I do agree that in retrospect, the war doesn’t make much sense for Russia. As the article speculates, Putin must have thought that Ukraine was weak enough to be conquered in a matter of weeks, and that the west wouldn’t intervene, since it also didn’t intervene in the case of Crimea and Donbas.
Russia is weaking and depleting the West’ “arsenal of democracy” without even having to fight against the West and risk a nuclear holocaust. The West cannot even replenish this military output because of their own neoliberal austerity measures and will not be able to do so in the foreseable future because they lack the industrial base, moreover this causes government spending to be allocated into the arms industry rather than other sector where the working class could benefit from (healthcare, education, etc) which just creates a bigger burden for the people, causes less spending, more inflation and more austerity measures. This is Russia’s best move, intentional or not, simply by Russia’s population, a war of attrtttion with a much smaller country in its neighbourings will always be the best Russian tactic, and I doubt this was carried put without at least the go ahead of China.
Yes, war is expensive, everyone knows that. But is it really worth it for Russia if they are impacted by it too? Surely they had to know that, going in. Though as the article states, they supposedly misjudged the costs and the duration of the whole operation, not expecting it to turn into a full on war. And now, I dunno, maybe continuing to fight is their bet at preserving… something, but everyone can see that the working class suffers on both sides because of it.
If Russia is seeing any kind of impact, it is a positive one. Their arms industry has strengthen, the West’s sanctions have forced their national bourgeoisie to impose policies that strengthen its economy and also it has isolated the West and increased inflation in Western countries. Prolonging the war is what’s better for Russia, they can play the long game, whereas the West can’t because they cannot produce weapons, ammunition, and so on because they would run dry.
I disagree with this. The west is clearly capable of continuous arms production, thanks to its large and stable imperialist supply chain. It is Russia’s economical potential which seems smaller in comparison.
Paper tiger, read about the West arms production currently and you’ll see every sober military analyst tells you they are in rags.