When the war started it was seizure-this and sanction-that. I’ve read that $350B in Russian assets were seized and held, while major companies exited the Russian market, the ruble crashed, and inflation rocketed.

Meanwhile the cost of the Russian war must be astronomical to maintain, imports/exports have halted with Europe, there’s no financial aid to Russia (that I’m aware of) and multi-billion dollar resource supplies were cancelled.

All this, and Russia seems to still be having a good old time. Russians are on holidays en mass, the country is buying up arms and fossil fuels like its church Sunday, and their war machine still powers away and is prepared to keep fighting for a decade if it has to.

How? How does a country take that much of a financial beating and still be thriving? Where is the point of being broke and not being able to fund a war anymore?

  • Hyperreality@kbin.social
    161·
    10 months ago

    Some possible reasons:

    1. One of their sources is Sudanese gold. Basically, they’re helping to exacerbate the genocide in Sudan, so they can fund their genocide in Ukraine.
    2. Russia has arguably won the sanctions war. They’ve shifted trade to China and India. Or they’re exporting raw materials through third countries to Europe, or transfering oil at sea, bypassing sanctions at a relatively low cost.
    3. Made deals with other oil producing countries to not increase production, so that prices remain stable.
    4. War isn’t that expensive, unless you’re the US (and care about casualty rates). North Korea. Dirt poor country, almost entirely cut off from the world, still manages to maintain a sizeable military and even develop nuclear weapons. Russia? Old soviet stock that was rusting in a barn, North Korean shells that occasionally kill your own troops, troops you only pay if they survive if at all. Send prisoners to the front, saves money on prisons. Send people from the poorest regions, so you don’t have to pay them much, and it doesn’t negatively affect GDP that much.
    5. Do like the Russians did during and after WW2. Rape and pillage. Russia is actively stealing Ukrainian resources, equipment and grain from the occupied territories.
    6. Sell (or barter with) pariah states like North Korea or Iran military technology they would otherwise not have access too, like nuclear or ballistic tech.
    7. War time economy means you can cut lots of stuff. Education, pensions, healthcare, drugs… all very expensive. Not as if the kids dying at the front will need an education anyway. Hell, apparently they’re sending disabled soldiers back to the front. Great way to get healthcare spending down.