The period in which we are now living, when the war has been going on for almost half a year,
can be safely called a time of hope for the Russian leadership and its propaganda, and rather specific hopes at that.
For a long time, at least since the end of spring, no one has been waiting for any significant news from the fronts.
The word «Kyiv» forever left the lips of chief propagandists, remaining
in the circulation of full-time buffoons, like Ramzan Kadyrov.
With a cursory glance at the map of fronts, which has essentially not changed since May,
it is clear even to the regime's most devoted information servants that the war,
while remaining highly intensive, has passed into a protracted phase.
On the one hand, losses in people and equipment will continue to grow every day.
They will become more and more difficult to hide.
It will be more and more difficult to fight with the forces of the poor national republics:
sooner or later, losses will come to large cities.
On the other hand, there is absolutely no prospect of good news for Russia.
Now, a more or less parity balance of forces has clearly developed at the front,
and if some powerful external circumstance does not affect it, it is not clear why it can change.
Why the war in the mode “captured two villages in the east, lost a village in the south and vice versa”
cannot continue further, stretching to infinity.
At the same time, rewinding everything back will not work either.
The intensity of the fighting is too great, the losses are too great, too many resources need to be directed to the war,
the Russian economy is suffering too much from sanctions to just forget about all this.
How do we know about the obvious shortage of resources, primarily human?
The unfolding mobilization of prisoners tells us about this.
The practice of mobilizing prisoners, such an exchange of risk for freedom, is nothing new, it was not invented yesterday.
This is what the Soviet Union did during the Second World War, forming the so-called “penal battalions”.
Not only were servicemen from ordinary units sent there for disciplinary violations,
a purely criminal element also served there.
At the very beginning of the current war, Ukraine also resorted to a variety of measures
to attract people to the defense of the country, for example, in Kyiv, almost everyone
who wanted to was handed out machine guns.
Among other things, there was talk about releasing prisoners with combat experience,
veterans of the war in the Donbass.
That is, on the one hand, this happens in principle.
On the other hand, it is always a desperate practice – on the verge of life and death.
In the first week of the war in Ukraine, it was not about who and when would take Lisichansk.
It was about the very existence of Ukraine as a state.
Skirmishes with Russian saboteurs went right on the streets of Kyiv, the Russian army stood in Irpin.
And from its outskirts to the office of the President of Ukraine for about half an hour by car –
about the same as from the Kremlin to my native Shchukino district.
At the end of February and beginning of March, the Ukrainian leadership was in an insanely difficult
and at the same time extremely simple situation:
if there are people capable of holding a machine gun, then they should immediately recieve it.
Because financial and arms assistance from the West is a good thing, but they still need to live to see it.
Russia is not in such a position – no enemy is standing in Khimki.
Moreover, the Russian authorities promise to pay completely unrealistic money for service under the contract:
in some regions they offer 200, in some – 300 or more thousand rubles.
That is, the average annual salary of poor regions in just a month.
And this is without taking into account compensation for injuries and death.
But even extra-powerful financial motivation is no longer enough.
They have to take desperate measures, such as the mobilization of prisoners.
At first, it was done secretly, but today, look, they are quite openly advertised
on the federal air through the lips of the court director Nikita Mikhalkov.
For the last crime he received 5 years and could have been released in February 2023.
But in the spring of 2022 he petitioned to be sent to the front in Donbass.
He knew what he could die for, he felt he had to, he wanted to atone for his past life there
Therefore, when we ask ourselves the question: how is Russia doing with the resources to wage war?
– there, we have an answer.
The answer is this: even promising fantastic salaries, even calling for prisoners, Russia cannot recruit enough personnel.
There is no way to form a grouping, if not for a decisive turning point, but at least to ensure
that the front moves faster than a hundred or two meters a day.
After all, Putin's problem is this: Ukraine does not have a real task to win this war in a military sense.
Ukraine has no task to take Moscow.
At this stage, there is no question of retaking Crimea or Donetsk and Lugansk.
At this stage, Ukraine has one goal – to defeat Putin, in any way.
Take back anything that he had already declared his own.
Kherson then Kherson, it doesn't matter.
Any local defeat will instantly change the internal situation in Russia.
It will be a pill that cannot be sweetened
Supporters of war, opponents of war – defeat will turn everyone against Putin.
This is another big problem.
After all, with the parity of resources that has now developed, the scale of tasks is completely different.
Putin cannot start a war for Kyiv, Lviv, Odessa and Kharkov, but return back with Mariupol and Kherson.
He needs a big win.
Putin's opponents do not need to win a big military victory – they just need to inflict any, even if thrice nominal,
but striking defeat on him.
Deprive him of any acquisition.
And then the internal situation in Russia may change significantly that further advancement
of Ukrainian troops will not be necessary, no one will resist them anymore.
It is quite possible.
Russia cannot on its own provide a turning point at the front, cannot compensate
its economy for the losses from the war and sanctions.
In both cases, in order to achieve some kind of tangible victory, and in order to keep
your rear in relative prosperity, you need some kind of external miracle.
In the very first days of the war and with the imposition of the very first sanctions,
a “reorientation towards China” became a hope.
The scope of the dream was much wider than a simple reorientation.
In essence and in the tone of the statements, it was at least about the fact that Russia
is forming a political and economic alliance with China against the US and the EU.
And China will have an honorable mission in this alliance to solve all our problems.
What do we know about China?
We know that every sixth dollar of Chinese exports and every 12th dollar of Chinese imports are in the United States.
And to Russia – every 50th and 30th, respectively.
We know that Singapore, a state smaller than Perm and with a smaller population than St. Petersburg,
is a more important trading partner for China than Russia.
We know that 48% of Chinese imports from Russia are crude oil.
But even according to this indicator, Russia is not the only and not uncontested partner for China:
it provides only 16% of Chinese oil imports, yielding in volumes to Saudi Arabia.
A conflict with the United States, and even more so with the United States and the EU, threatens China
with such a powerful economic downturn that it can only be compared with a war on its own territory.
Entire sectors of the economy will cease to exist, and the fall in GDP will be in double-digit.
There will be an economic disaster for China.
But the complete loss of Russia will not mean anything critical on the scale of the Chinese economy.
In any of the markets, Russia is a partner for China that can be neglected.
With such a reality in front of them, Russian propaganda did not at all hesitate to talk
about the “Chinese alternative” as some kind of established fact.
Say, China, just give it free rein, would show a middle finger to America
and buy from us everything that is easy to take, bypassing any sanctions.
Moreover, the main and characteristic thing in these dreams is not even their complete unrealism,
but the fact that no one thought to ask the position of China itself on this issue.
It sounded something like this: we will generously allow China to increase trade with Russia by about 4 times
in order to compensate for the embargo from Europe and the United States.
No one asked if China needed it.
The second and main dream and hope of the regime is that the Western world, and the United States in particular,
will “get tired” of Ukraine.
That sooner or later the voters, and after them the politicians, will get tired of having to allocate
hundreds of millions, billions and tens of billions of dollars.
These are the amounts that Ukraine constantly needs both in the form of direct financial assistance and,
most importantly, in the form of weapons.
In any discussion about aid to Ukraine, commentators tend to forget about the commercial side of the issue.
And you shouldn't forget about it.
The military-industrial complex in any country where it exists is a leading employer and a powerful lobbyist.
There cannot be such a manufacturer of weapons and equipment, which now does not want
its products to be in service of the Ukrainian army.
It's not just that these are just huge contracts.
That 40 billion US government-approved lend-lease will turn into turnover, profits and jobs for very specific companies.
And the companies will fight for these contracts.
The fact is that the Ukrainian front is an advertising campaign of new types of weapons unprecedented in history.
After all, only the lazy now does not make military drones – God knows what kind of space technology these are.
But what do we hear when we say “combat drone”?
That's right, we hear Bayraktar.
And not only us.
Governments, parliaments, generals all over the world see and hear the same thing:
a pitiful $5 million corn-powered plastic airplane pops tanks like popcorn.
When a manufacturer gives Ukraine this drone, and then another one, you should not be surprised:
this is not charity at all.
Just for every one donated, another 100 Bayraktars will be sold.
Now the Baykar company does not have to worry about its future – there will definitely be enough orders for its lifetime.
Or here is the pillar of the US military-industrial complex Lockheed Martin, which employs more than
100 thousand American voters, which has its own congressmen, senators, loyal media
and millions of dollars for lobbying.
Where else and under what circumstances could it showcase that some 4 or 10, even 16 or 20, as now,
of his HIMARS systems can disrupt the offensive of one of the largest armies in the world?
Army, in the rearmament of which a trillion dollars were spent within last 10 years?
There have been many wars since 1945.
But let's be honest: when you fight against the Iraqi army, al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban,
you can do it with weapons and equipment left over from the victory over Hitler.
When semi-literate tribes of shepherds armed with rusty machine guns are against you,
then satellite-guided missiles, drones, guided missiles and the concept of network-centric warfare are not really needed.
If you spend not one $100,000 smart projectile, but thirty $2,000 stupid projectiles designed in a time
when satellites were only found in science fiction, the result will be exactly the same.
The scientific and technological progress of the Western defense industry,
which has been accumulating for almost 80 years, has finally received a real adequate opponent.
A military group of hundreds of thousands of people, with heavy equipment, with layered air defense,
with radars, aviation, with all the signs of a regular army, not a bandit formation.
It's also Russian!
In such a situation, not only government contracts worth tens of billions are at stake, but reputation for decades to come.
And it is impossible to imagine that the war in Ukraine will not become an international exhibition
of arms and military equipment.
Everything in the world, Lockheed Martins, Boeings, Texas Instruments are now hammering their politicians:
they say, we are helping Ukraine too slowly, we need to do more and faster.
The one who shows himself best of all, whose weapons will make the greatest contribution or turn the tide of the war –
tomorrow will be in all military purchases, from Canada with Australia to Kazakhstan and China.
Everyone is now looking very carefully at how, in fact, not in exercises and not in computer models,
a new type of war looks like.
Whose weapons and whose approach in it are the most effective.
Whoever wins will become the new standard.
It is especially amusing, by the way, that the Russian authorities are counting on the victory
of the Republicans in the United States.
Propaganda relishes any Trump’s remark in the spirit of “let’s agree with Putin.”
Friends, in fact, the Republicans are entirely sitting on the money of heavy industry in general
and the defense industry in particular.
And to imagine Donald Trump saying: sorry, dear Michigan Chrysler worker, you will not assemble
an armored personnel carrier for Ukraine, you will smoke bamboo in the labor market,
is harder than taking Kyiv in 3 days.
It is clear where such fantasies come from.
Fantasies that some external circumstance will happen that will turn the tide in favor of Russia.
The thing is that if you stupidly and consistently continue what is happening now, then you will not come to a positive result.
Russia is losing the resources it needs for war every day.
Every day the list of damaged vehicles in the Oryx project is enlarged, trained soldiers die every day.
Every day Russia is literally getting weaker militarily.
Every day the cost of war for the system as a whole grows.
You need to spend a lot of money on warfare.
It is necessary to save those industries that fall under sanctions.
It is necessary to postpone reserves for December, when Russia will lose 90% of oil exports to Europe
and the government will have real budgetary problems.
Russia has only Russia in this war – no one is ready to cooperate with it.
Russia has a lot of resources, but that's all.
Ukraine is also in a very difficult situation.
Its defense capability is directly dependent on the speed of decision-making
in the most sluggish bureaucracies on the planet –
this is clearly not a situation anyone would like to find themselves in.
Nevertheless, there is a non-zero probability that the situation will continue as it is:
Ukraine is gradually arming itself with new weapons, and Western sanctions are also
gradually ruining the Russian economy.
It is clear how this process will end: sooner or later the balance will change in the opposite direction
And Russia will lose the war.
And there is no other way out.
It is from here that the hopes of the Russian authorities that we hear all the time come from.
Hopes that China will save us, and the Western world will stop saving Ukraine.
It does not matter that these hopes are based on nothing and contradict reality.
There is simply no hope for anything else.
See you tomorrow.