
Quite doubtful that China will continue to grow and be the "world's largest economy" in a decade, with its declining population, cratered real estate industry, and terrible mismanagement which shows no side of abating in the coming years.
I don't think Russia will end up like NK - definitely not - though it will remain a pariah to much of the world for some years to come. The nations who are still willing to trade with them will not be enough to make up what they lose from the EU - replacing the investment from the world's wealthiest nations with a collection of developing ones? Good luck
According to the Lowy Institute which has written much on the matter on China, (The Lowy Institute is an independent, nonpartisan international policy think tank located in Sydney, Australia. It is Australia's leading think tank, providing high-quality research and distinctive perspectives on the international trends shaping Australia and the world.)
China is now the largest economy in the world at purchasing power parity, which corrects for price differences across countries, and the second largest at market exchange rates. It accounts for almost a fifth of global production and more than a quarter of world carbon emissions.
Overall, our analysis suggests China will still most likely become the world’s largest economy by any measure by around 2030. But its size advantage over America would be slim and it would still be less prosperous and productive per person than the United States and other rich countries, even by mid-century.
I would agree with the Lowy Institute analysis with this matter.
BTW India is expected to soon over take the UK soon as the worlds 5h largest economy within the next few years.
Indonesia is expected to be in the top 10 economies of the world within a decade.
In the past 60 years, the vast majority of wealth was from the WEst and Japan, yet increasingly the wealth is being more concentrated in the Asian regions. With it a fast growing middle class.
So far Russia economy is doing well considering there is a war going on. All thanks to very high oil and gas supplies.
BTW Hungary is strongly opposed to the EU boycotting oil and gas into Europe. Even if the EU gets supplies elsewhere, it will take a decade at least to source different suppliers to match Russia imports. Sure new massive oil fields have recently been discovered in Guyana and Surname and parts of Africa, yet it will take some years for oil and gas companies to extract very large amount of gas and oil from them. BTW Germany has warned that an immediate boycott of Russian gas and oil supplies could hurt its own population more than Vladimir Putin, bringing mass unemployment and poverty.
“If we flip a switch immediately, there will be supply shortages, even supply stops in Germany,” the economic and energy minister Robert Habeck told public broadcaster ARD on Sunday, as Europe’s largest economy intensely searches to diversify its energy supplies in the medium term.https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-warns-germany
Plus there are talks of bringing a gas pipeline from Israel/Egypt to Europe due to the large gas fields discovered there, yet it will take some years to achieve that.
Sure there has been a massive rise in investment in renewable energy, yet the world is no time soon going to very much revert to renewables anytime soon as a replacement with oil and gas. In 10 years that discussion is more likely but not so much now.
So far Russia economy is doing well considering there is a war going on. All thanks to very high oil and gas supplies.
And some actions to prop up the ruble that aren't sustainable long term without further stifling their economy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 415_s2k
Quite doubtful that China will continue to grow and be the "world's largest economy" in a decade, with its declining population
This is interesting because China seems to finally be right about at the demographic tipping point that people have been predicting for so long, it might have even been last year 2021 when they reached peak population. Otherwise it will be some point in the 2020s. Their change to a two-child policy in 2016 only had the slightest brief bump, the new three-child hasn't done much of anything, neither have their other feeble policy attempts to turn the ship it's like putting a band-aid on a compound fracture. Even worse the size of their workforce peaked in 2014.
That said, there are other countries like Japan, Korea, Spain, and Italy that are in the same age/workforce spiral.
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