Just told my family yesterday that if we are ever in a real war expect everything to stop working within 8 hours. We will go back to cash and paperwork but it will be painful and slow.
At this point it's not cash that is missing, it's absolutely everything that sustain human life, and there's probably not enough working things to even barter.
Throughout this war, 62k Russians are certainly KIA because we know their names and faces [~], and estimates of total Russian KIAs vary from 120k from a Russian outlet [^] to 565k by Ukrainian Armed Forces [_].
In comparison, total KIA losses of Soviets in the Afghanistan war were 14k-26k, and Americans in the Vietnam war lost 58k KIA + 150k WIA throughout 10 years.
In short, this is the biggest war in Europe since WW2. But hey, it's not war enough because not enough Ukrainians are dead or something, idk.
Its really not a full mobilization though. Yes 62k casualties seems like a lot. When Russia is fully mobilized in total war however, the sort of war that NATO planners fear the most, they go through millions of casualties and take over half the European continent in the process.
I don't think that "number of deaths" is a proxy for "infrastructure stops working".
One of the worlds (what we thought) super powers has been trying for the last two years to destroy the infrastructure of a country with 33M inhabitants. They may not have fully mobilised, but they are definitely spending all their military equipment. Long range / tactical missiles. Air assets. Naval assets. Cyber warfare.
The result in Ukraine : unimaginable human suffering, but electricity and the internet are still working over there.
When the nukes start flying, that's another matter though. But in that case our problem will not be that our credit cards stop working.
They are very much not sending all their equipment. They are very much not in a total war economy. The conflict is highly constrained. In an unconstrained war, Kyiv would be leveled already. Ukraine would be plowed over. Western powers have done a lot of work to set up guardrails for this conflict. The modern russian army is 1/30th the size of the red army, for reference on present level of mobilization and what is theoretically capable of being employed should russia actually be fighting a war for survival of the russian state.
You are again talking about mobilisation. Yes. They can enlist millions of untrained men.
But in terms of total assets deployed, they are currently all-in. Attrition being what it is, they are reducing their Soviet stockpiles at a prodigious rate and are currently activating 40’s and 50’s equipment.
This is all extremely well documented by open sources. People are counting tanks on military bases using satellite images. Check out Perun on YouTube. He’s a defense economics expert that posts a 70 minute PowerPoint presentation every Sunday, complete with sources and references.
Well yeah its still not going all out even if they are using what they have. Russia going all out produces like 1500 t34 a month, 3000 PPSH a day. Like I have been trying to mention, they aren’t in total war mode. People are still working for domestic companies doing normal work. They aren’t being conscripted to tank factories. If they were it would be a different story that’s for sure.
Where are you getting those production numbers from? This isn’t a video game where every turn the bear player gets 1,500 new tanks — their true capacity depends on complex supply chains, skilled people, and the impact of sanctions on their ability to pay for everything. You’re claiming figures at least order of magnitude higher than they’re reportedly hitting, and it’s really hard to believe that they’re slacking that hard on a core part of a war critical to Putin staying in power.
The limiting number for a "Russia goes bananas and decides to steamroll into Portugal" event, based on what we've seen in the invasion of Ukraine so far, seems to not be the number of soldiers but the amount of functional equipment.
Russian production numbers sound good if you ignore that most of them refer to stored Cold War era equipment being reactivated. Their main and most successful staple has been artillery and that mostly worked because it could be fired from the safety of being on a side of the border NATO pretty much told Ukraine not to cross - for a time. It also seems like the "saber rattling" Russia did in the lead-up to the invasion by positioning military around the Ukranian border was less of an intimidation tactic and more of a necessary part of the process.
I'm not saying Russia couldn't do a lot more damage in an all-out war into the West even without involving nuclear weapons (which already assumes European countries with nuclear weapons or the US wouldn't use them either). But based on the underwhelming performance of the Russian military relative to its supposed numbers, I don't think Russia could have pulled off the kind of Blitzkrieg you're envisioning, let alone once supply lines become a problem. Especially if you consider that the plan for the invasion of Ukraine clearly was built around a surprise attack on Kyiv, which failed spectacularly because the terrain and weather meant the tanks had to drive slowly in a line and somehow Russia didn't bother providing infantry support.
I'm not suggesting that Russia vs the west would be successful. I'm only suggesting that this conflict is nowhere near as mobilized and driven as what Russia has shown it capable of in the past in WWII. Apparently this is a controversial take given the responses I've been getting.
It's not a controversial take. You just lack understanding of the English language.
OP: Looking at two countries in an actual long running war...
You: This isn’t really all hell breaking loose actual war.
Nobody used the term "all hell breaking loose". You did. You redefined the conversation to be about 100% mobilization (from Russia), and then got all pissy that people called you out.
I hope nothing I wrote could be considered “pissy.” I thought I was articulating my point well enough but I guess a nerve was struck given how many people pounced to say my opinion is wrong, using throwaways to boot. Opinions are opinions, they are neither right or wrong.
Given that Russia is not facing an existential threat comparable to that of Nazi Germany, I don't think there's any way the conflict could be anywhere as driven as that.
Could Russia mobilize more? Yes, absolutely. But based on what we've been seeing they lack the supply lines, resources and frankly military competence (which is unsurprising given how Putin deals with anyone but yes-men) to be able to do anything with that if they had it. Also, as I said, the NATO response to invading, say, Poland would also look extremely different from the current NATO response to invading a non-NATO border state.
The Soviet Union's main advantage during WW2, other than receiving immense support from the Allies (both in supplies and military equipment), was that it was fighting the Nazis on their back foot. The Nazis had made a similar fumble as Russia did in Ukraine by misjudging the climate and seasonal weather and they also didn't have a reliable supply line. The Soviet Union did deal a devastating blow in Stalingrad but the Nazis there were pretty much stranded in hostile territory without support at that point and many soldiers were suffering from frost-related health issues. When the Soviet Union actually invaded Germany the Nazis' troops were already spread out all over Europe and into Africa and losing ground in the various occupied territories.
The Soviet Union suffered massive casualties and contributed more sacrifices to defeating fascism than any other country involved, but militarily its capabilities do not translate into any scenario involving modern Russia NATO analysts would lose sleep over. Russia is "holding back", yes, but so is NATO and especially the US. Even the "modern" equipment the US has started sending to Ukraine is decades behind on what the US military has available. Ukraine's stronger allies have very much been holding out on "the good stuff" and instead mostly cleaned out their dusty reserves. Russia OTOH doesn't seem to have the production capacity nor resources to churn out its newer equipment (which is still years behind what the US etc have access to) and is already falling back on decades old stock and desperately buying ammunition from North Korea of all places.
If Russia is holding back, it seems like a strategic error. Why have they not brought in more conventional weaponry and personnel if it would bring them victory?
I would guess that NATO planners have been adjusting their assessment of what Russia is capable of when completely mobilized. The answer sure looks a lot like "way weaker than we imagined, pretty well ineffective in the face of significant resistance, the only reason to pay any attention them at all is they have ~half the nuclear weapons worldwide."
Simple game theory. If they escalate the conflict there is a potential that western allies would also escalate the conflict in response. Russia tows the line between funding a minor conflict and disruption of their domestic economy in favor of a centrally planned wartime economy. Having an active conflict to engage in is also a benefit in and of itself. The U.S. for example is the most advanced military in the world because they have engaged in more or less a continuous series of conflicts since WWII that allow them a unique opportunity to experiment in tactics and technology that for most other nations remains theoretical and simulated.
So, in addition to the losses figures from before, there was a major mutiny, with a 1mln city (Rostov-on-Don) captured for a day, with 7 units of aircraft downed. And recently the Russian ministry of interior released figures that cases of organized crime have risen by 76% compared to a period before 2022 [_], because that's what happens when you take a bunch of convicts - some of which were convicted for life - and give them all a "get out of jail" card for 6 months of running with a gun.
You are claiming this is actually beneficial for the Russian Federation because all of that is outweighed by experiments in tactics, correct?
Things can be good for the military establishment and bad for the people. Being able to iterate on military tech in an active conflict is a unique opportunity for military planners and engineers. Just look at the united states military and how much was learned in the last couple decades of war.
You've just said that there's a mode that the Russian Federation can just get into, that will allow it, a country with 144mln population, to gain an upper hand in a hypothetical war against the EU, a union of 447mln people, while having inferiority in all kinds of technology, from practically non-existent semiconductor manufacturing to inferior metalworking, thanks to which Russian howitzers have 8-10 km smaller effective range than European ones.
The high-speed "Sapsan" trains from Moscow to St. Petersburg are German, not the other way around. The cranes they used to build the Crimea bridge were Dutch, not the other way around. The optics they were putting in their newest tanks was French, not the other way around. But of course, all these guys need to take over Europe is just "mobilization", whatever that means. With multiple times less people and inferior technology. Right.
You are either seriously misguided or just trolling.
I have never said they can beat the west. I only highlight that once upon a time, Russia was producing like 1300 t34s a month. A true centrally planned wartime economy is really something else entirely when its applied to a continental power like Russia or the United States.
Russia can never go into full mobilization modus operandi because these armed forces are busy with their shenanigans abroad in Africa and the Middle East.
While we focus on democratic debates that are based on their spoonfed misinformation campaigns, Wagner is literally conquering central african countries one by one.
That's a good point -- Russia doesn't want to massively escalate against the US with an all-out cyberattack. I've often wondered if total war against Russia or China would show how fragile our internet-connected infrastructure is, with e.g. important people's bank accounts vanishing with no evidence they ever existed.
Funny you mention only "important peoples bank accounts" Because if they just wiped all the poor peoples accounts that would be enough for complete internal revolt
