« Economically, Putin has sacrificed a successful Russian future for a successful Russian present — and ended up with neither. »
— Casey Michel, Director of the Combating Kleptocracy Program at the Human Rights Foundation, writing at the Kyiv Independent.
His article is about Russia's futility in the face of Ukraine's relative underestimated strength. Russia has wasted a staggering amount of resources and paid an enormous cost in lives just to make Putin think he is the 21st century equivalent of Peter the Great.
Michel puts Russia's losses in perspective...
Pick any metric you'd like. Thanks to Moscow's stupendous failures, Russia has now likely lost more men than the U.S. did during the Second World War, with tens of thousands of casualties now piling by the month — all in the war that has now lasted longer than the Soviet fight against the Nazis ran. All the while, Russia's economy has careened toward stagnation, with galloping interest rates and food prices once more "surging," as the BBC recently reported. [ ... ] Instead of a rising regional hegemon, the war has exposed Russia as little more than a vassal state for China, a country that has its own revanchist designs on Russian territory. Moscow's influence in places like the Caucasus, Europe, and the Middle East has collapsed, with the Kremlin able to do little to aid former allies like Bashar al-Assad or Nicolas Maduro.
And whatever happens in Iran, it is no longer in a position to assist Russia.
In the 19th and early 20th century, the Ottoman Empire became known as the sick man of Europe. Putin is doing his best to turn Russia into the sick man of Eurasia.
An irony is that the longer this war goes on, the more innovative Ukraine needs to get. Ukraine has developed its defense industry at an astonishing pace. It has progressed to the extent that other countries are now seeking Ukrainian defense technology.
Same Shaheds that terrorized Ukraine are now flying at Bahrain and Qatar — and Kyiv gets UK’s call to help stop them
Putin is draining the economic lifeblood from Russia while unintentionally turning Ukraine into a defense industry giant.
