Well, I mean.....I wouldn't expect Putin to put out a press release:
Dear fellow Russians. I fucked up. Shit's bad now. Oopsie!
Lovingly yours,
~Putin
- President ~~Camacho~~ Putin: Shit. I know shit's bad right now, with all that starving bullshit, and the dust storms, and we are running out of french fries and burrito coverings.
- Of course Putin blames it on NATO aggressively doing nothing, and Ukraine wanting to join EU.
  So Russia had to defend itself against all that! Now NATO has borders right up to Russia through Sweden and Finland as a result of Putins idiocy.
  And In fact Putin recently announced that the Russians should prepare for war, as in things are getting tough now.
  And who the fuck else is to blame for that? If you have 2 brain-cells to add 2 and 2 together?
  
  What I find funny is that right now, because of the war, Ukraine legally can't join NATO simply because there is a provision that blocks attempts from an already at war nation to join NATO.
  HOWEVER...if putin never tried this shit at all to begin with, Sweden and Finland wouldn't have joined. Ukraine had an agreement with russia to not join NATO as part of their deal from the early 90s when they gave up their nukes. Now, literally the second the war ends, you KNOW Ukraine will be welcomed into NATO with open arms.
  The end result means that this war will have directly resulted in THREE new nations joining NATO that otherwise probably wouldn't have even attempted it.
Russia:
Keen to show Western sanctions are pointless, Russia says its gross domestic product grew 4.3% in 2024 after 3.6% expansion in 2023.
Report:
Russian GDP numbers could not be trusted because Moscow was most likely strongly understating inflation which affected real GDP calculations.
They acknowledge 9% inflation, but real inflation is probably twice that. And now you have about -6% GDP.
Add to that the vast increase in War costs, probably taking up 10% more of the economy, and suddenly you Have about -16% real GDP.
But even that is probably not the whole picture, because Russia is using every trick in the book to hide how bad the economy really is.
This is somewhat covered by cannibalizing everywhere they can, and cutting on maintenance and repair everywhere.
They are also cutting on social services and benefits, so it is very hard now for pensioners to survive without help from family etc.
Decreasing oil incomes will make it even worse this year, and the Russian government is running at a deficit it is getting more an more difficult to cover.
In short the Russian society is deteriorating FAST now! And Allegedly Putin has been out recently to warn the population to prepare for war. Probably not because they can do much more than they already do, but because the population needs to prepare for a really rough time economically, and for public services that don't functions as they should.
- Russia even did something completely new. They're letting new recruits write off private debt!
  As in, you owe me 76.000 euros for, I dunno, a fancy car. You join the military, and suddenly, you don't owe me anything anymore. Yay for you (and sucks to be me. Good thing I can always enlist if I get into financial trouble)
  
  I mean... Can't get any money from a dead guy anyway so sure why not.
  
  If you don't complain we may allow you to live a little longer.
Second on the list: water is wet.
https://archive.is/EfEGo
There is something that I'm having trouble reconciling:
FTFA: "The Commission broadly agrees with this analysis and the overall increasing fragility of the Russian economy. This underlines the importance of the international community's ongoing efforts to limit the Kremlin's capacity to continue its war of aggression against Ukraine," he said.
If it's sanctions and war spending that's eroding the economy, wouldn't it underline the importance of keeping the Kremlin at war even longer? To totally collapse the Putin regime? I mean, I wouldn't wish that on my Ukrainian brothers and sisters, but if we're on the cusp of putting Putin dick down in the dirt, why would we take our collective foot off the gas?
- I spend a couple hours a day following this conflict and my conclusion is that, yes, it would likely be in Ukraine's interests to continue conducting the war for a couple more years as long as they had enough support from Western allies. But there's a few things to consider here.
  Russia is still pushing for maximalist goals when talking about a peace deal. This makes fighting a lot more attractive to Ukraine than a peace treaty for now. If that changed, the calculation could change with it.
  Ukraine is still slowly losing land. So in general it is not in their favor to continue to prosecute the war if Russia was willing to allow a peace deal at the line of control.
  Western support isn't guaranteed as Trump is a big wildcard here but looks pretty okay for the time being.
  The goal of continuing to prosecute the war would be to get Russia to a point where they either
  a) Start losing territory
  b) End up in such bad shape economically that they simply can't manage to keep the war going any more and make a favorable peace deal
  c) End up in such bad shape that Putin is deposed
  I personally think that given their current constraints that we could reach one of the above outcomes in the next few years if we kept Western support about at the levels that it currently is, because Russia's capabilities will degrade pretty quickly over the next couple years due to the fact that they
  Have used up the vast majority of their usable stockpiles and can only build equipment at about 10-20% of the rate they have been historically consuming it. Ukraine and Europe's production on the other hand is picking up as it wasn't based on refurbishing stockpiled equipment.
  Will have harder and harder time finding soldiers as their recruitment techniques are becoming prohibitively expensive (though this is also true for Ukraine)
  Have all but used up their sovereign wealth fund and do not have much access to anyone else which can loan them money, even at the high interest rates they are offering. Now they are raiding the banks for money, but the first banks are already starting to collapse. Their only option left is to print money which will cause inflation. Given their real inflation rate already is somewhere around 20%, the likely outcome over the next couple years is a hyperinflation spiral which will hurt everyone in Russia enough that there will certainly be negative sentiment towards Putin. There could also be a banking crash where people can't withdraw their money, etc.
  My feeling is that the US doesn't want the risk of Russia falling too far due to their nuclear stockpile and just want to see the whole thing over, but Europe really needs Russia to be beaten well enough to not come back, so it's really a question of whether Trump gets his peace deal or not, because I feel like Europe is okay to go on fighting, even without the USA, though they will be strapped for resources to do so in that case, at least in the near term.
  
  Great write up and analysis, very clear with concise points. I would also agree with your thoughts, but even apart from that bias I appreciate the detailed response!
- The order of operations goes:
  Stop the war, prevent Russia from winning
  everything else
- This is just untrue in democracies with transparency, you can look up the (real) numbers yourself, as can economists and journalists.
  In dictatorships you must trust the numbers given to you, so there yeah they'll lie their teeths off.

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