Russia has the economy of a medium-sized EU nation. The EU is vastly more powerful. If the EU wants to, they can give Ukraine everything they need to win. Only they're divided and unwilling to believe in their strength after 80 years of dependency on the US.
> EU’s top diplomat: ‘The free world needs a new leader’
They were going to use them if Ukraine entered Russian soil!
Then they declared that parts of Ukraine was Russia. Ukraine took back some cities on supposedly "holy Russian soil" and nothing happened.
Then Ukraine took a chunk out of (actually) Russian Kursk. Suddenly no talk of nukes for a while.
What would they do with the nukes? Suicide?
This is why GDP is a useless metric. Last year it was reported Russia was manufacturing 3x more artillery shells than the US and whole EU combined.[1] Billion-dollar cosmetics and luxury goods industries don't translate well into battlefield success.
>If the EU wants to, they can give Ukraine everything they need to win.
Except manpower, which Ukraine needs and doesn't have.
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/10/politics/russia-artillery...
And perhaps a tiny bit cautious about escalating a conflict with a neighbouring country that happens to have the world's second largest nuclear arsenal?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Peace_Treaty
Finland fought exceptionally well, which shocked the world, but they still lost the winter war.
This is magical thinking. Russia is near bankrupt.
First, I've been hearing it all my life. More often after 2014, and very often since 2022. In 2022, it was "russia has days left of reserves".
Second, nationalism was always (since 1300s?) strong in there. It always united russians against the enemy even if they hated the goverment. That's why every incrusion attempt always failed.
We need to keep applying pressure until something breaks. There's a constant refrain of "Sanctions don't work. Please stop the sanctions." from the Kremlin.
Examples? All I can see is majority of russians living their life as usual. Sure some transplants in Moscow are sad that their consumarism routine got distracted, but that is it.
As for money frozen in EU, IIRC most of it aren't realted to the goverment and just happened to be in trasit when sanctions started.
Every oligarch knows that Putin is the hand that feeds and biting it at best gets you in prison at worst an express descend to the ground.
but sanctions clearly destroyed Syria.
That's not saying anything about their offensive capabilities, which as whole world sees are a fraction of what was thought about them. They really are supremely ineffective, corrupt and lazy in numbers and levels that cripple whole war for them. They can't produce enough new armed vehicles and their stockpiles from cold war are running very thin as per independent satellite analyses, they use stolen motorbikes, donkeys and golf karts for troopers now (with corresponding death rate). Their nuclear weapons are just a guarantee they won't be attacked on Moscow conventionally or nuclear in any way, nothing more. As we see all other 'doctrines' and 'red lines' fell apart with long lasting incursion in Kursk so that was just an empty bullshit.
They know all this, their country is falling into inflation spiral which can easily end up with people's revolt and I believe puttin' realizes how fragile his relatively soft power grip on russia is. Plus he has positioned himself as an arbiter between various power clans within his hierarchy, not as a single supreme single ruler whom everybody fears for life like in North Korea for example. He desperately needs to finish this war within a year or two since he is an extremely paranoid person. But he has some sort of effective reach or control over orange man and we saw what we saw, who knows why.
In Russia. In fact it was Russia's winter the one who did most of the work. The Russian army was always very bad.
Now Putin is Napoleon or Hitler invading other countries.
Yes the winters did help, but they were still outnumbered, and outproduced.
The only reason they could make all those tanks in the first place was because of American trucks.
So did the UK, so what’s your point?
During WW2, for example, the Soviets lost a total of 20-27 million dead. Only China, a country almost three times as populous, came close at 15-20 million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Total_...
The British Empire lost less than 500,000.
That's the important bit. Russia needs to source soldiers from prisoners and North Koreans.
The situation isn't quite that bad in either Russia or Ukraine which was also one of the constituent parts of the Soviet Union. But it's certainly closer in Ukraine, even if most Russians hold an irrational level of enthusiasm for the war