Ag with kids said:Again...none of that says Russia is STRONGER. It just says they are building up faster than we expected.FJB24 said:Well look at the other one though.Ag with kids said:FWIW, that article doesn't say Russia is stronger today than they were when the war started.nortex97 said:
Nothing, at all, in his excerpt which you've gladly latched onto questions what I posted.Speculations about what will happen in the future, long term, from one sentence of a multi-page analyses, doesn't mean they aren't stronger today. In fact, it is couching an optimistic/overall strengthened analyses with a minor caveat/variable, but as a partisan who only sees things from the Ukrainian Pravda side it is the only bit read/pasted in return.Quote:
It remains unclear whether the defense industry will be able to mass produce modern or advanced weapon systems or sustain production over the long term
Please advise what tangential statistical means you have to show Russia is presently "weaker today" than in early 2022. No, total casualty figures don't count (neither Putin nor Zelensky care about their cannon fodder). Misdirection about what an article says or ad Homs won't work, and I'll just ignore it.
It says that they've essentially stanched the bleeding and are now building back up at a good pace.Quote:
At a news conference, Austin and Gen. CQ Brown, America's top military officer, again detailed Russia's losses. But they added another trend: Russia's recovery.
"Russia has ramped up its production," Austin said. "All of their defense industry really answers directly to the state, so it's easier for them to do that a bit quicker."
Brown put it more simply: "Russia has aggressively reconstituted its military force."
Coming a month apart, the two sets of comments show a distinct change in how the U.S. views Russia's military. While American officials have long detailed the costs of Moscow's invasion for its armed forces and its economy, in the last two months they've started to acknowledge Russia is recovering faster than the U.S. expected.There's no reason to think Russia is weaker today than in early 2022. At least, none that have actually been posted/cited here.Quote:
Still, European and American defense officials, along with experts on the Russian military, told Defense News the Kremlin's force is reconstituting faster than expected. They gave three main reasons why.
The first is the resilience of Moscow's defense industry.
During the war, Russia has almost tripled its defense budget, according to Richard Connolly, an expert on the country's economy at the London-based Royal United Services Institute think tank. Russia is set to spend somewhere between $130 billion and $140 billion on defense in 2024, which is about 6% of gross domestic product and a third of the government's overall budget, Connolly approximated.
But because costs and wages are lower in Russia than in high-income countries, like many in NATO, the Kremlin's defense fund buys much more than it would in the United States. When that conversion is taken into account, Russia's 2024 defense budget falls between $360 billion to $390 billion, Connolly estimated.
The spending trend itself has raised salaries. Working in the defense industry was once a middling career in Russia; it's now lucrative and attracting more workers. Based on official Russian figures, which Connolly noted may be inflated, the number of people working in the defense industry rose 20% during the war, from 2.5 million to about 3 million now.
The funds have also gone toward procuring military hardware. Connolly estimates this share of the defense budget probably doubled during the war, helping Russia replace lost equipment.
Connolly said he doubts the state of Russia's economy will factor into how the war ends. Moscow has a cadre of policy wonks guiding its country through sanctions, he noted, and they have lots of practice doing so. In fact, Putin recently replaced a general at the helm of the Defence Ministry with an economist.
In addition...the numbers being looked at are all supplied by the Russian government, which is known to lie about that kind of stuff...
If the numbers are wrong because they are Russian, can you provide the correct numbers? Or should we just believe you?
Its worth noting, certain posters in this thread believed every number Moscow published relative to the Moscova. If you could also indicate when Moscow is to believed, I would appreciate it.