nytimes.com
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About half of the country’s federal budget goes toward the fight in Ukraine, money that does little to support its long-term development.

For four years, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has made the war against Ukraine the lodestar of his every move.

The single-minded approach has helped Mr. Putin salvage what began as a disastrous invasion, get his troops back on the front foot and dictate demands in peace talks mediated by Washington.

But his stubborn pursuit of the war has come at a huge cost. It has killed or wounded as many as 1.2 million Russians, by some estimates, while reordering Russia’s economy and society in ways that many economists believe jeopardize the nation’s future.

“You have lots of money spent on tanks, shells, bombs, military benefits and other things — no long-lasting value, nothing that works on what we call development,” said Alexandra Prokopenko, a former Russian central bank official who is now a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.

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    • Phoenixz@lemmy.caEnglish
      41·
      3 小时前

      Well, Russia is close to collapse, yes. Not days, for sure, but close enough. Ignore the lost money for a second, Russia lost 1.2 million abled men, plus god only knows howany wounded on top of that ((typically at least the same number, or more. So let’s call that 2.5 million men that will no longer be contributing to the economy, and about a million that will now much leech your economy (blinded, lost limbs, etc) with medical needs.

      Russia has, say, 150M people. Say, 60% is working age, so 90M people of working age. Russia lost some 2-3% of that. That is not a small “oopsie we’ll fix it in post later”, this is an “oopsie we’re fucked” level

      And that is just the dead and wounded. Russia blew through its savings, it barely has a military left to protect itself from other big players like China. Literally it’s only defence, currently, are it’s nukes and with all the corruption there, it’s highly doubtful that those are still functional in amounts high enough to be a credible defense.

      So no savings, a huge cut in its workforce, it made itself the pariah of the world…

      Yeah, Russia is fine tomorrow.

      But next year? 5 years from now?

      Russia is fuuuuuucked