@wdolson Just realized I had my blinders on...actually the gold standard in collapse should be the 1967 and 1973 Israel wars. Shouldn't have, feel I let the thread down by omission.
Other good examples, though Arab culture is different from Russian culture. Russia is xenophobic because of all the armies that have invaded over the centuries. Russian mythos is that they always defeat their enemies in the end. When they lose, it tends to destabilize their society. It happened in 1906, 1917, and 1989.
Much of the Arab world was occupied by somebody for centuries. Before the French and British "protectorates" most of the ME was controlled by the Ottomans. It was part of the Byzantine/Eastern Roman Empire before that. During the Crusades they eventually drove the Europeans out, but lost a lot of battles before that happened.
Losing to Russians is an existential crisis while losing to Arab culture is something you roll with. Additionally the Israelis are essentially a western army (many Arabs see them as a new crusade by proxy) with western weapons and tactics. Losing to a better force is easier to justify than losing to an army that should have folded like a cheap suit on day 1.
Russia also sees Ukraine as an inferior cousin. The Russians bear should always be able to beat up Ukraine without really working up a sweat.
The Europeans are trying to move away from Russian oil and gas and Modi is talking about buying more. It's sort of like the difference between owning a Yugo and trying to get rid of it compared to going out and buying one knowing the reputation.
Great assessment. The only question that remains is how long can Putin’s $300 billion in reserve buy itself some needed time? If China will help in any form? And whether India or others will buy Russian oil, which will also give Russia more time. From the beginning of the invasion reporters were questioning Biden if his $1 trillion sanction will work, his reply: wait a month and you’ll see the unprecedented effect.
Putin doesn't have access to a large portion of his reserves. Countries around the world have frozen them. They have virtually no international currency to work with.
India won't be able to get any of the oil they have agreed to buy until the war is over. The port to load the oil is shut down because of the war. I doubt India is going to agree to buy oil now with a delivery date that is completely unknown and could be many months.
Just as important as the military lifeline, how much will Putin pump into his own economy? When will the average Russian middle class start to really feel the economic pain and their savings evaporate? Military experts have stated the war is costing Russia up to $20 billion a day, I think that number is too high. Base on the lack of logistics, it might be closer to $1 billion a day. If we split the cost of financing the military and Russian economy at $1billion a day each, the Russians theoretically have 150 days or less, barring any income from oil exports, before they completely have to fold. If Putin does fold before he runs out of cash, how much time will $200-300 billion buy him before the Russian economy collapses? Then there’s this question: how will his military/young men who saw the fighting first hand, shooting of their own wounded soldiers, act of terrorism against Ukraine, being lied to and forced into battle, etc. react when they come home in massive numbers. They surely will be telling their parents, relatives the truth. And ounce the Russian economy feels realPAIN, that’s when things will get interesting.
The $20 billion a day comes from leaked meeting notes from a meeting with Putin around day 4 of the invasion. The notes just said "20 billion) with no currency mentioned. I assume they were talking about it in rubles. The exchange rate was about 89 ruble to the dollar then which would make it about $225 million a day. Since then the ruble has dropped relative to the dollar, but since all of this is internally spent money comparing to dollars at this point is sort of moot.
With their main oil port effectively closed by the war, the Russians have no options to sell more oil as long as the conflict is going on.
Another grim possibility is that when the war situation becomes untenable, they leave the army there to get ground to dust and either go into captivity or die. That solves the problem of soldiers coming home and telling the stories of what happened.
Also most Russian soldiers in the field are not aware of the destruction of civilian property they are doing. Most of the destruction is being done by artillery, air, and long range missiles. The only people who see any of this are the aircrews, but they are detached from it. Bombing from the air is disassociated from the personal damage they are causing on the ground.
The Russians may refuse to take back their POWs at the end of the war. Russians have a kind of 1940s Japanese attitude about prisoners. There was a story told by a retired US general who had been head of the command in Europe. His troops were renovating what had been a prison camp during the war (for some sort of museum or something) and they came across a cemetery. A bit of investigating and they discovered that it was for Russian POWs who died in captivity.
They did some sprucing up because Americans take war dead seriously. A Russian general was visiting and he offered to take the Russian general to see the cemetery and the general declined stating that the cemetery had to be full of Belarusian and Ukrainian POWs because Russians never surrender.
I can't recall if is was the same retired US general or another one who said he worked with Ukrainian peace keeping troops and they observed how the western armies honored their war dead. It was a new concept for them, but the Ukrainian army adopted the practice. The Ukrainians up to that time were more Russian in their approach which was to dismiss their war dead almost like they were losers and move on.
My partner and I were discussing this the other day. The Ukrainians are ultimately European in their outlook. Europeans do things like honor their war dead, as individuals who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. The Russians are a hybrid between more eastern cultures and the west.
Individuals in east Asian cultures like China and Japan circa WW II had the normal attachment to family and individuals they love, but the government policies for care of their soldiers both living and dead is/was something westerners would consider amazingly brutal and heartless. The Russian approach is more like these eastern countries in this regard.
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