Procurement: Russia Ignores Worldwide Sanctions
May 11, 2025: A major economic weapon against Russia is economic sanctions. These were first implemented in 2014 after Russia seized Crimea and portions of two east Ukraine provinces. Russia has managed to cope with the sanctions, managing to defeat every western effort to make their sanctions more effective.
In 2022 Western sanctions were expanded, blocking Russia from obtaining a lot of industrial equipment for factories or establishing new ones. Russia had particular difficulty obtaining machine tools and components needed to build weapons. These include motors and other components for drones, including lithium-ion batteries that power most drones. Many of these banned components for weapons are also used in non-military items. These are called dual use items, and the new sanctions ban them as well because this is how you guarantee no supplies of items that can be used to build weapons. This includes complex systems like missiles, which require specific chemicals needed to fabricate the solid-fuel motors used.
There are alternative sources for sanctioned items, but the cost is higher, delivery takes longer, and regular deliveries are not guaranteed. Using smugglers to deal with sanctions is expensive but Russia must pay more to keep essential war-time industries going. Russia managed to evade sanctions against its oil exports by offering oil at discounted prices. Many nations were willing to risk political or economic blowback for buying Russian oil. So far, the discreet Russian trade in cheap oil survives.
The Ukraine War saw Russia at odds with NATO countries that control over half the $110 trillion 2024 worldwide GDP. The U.S. and China control 45 percent of that. By comparison Russia had a GDP of $1,845 billion in 2021, $2,265 billion by 2022, $2,020 billion by 2023 and $2,186 billion in 2024. Ukraine had a GDP of $200 billion in 2021, $179 billion by 2023 and $189 billion in 2024.
NATO countries have supplied Ukraine with over $100 billion in military and half as much in economic aid. As the aggressor Russia gets no aid from anyone and has limited trade relations with North Korea, Iran and China. This war is the first between industrialized nations since 1945. When it ends there will be a shift to national reconstruction in Ukraine. NATO nations have promised substantial post-war economic rebuilding aid so that Ukraine can fit count on that aid while planning their own wartime production.
Both Russia and Ukraine have suffered labor shortages because of the war. It was worse for Russia because over a million Russian men were killed, disabled, deserted or fled the country to avoid military service. The labor shortage is made worse by the lack of high school and university graduates with technical training. Too many of those grads concentrated on the humanities rather than industrial and software engineering. As a result, firms manufacturing requiring a lot of people with technical skills cut production. The government responded with bonuses and other benefits offered to students studying technical subjects.
The Ukraine War caused enormous economic damage to both countries. Ukrainian GDP declined 30 percent in 2022 while Russia’s declined about three percent. Russia was hit hard by economic sanctions in 2014 for taking Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine, and sanctions for its 2022 invasion made it even more isolated from the global economy. Russia’s only arms imports now come from equally poor North Korean artillery shells and rockets and cheap Iranian missiles. China and India help with the funding by purchasing heavily discounted Russian oil and natural gas. Lacking any such planning Ukraine was able to quickly create a plan using its decades of experience as the primary military manufacturing region for the Soviet Union. This ended in 1991 as the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine began developing an independent economy.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Wednesday, May 14, 2025 - 04:13 pm: Edit

I notice that, earlier in this thread, there was discussion of whether or not there is likely to be a "brain drain" effect in the U.S. As someone who works directly in academia - specifically as someone who herds faculty and handles their promotion & tenure process at a public university - I can unfortunately report that yes, a "brain drain" effect has begun.

To make a long story short, an academic career lives or dies by research grants. When those grants dry up, so do the both the research prospects and career prospects for both faculty and graduate student researchers. And at this time, research grants are not only drying up; existing grants are being clawed back.

Please note that the college where I work is not researching best methods for underwater basket weaving, nor is it investigating the cultural impact of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is a college for agriculture, food and natural resources. We've seen a major soybean research program shut down entirely, a swine program that is now on life-support, and I'm sure I don't have to explain the impact on anything dealing with natural resources. We also have close ties with our university's school of medicine, which has been forced to end research - including medical trials that were underway - on cancer, Alzheimer's, and other diseases and syndromes; our biochemistry department was involved in a fair bit of those.

Due to the above, more than a few researchers - both faculty and grad students - are now looking elsewhere to continue their research and careers...and by elsewhere, I mean outside of the United States. France, Germany, Australia, Japan, and a number of other countries are running a full court press to recruit American researchers, and the effects are already showing. The exodus is, in fact, underway; if the recisions at the National Institute of Health, National Academy of Sciences, etc. continue as planned, it is only going to get worse.

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Wednesday, May 14, 2025 - 05:08 pm: Edit

Jessica, I agree there is a brain drain, and it's a problem.

But science has a credibility problem, going all the way up to the journal "Nature", which still hasn't retracted Proximal Origins, in spite of Slack messages where the authors privately gave assessments of Covid origins that were starkly at variance with what they wrote publicly in their paper.

I would love to support and trust Science. But Science has thus far chosen not to correct itself on the worst disaster of the 21st century so far.

I don't have a good solution to that.

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Wednesday, May 14, 2025 - 05:14 pm: Edit

SVC, I guess my point is . . . if one doesn't stand up to Putin now, the nuclear risk is likely to grow.

Suppose, for example, that Putin's nuclear threats succeed in intimidating the West into not kicking him out of Ukraine.

A dictator, like Putin or Xi, might reasonably conclude that nuclear threats work. Then we see an invasion somewhere, be it the Baltics, Kazakhstan, or Taiwan, again backed up by nuclear threats, and again resulting in a successful invasion.

This would encourage more and more countries to get nuclear weapons. Vietnam might need them to protect against China, Finland against Russia, Bangladesh against India, Congo against Rwanda, South Sudan against Sudan, and so on.

At that point, a nuclear war would just be a matter of time.

Tit for Tat strategies have a good record, both in theory and in practice. Standing up against Putin would seem to be a logical application of Tit for Tat.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Wednesday, May 14, 2025 - 05:25 pm: Edit

Frankly the only thing that would have deterred Putin would have been to seriously flood Ukraine with arms after 2014. Any other option would have been, before the invasion, seen as too escalating to be acceptable to Ukraines supporters then. No one really believed in such an old fashion thing as a conventional way of conquest.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Wednesday, May 14, 2025 - 05:41 pm: Edit

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, May 14, 2025 - 05:57 pm: Edit

The lab leak thing, including gain of function, has been the most likely explanation for two or three years now. The government is hemorrhaging secret documents proving that. Let’s stop trying to avoid the truth. No further propaganda will be posted. Sanctions will apply. Don’t waste my time.

The brains we are draining don’t seem to be ones we needed to keep.

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Wednesday, May 14, 2025 - 06:16 pm: Edit

Jessica, I'm not going to blame you personally for being mistaken there. But it was a lab leak, and there is extensive evidence of a cover-up.

"We are all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns. And if we did we wouldn’t put them in emails. And if we found them we would delete them." -- David Morens to Peter Daszak.

"I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear after I am FOIA’d but before the search starts. So I think we are all safe. Plus I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to Gmail," -- Morens to Daszak again.

"Tony [Fauci] doesn’t want his fingerprints on [Covid] origin stories." -- Morens

"You have to look very closely at the genome to see features that are potentially engineered… I should mention that after discussions earlier today, Eddie [Holmes], Bob [Garry], Mike [Farzan], and myself all find the genome to be inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory,” -- Kristian Andersen

There is a lot more evidence along those lines. But I'm already writing too much of a novel.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, May 14, 2025 - 09:30 pm: Edit

Enough.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Thursday, May 15, 2025 - 02:37 am: Edit

"Frankly the only thing that would have deterred Putin would have been to seriously flood Ukraine with arms after 2014"

Would it be fair to say that this didn't happen, because the Germans (and others) 'wanted to continue to benefit from the 1990's peace dividend and wanted two new BMW's on every driveway - rather than an extra Tank in evey Garrison'?

Alas, NATO in general underspent (UK and US excepted) but those nations did get nice new Shiny BMW's on every drivyway - and thats what their public wanted?

Se 'we' are to blame. Polticians could have been told to look to the future - not shiny BMW's.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, May 15, 2025 - 05:39 am: Edit

The only people who could have told the politicians instead told them they wanted BMWs, so European consumers ARE to blame. They didn't buy war insurance (i.e., a big army) like they should have.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, May 15, 2025 - 06:05 am: Edit

Si vis pacem, para bellum is a Latin adage translated as "If you want peace, prepare for war." The phrase is adapted from a statement found in Roman author Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus
Si vis pacem, para bellum (Classical Latin.)

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Thursday, May 15, 2025 - 08:10 am: Edit

"most Russian and Ukrainian casualties were caused by drones. " I believe this is incorrect. I see analysis by IFSW and the General Staff of Ukraine saying Artillery is the major cause of most casualties. Drone attacks just are videotaped more...

"The 12.7mm machine-gun has an effective range of two kilometers, which is about half the range of the 70mm guided rocket used in an earlier AUD system" vs "APKWS 70mm laser guided rockets. These weigh only 15 kg each and have a range of about a thousand meters when fired from the ground." in the same article. 50 cal (12.7mm) has about 2 km range, but 70mm rockets can have a much longer range but this varies considerably (apparently there are variants).

from the wiki "Firing ranges are 1,100-5,000 meters, the former of which can be hit less than 5 seconds after firing.[5] Maximum range is constrained by use of the existing Hydra 70 motor, but since the seeker can see as far as 14 km (8.7 mi), a more powerful motor could extend range while retaining accuracy.[11] Nammo is working on a modified rocket motor that can extend range to 12–15 km (7.5–9.3 mi).[12]"

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, May 15, 2025 - 09:28 am: Edit

As expected, Putin stiff-armed the ceasefire talks in Istanbul.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Thursday, May 15, 2025 - 10:26 am: Edit

SVC and Jeff

Can't disagree (although I am sure the Spanish bought Seats, Italiand FIATS and the French Renaults )

Alas the Consumer wanted stuff and the politicans was happy to provide.

Shame Poltiicans are not sensible enough to every so often say 'You want this....but you need that'!

Jeff - I'll get my eldest to check your Latin (he did actually study it at school)

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, May 15, 2025 - 02:05 pm: Edit

I can’t take credit for the latin, just never had the opportunity to study it.

knew the phrase from my other readings, where it was quoted by various authors.

I do hope that is correct.

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Thursday, May 15, 2025 - 02:05 pm: Edit

Paul, back in 2014, the West was concerned that providing military support to Ukraine might provoke Putin.

We can all see how that turned out.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, May 15, 2025 - 03:08 pm: Edit

Politicians are always saying "you want X but you need Y and I'm going to be sure you get Y."

The problem is that Y tends to be some ivory tower feel good new age crud that nobody really needs. Yes, you need National Endowment for the Arts to put a crucifix in a bottle of urine, and I'm going to be sure that's what you get.

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Thursday, May 15, 2025 - 03:45 pm: Edit

>> back in 2014, the West was concerned that providing military support to Ukraine might provoke Putin

Not entirely. It's important to keep in mind that a pro-Russia position was entirely mainstream German politics until 2022. Both Schroeder and Merkel and their parties supported it. The idea was that enhanced trade and economic cooperation would eventually moderate Russia's ambitions and bring them into the fold of Europe. And the inexpensive and plentiful energy would help drive competitiveness, furthering German mercantilism.

And at the time Obama and Kerry believed the Crimea invasion was just a minor issue by a has-been power.

So it wasn't so much concern in the West over provoking Putin, but rather seeing assisting Ukraine as being contrary to the current set of political objectives. The fate of Ukraine was largely irrelevant.

--Mike

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Friday, May 16, 2025 - 02:45 am: Edit

Maybe not irrelevant, but few in the west thought Russia would do anything more than stick to their playbook that had been successful so far.
We are used to resolutions passed in the UN, stern warnings from the WH, protests delivered by ambassadors etc. and this unhinged president elect for life simply ignore all that and just goes and invades a neighboring country! Didn't he get the memo?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, May 16, 2025 - 02:59 am: Edit

Putin knew that Europe lacked the strength to intervene and that the US administration would not.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, May 16, 2025 - 09:25 am: Edit

The Ukraine invasion was botched three years ago. And Putin, the Generals and the entire military organization of Russia has been repeating the same program over and over again expecting a different result.

Einstein’s definition of insanity, is repeating the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, May 16, 2025 - 11:56 am: Edit

There was a quote, I think it might have been a Prussian , Bismarck perhaps.

He was asked about his preference in fighting a professional or an amateur.

The answer was he preferred a professional.

The explanation was, that he knew how a Professional would perform and conduct himself, an amateur not knowing what he should do in any normal situation, was unpredictable.

To a certain extent, the Ukrainian side, not entirely a Professional military, did a lot of “outside the box” things, instead of using the Soviet Army book of tactics.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, May 16, 2025 - 09:01 pm: Edit

The finest swordsman in Italy does not fear the second finest, for he knows he is the master. And yet, that finest swordsman fears the worst swordsman because he knows not what that lunatic might do.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Friday, May 16, 2025 - 09:52 pm: Edit

It's a common tournament experience. Are you able to think on your feet and flexible enough to adapt new tactics mid game?
Auftragstaktik wins over rigid soviet style command and control the moment the technology no longer favor the later. With the advent of drones it was all over for Russia really. Now they must change their doctrine since they have no technological answer, and that change will take years if it is all possible under a dictatorship.