I’m more curious about rebuilding. Ukraine had quite a lot of high-tech industry during the Soviet era, some of it even remained AFAIK. Aerospace industry, rocketry. Apparently there’s even a neutrino detector in the salt mines around Soledar. Yes, the very same mines where AFU is now hiding and Wagnerites are clearing out.
And don’t even get me started on the basic civilian infrastructure - houses, sewage, railways, electricity generators, etc.
Most of what was built in Ukraine during the Soviet era will not exist anymore when the conflict is over. It will either have been destroyed in the war or, if there is any rump Ukraine left, it will be dismantled by the neoliberal shock therapy that the EU and IMF are planning on imposing.
The sole parts that will remain relatively intact are those that Russia took without much fighting at the start of the SMO, though even these are getting quite damaged by Ukrainian shelling. The rest of the eastern regions will be leveled in the course of Russia’s advance if Ukraine continues to put up a fight for every square meter, while the western regions will be devastated by waves of missile strikes like what has been happening to the electrical infrastructure.
It is unfortunate but this is what happens when fascism sinks its claws into a country. Ukraine will likely end up looking like Germany did in 1945.
The rebuilding afterwards will be slow because the west is not interested in building, only destroying and privatizing and looting, while Russia has limited means and though they are more motivated, their own capitalist economy cannot mobilize as much as the socialist planned economy did in the USSR after the war. Some more important cities like Mariupol will be rebuilt quickly and look very pretty as tourist destinations, most of the rest of the towns and villages will not.
Ukraine’s future looks de-industrialized consisting mainly of depopulated agricultural land with some natural resource extraction.
Sad to think NATO has done / will do to Ukraine what it did to Kosovo, Iraq, and Libya, et al by provoking a third party to cause the damage.
I’m sure Blackrock have their best people on it.
We unironically need more liberals like this.
