Why does Ukraine need Taiwan or boats against the current? Doomscrolling

Exclusive. Russia will not collapse so quickly. On the contrary, the war became doping for its economy. Bloomberg и The Wall Street Journal reported on the restoration of the Russian economy to pre-war indicators. "Putin withstood all Western demands to stop the invasion of Ukraine, and his power is strong," writes The Wall Street Journal. "Sanctions and export controls have had a much smaller impact on Russia's ability to fight than expected. Russian defense plants are ramping up production, and high oil prices continue to fill the coffers. China and India, which buy Russian raw materials and sell their goods to Russia, provide serious support to the Russian economy. Russia's neighboring countries - Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan - also received large profits, acting as intermediaries to circumvent sanctions."

«Key branches of the Russian economy (including the military industry - author's note) are successfully adapting to sanctions, and some of them have already fully recovered after the sanctions subside", - writes Bloomberg. "The third quarter of 2023, in which Russia's GDP grew by 5,5%, was the best by this indicator in more than a decade, if we do not take into account the sharp growth immediately after the lifting of coronavirus restrictions". These indicators exceeded the forecasts of all surveyed Bloomberg economists. "Now the Russian economy has almost returned to the level it was before the invasion of Ukraine", summarizes Bloomberg. "Sales of energy carriers still remain the most important source of income, and Russia continued to supply oil to other countries at prices above the ceiling of $60 per barrel set by Western countries"One of the most striking examples of how the Russian economy evades sanctions is the banking sector. For 9 months of 2023, its profit broke the previous annual record set in 2021. Gosudarstvenny "Sber", included in the sanctions lists, plans to according to the ego head Herman Gref, that this year will become the most successful in its history.

Another factor in economic recovery was Moscow's ability to find new sources of imports, Stanislav Murashov, an economist at the Russian Raiffeisenbank, told Bloomberg. Thus, car sales have returned to the pre-war level, although the structure has changed: now about 80% of imports are Chinese cars - as well as Chinese-built cars of European brands. In October, the Russian Avtovaz also reported on the growth of production and the best sales volumes in a decade.

Air transportation has also returned to the pre-war level, despite the fact that Russian airlines were forced to abandon many international routes, and their planes are falling apart. The companies began to develop domestic flights and have already achieved the goal set by Putin in 2018, according to which half of their routes directly connect Russian cities, bypassing a transfer in Moscow.

Moscow, even according to the external impression, has noticeably increased the number of luxury cars, and is literally bursting with money coming in from military orders and rising oil prices. Since the beginning of "SVO", Russia has earned 550 billion euros from the sale of oil and gas - these data were published by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (although a significant part of these funds is no longer in freely convertible currencies). At the same time, the EU remains the largest buyer of Russian energy resources.

The main buyers are Germany (28 billion euros), the Netherlands (18 billion euros) and Italy (17 billion euros). The EU is followed by China in the list of main buyers, which spent more than 143 billion euros for these purposes. In addition, the Russian Federation exports energy resources to India, Turkey and South Korea. The Kremlin's expenses for a year and a half of the war amounted to only about 156 billion euros - 28,36% of what the sale of energy resources brought to it, among the buyers of which the key place is still occupied eternally worried West.

Of course, Russia's rise to war is like a drug addiction, and it will inevitably be followed by a recession. But this income can last very long, for decades, that is forecast by The Economist that the war will last another five years seems rather optimistic. The war in Ukraine has become an organic part of the Russian economy. Of course, Russia at the same time devours itself like Ouroboros, but it makes it quite comfortable for itself. Capitals are withdrawn to the West, if not directly, then through offshore or the Emirates, in the same place, real estate is bought in the West and investment in non-Russian enterprises takes place. Yes, now it is issued to a relative, or to fictitious persons, but this detail does not change anything, in fact. A certain number of losers who have seriously come under sanctions, and the deprivation of prominent Putin functionaries of an insignificant part of their fortune, does not affect the general trend at all.

The social slag from the Russian hinterland, which otherwise would have become a headache for Russia's non-combatant neighbors, from China to the EU, is being successfully burned on the Ukrainian front, and I am also happy about it. In any case, the number of those willing to play Russian roulette went to the Soviet Union, allows the Kremlin to successfully minimize mobilization measures.

Of course, in the end, having digested itself, Russia will cease to exist in its current form. The products of the Soviet and post-Soviet degeneracy will partly enrich the Ukrainian black earth, partly die out on the spot, partly be taken for re-education by the Chinese, and partly run away, together with the money, around the world, infecting it with cannibalistic morals and mental pus. But Ukraine has every chance not to live to see the disappearance of Russia, and it even escaped Russian occupation. We may suffer losses from which it will be impossible to recover.

Zapad worriedly scratched his head. And no more. Yes, the West provided us with enormous and invaluable help. Simple orderliness (we are not katsaps!) does not allow us to forget about it. But the West is itself in a deep crisis today. The West is old, both in terms of the average age of the population and psychologically. The West is afflicted with left-handed diseases, which have not been cured in the last hundred years, and which have been aggravated by poorly controlled migration from underdeveloped countries. As a result, the West is largely indifferent to the protection of liberal-democratic values ​​and principles.

This indifference does not allow him to look at the wars in Ukraine and Gaza from the right angle, he perceived them as the first TVD of one big war of the West and the anti-Western bloc, generated by contradictions that have matured in the narrowness of the globalized world, and, therefore, is already inevitable. Of course, there are exceptions to this indifference - Great Britain (the situation of World War II is exactly repeated here), the Baltic countries and Poland. But they too are experiencing the same crisis phenomena as the entire West as a whole, and, therefore, the strength of their positions is also not limitless.

In addition, in the fight against the anti-Western bloc, which includes Russia and China, there is no way to do without the resources of the United States. And the USA is also in crisis today, they are focused on internal problems, Congress is drowning in inter-party showdowns, and the 2024 election is likely to be won by Donald Trump, so what writes The Economist. Speaking about the high chances of Trump's victory, the authors of The Economist point out that he dominates the Republican primaries and, judging by the polls, is far ahead of Biden in swing states. Thus, according to TheNew York Times, 59% of voters trust Trump in economic matters against 37% who trust Biden, and this gap continues to grow.

And since Trump perceives foreign policy in a very fragmented and primitive way, he will most likely support Israel - but will hand over Taiwan to Xi Jinping, sincerely not understanding the point of conflict with the nuclear superpower council of a tiny island, and will declare to the EU that Ukraine is his problem. After that, he will plunge headlong into domestic politics, thundering American legal institutions in order to persecute enemies.

Trump's policy will inevitably, and in many parameters, including economic ones, come into sharp conflict with the European one. At the same time, the European Union is also in a state of crisis and is experiencing bad times. And Putin will certainly use this to increase pressure on Ukraine.

Some Western politicians, understanding the situation, are already ready to sacrifice Ukraine, assigning it the role of a curtain behind which the West can still prepare for a major war. Thus, analysts of the German foreign policy association DGAP write in their report that NATO in Europe has "five to nine years" left to prepare to repel Russia's attack on the Alliance's territory. Putting aside the misunderstandings, we will see here a proposal to use Ukraine as a shield in order to use it to restrain Russia all the time, providing it with a minimum of support. At the same time, at the level of the voter, the West still does not consider supporting Ukraine to be a primary problem for itself. Moreover, parties ready to compromise with Putin are gaining strength there.

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All the talk about Western guarantees to Ukraine is obscenely reminiscent of the story of the Budapest memorandum. Literally, everything in them does not even speak, but screams that sooner or later all the guarantors will get their hands dirty, and repeat the well-known phrase from the anecdote about the dog running: "Well, I didn't smooch, I didn't smooch". They won't get used to the West, Mr «ne shmog" already once, and not only in Ukraine. The number of countries to which the West first promised "as much as needed" support, and then surrendered them, threw them to death, has confidently reached double digits only in the last hundred years.

A few words about the victory of Ukraine, the war of exhaustion of Russia and the pause in the offensive

All talk about the fact that the war cannot end with the victory of Ukraine, and therefore an inevitable compromise, is based on a misunderstanding of the essence of Russia. Ouroborossia, devouring itself, can develop along a democratic path, in general and in principle. Any collapse of the regime in the Kremlin, without the liquidation of Russia as such, with an attack on small national states that fiercely hate each other (this is a mandatory condition, otherwise they will begin to unite) will simply start another cycle: first an imitation of "thaw" - then a return to totalitarian freezes . The killing of the Russian bear and the cutting of its carcass, and precisely the small cutting, and not the cutting off of the peripheral parts, is a question of the safety of all mankind. Everything is easier with China - in principle, it is fully democratized, and the CCP regime will inevitably collapse. Iran is ready for Western-style democratization even more than China. You can simply stop feeding the North Korean menagerie, isolating it from the world for five years, which, in the case of China's democratization, can be solved without any problems.

And only Russia is incorrigible, and it will breed totalitarianism again and again from the depths of the people.

To defeat Russia, it must be brought, at least, to the state of the USSR by the time of its collapse. An endless war with Ukraine, together with sanctions, is a worthy but very slow instrument of such destruction.

Now, in the second year of the war, the war still affects Russia like doping. In order for the regime in the Kremlin to begin to seriously falter, Russia's human losses should, according to modest estimates, amount to 1,5-2 million killed only, with a corresponding number of cripples who will beg, drink and breathe throughout Russia, literally at every corner . But this figure is still very far away, which means that we will have to fight with Russia for a very long time. And this role, alas, fell to us.

So, so that Ukraine does not end before Russia ends, we must protect our people. We have already lost too many of them. Now only a protracted high-tech war can save us: an immovable front line, repelling Russian attacks and pelting Russia with missiles and UAVs, in greater numbers than it can do in Ukraine, at an ever-increasing range. In total, this should cause enough damage to Russia to cause its gradual exhaustion.

But such a war requires large investments, and investments assume payback. This means that our attitude to the war should be fundamentally revised, starting to plan it as a business that, in the end, should bring income. We should think about what we will get as a result of the victory, and to what extent these acquisitions will be able to satisfy investors, recouping their costs.

In other words, the slogan "return to the borders of 1991" is hopelessly outdated, since such a result of the war will not pay off the costs of its conduct, and will not bring us money for post-war reconstruction. We will be able to win in Russia only if we manage to turn the war with it into a promising start-up capable of making a profit. Not necessarily directly from defeated Russia - although, of course, from her too. But technologies developed in the course of war and tested in real conditions, and well-proven samples of mass-produced weapons can be profitable.

Valery Zaluzhny v interview The Economist magazine, and in more detail essay rightly pointed out that the war has reached a technological impasse, and in order to win, Ukraine needs to reach a fundamentally different, higher technological level of conducting the war.

But in further arguments, Zaluzhny made three false assumptions. He assumed that the West already has such technologies today; that it is able to provide Ukraine with weapons based on them, moreover, in sufficient quantity, and that, having such an opportunity, it will, at some point, want to do it. All three of these assumptions are incorrect. Today, the West does not have such technologies, there is not a sufficient amount of weapons based, if not on such perfect, but at least on technologies close to them, and there is no political will, both for the operational perfection of technologies and the expansion of the production of weapons, and for providing them Ukraine in sufficient nomenclature and quantity.

The history of the refusal of the Federal Republic of Germany to provide Ukraine with Taurus missiles, and the completely shameful discussion of the fact that, if such missiles are provided, then only on the condition that they do not strike Russian territory, it would seem, should have dotted all the "i" . The West, as already mentioned, is seriously ill today. As a result, only we ourselves can develop and produce such a weapon. But we will not be able to do it ourselves, we will need external help, financial and technological. And there are simply no options for receiving such help anywhere else, except for Taiwan (and soon, perhaps, Israel as well), today.

Sergey Ilchenko, political commentator Newsky