Russia/Ukraine conflict

[SwedishAdvocate]

A couple of articles my partner found by someone who grew up in Russia and now lives in Kyiv about Russian culture and how Ukrainian culture differs. She said she had to log into Quora to see it, but the articles open for me with no log in.

Is Putin a product of the Russian mentality and culture?

How Ukrainian mindset differs from the Russian one?

For the second one I can't find the original on Quora.

Essentially for Russia Putin is not a bug, he's a feature.

Or is is this "core Russian" mentality instead the result of going from Feudalism directly into one of the most repressive Military Dictatorships in history (the Soviet Union)... And then into the Dictatorship that we have now with Putin... And all of this combined with the very worst parts of Nationalism...

The revolution in 1917 ended up in a truly, truly horrible place. But that does not mean that is wasn't based on a lot of genuinely good intentions. And by now I'm guessing that we all know who crushed the seeds of democracy after 1989 – the old remnants of the Soviet KGB/GRU and the like. And yes I know – there has never been a truly free and democratic election in Russia ever...

There are estimates that some 20 million people were killed during Stalin's rule alone. And of top of that you have someone like Lavrentiy Beria in the Soviet Politburo who allegedly raped hundreds of girls and women with impunity until he was executed at age 54. He also allegedly murdered countless of girls and women. I wonder what amount of generational trauma all of Russia's/Soviet Union's combined crimes against Humanity results in...

And regarding the events in 1917... How many in this thread/on this forum have read A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn? The United States wasn't exactly a rose sprinkled Fairy Land in 1917 either... Nor has the United states always been a true force of good on this planet. And if that was the US in 1917... then imagine what Russia must have been like before the revolution...

When Russia has lost in Ukraine it seems that they will have four choices. 1. Go full North Korea style. 2. To align themselves with China. 3. Some combination of 1 and 2. Or: 4. To align themselves with the Democratic west. What is the best alternative here?...

Those Quora-posts were written by a Ukrainian. And considering All of History I of course fully understand where he is coming from. But there are a lot of Russians who don't support the current dictator. Russia agreeing to all of Ukraine's term for negotiations and then implementing a Nordic Model type of Democracy would be the best outcome here. Maybe the current German form of Democracy is even better but I don't know enough about German Democracy to really say. But regardless – considering what Russia has done under Putin – any kind of future Russian departure from an Absolute Democracy must be met with Massive sanctions until all transgressions against a future Russian Absolute Democracy has been vigorously corrected.

Feudalism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Lavrentiy Beria - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

A People's History of the United States - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Nordic model - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[wdolson]

Or is is this "core Russian" mentality instead the result of going from Feudalism directly into one of the most repressive Military Dictatorships in history (the Soviet Union)... And then into the Dictatorship that we have now with Putin... And all of this combined with the very worst parts of Nationalism...

The revolution in 1917 ended up in a truly, truly horrible place. But that does not mean that is wasn't based on a lot of genuinely good intentions. And by now I'm guessing that we all know who crushed the seeds of democracy after 1989 – the old remnants of the Soviet KGB/GRU and the like. And yes I know – there has never been a truly free and democratic election in Russia ever...

There are estimates that some 20 million people were killed during Stalin's rule alone. And of top of that you have someone like Lavrentiy Beria in the Soviet Politburo who allegedly raped hundreds of girls and women with impunity until he was executed at age 54. He also allegedly murdered countless of girls and women. I wonder what amount of generational trauma all of Russia's/Soviet Union's combined crimes against Humanity results in...

And regarding the events in 1917... How many in this thread/on this forum have read A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn? The United States wasn't exactly a rose sprinkled Fairy Land in 1917 either... Nor has the United states always been a true force of good on this planet. And if that was the US in 1917... then imagine what Russia must have been like before the revolution...

When Russia has lost in Ukraine it seems that they will have four choices. 1. Go full North Korea style. 2. To align themselves with China. 3. Some combination of 1 and 2. Or: 4. To align themselves with the Democratic west. What is the best alternative here?...

Those Quora-posts were written by a Ukrainian. And considering All of History I of course fully understand where he is coming from. But there are a lot of Russians who don't support the current dictator. Russia agreeing to all of Ukraine's term for negotiations and then implementing a Nordic Model type of Democracy would be the best outcome here. Maybe the current German form of Democracy is even better but I don't know enough about German Democracy to really say. But regardless – considering what Russia has done under Putin – any kind of future Russian departure from an Absolute Democracy must be met with Massive sanctions until all transgressions against a future Russian Absolute Democracy has been vigorously corrected.

Feudalism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Lavrentiy Beria - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

A People's History of the United States - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Nordic model - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Kamil Galeev laid out his thoughts on what will happen after the war.
1) Putin manages to hang on and holds Russia together. The country turns into a hermit state like North Korea.
2) Putin gets overthrown and they try to create a new Russian imperium.
3) Russia devolves into civil war and balkanizes.

I don't see Russia getting into any close alliances with China. China isn't above using Russia for their own ends, but an alliance between the two would have both parties trying to dominate the other. At this point China considers itself an emerging super power and the only alliances it's going to make are ones that are subservient to China.

Democracy for Russia is a western dream, but it's not going to work there any time in the near future. To anyone over the age of 30, the one time Russia experimented with democracy was a time of turmoil. The 90s were a very grim time in Russia. To most Russians democratic government is a weak form of government.

There are people who are not fans of Putin, but that doesn't automatically make them fans of western democracy. The only thing Russians have known that even remotely worked was some form of autocracy.

 

[SwedishAdvocate]

Kamil Galeev laid out his thoughts on what will happen after the war.
1) Putin manages to hang on and holds Russia together. The country turns into a hermit state like North Korea.
2) Putin gets overthrown and they try to create a new Russian imperium.
3) Russia devolves into civil war and balkanizes.

I don't see Russia getting into any close alliances with China. China isn't above using Russia for their own ends, but an alliance between the two would have both parties trying to dominate the other. At this point China considers itself an emerging super power and the only alliances it's going to make are ones that are subservient to China.

Democracy for Russia is a western dream, but it's not going to work there any time in the near future. To anyone over the age of 30, the one time Russia experimented with democracy was a time of turmoil. The 90s were a very grim time in Russia. To most Russians democratic government is a weak form of government.

There are people who are not fans of Putin, but that doesn't automatically make them fans of western democracy. The only thing Russians have known that even remotely worked was some form of autocracy.

Two questions:

1. What is your preferred scenario once Russia has lost this war?
2. Where is Russia going to get it's infrastructure after this war is over? It is not going to come from the west. Where will the planes come from? Where will the cars come from? Can Russia themselves replace everything that the west has provided them before the sanctions? Isn't all of this going to have to come from China?...

 

[wdolson]

Two questions:

1. What is your preferred scenario once Russia has lost this war?
2. Where is Russia going to get it's infrastructure after this war is over? It is not going to come from the west. Where will the planes come from? Where will the cars come from? Can Russia themselves replace everything that the west has provided them before the sanctions? Isn't all of this going to have to come from China?...

The best solution for everyone would be Russia balkanizing. It would mean a bunch of new countries would end up with nuclear weapons, which is not great, but it would leave the rump state of Moscow/St Petersburg too weak to be much threat to anyone. The world would have to do some negotiating to secure all those weapons.

As for Russian infrastructure after the war, there won't be much. Russia is likely going to backslide into a more primitive state. China won't be selling them much because they won't have much money to buy any goods China is selling. This is especially true if Russia breaks up. All the wealth generating regions of Russia are away from the Moscow area. The oil fields they depend on would be in new countries.

The same with the industrial base. In 1941 Stalin moved the bulk of Russian industry to the Ural Mountains and east from there. Those industries never moved back after the war, so most of their military manufacturing is in regions that would likely no longer be Russia in the event of a national divorce.

I saw a map of Russia's economic centers a few months ago. Almost all the GDP in the country is generated in the oil producing regions and Moscow itself. The rest of the country combined produce only a small fraction of the GDP. A lot of the wealth generated in Moscow is based on activity going on in other parts of the country. The typical pattern for manufacturing plants in the Urals and beyond is Moscow sends out a manager who runs the plant. If the manager is a fairly low level one, he keeps his family in Moscow and flies home regularly. If he is a higher status manager, he keeps his family in a western country and flies there once a month or so to see them. The locals never rise up the food chain, they are always managed by Muscovite managers.

Another article by Kamil Galeev talked about how Moscow sucks wealth from every part of the country to appear to be a cosmopolitan capital. After the sanctions from the 2014 invasion of Crimea went into effect, the draw of wealth became more critical on the regions to support Moscow. The quality of life in Moscow stayed about the same, but the rest of the country degraded.

Archangel used to be a fairly prosperous city, but now they don't have money to repair a very leaky sewage system and raw sewage regularly ends up in the streets. Roads that used to be paved are now more pothole than road. Russia outside Moscow and the oil producing regions has been deteriorating for 8 years. The sanctions put in place this year will make things even worse.

A Russia reduced to the core Muscovite cities would have nothing to base an economy on. That region doesn't grow much, it's too far north. Little is made there that can be exported. There are some IT businesses, but a lot of those people have left the country. IT is a very small part of the Russian GDP to begin with. To just stay alive they would probably be forced to import food and energy from their former provinces.

The rump of the Russian Federation would be very impoverished. Imports of any kind beyond necessities would be luxuries few could afford. A lot of the remaining wealth would flee the country.

China would swoop in and have a lot of influence on as many former Russian provinces as possible. Especially in the eastern parts of what is currently Russia. The US should get involved to make sure nuclear arsenals are secure. To ensure the new countries don't end up like Ukraine, in exchange for nuclear arsenals, membership in some kind of mutual defense alliance with a nuclear power would probably be necessary.

Russia would probably be a miserable place with an authoritarian ruler, but the rest of the world probably wouldn't care too much because they will be a toothless tiger with no capability of becoming a nuisance to their neighbors.

China will rape Siberia for natural resources and prop up the governments there. What is now Southern Russia will gravitate into the orbits of the former Soviet republics that broke away in 1991 and possibly India and China. If Ukraine is smart, they will offer an olive branch to the new countries just across their borders and form alliances with them. As Ukraine grows they will need immigrant labor and can draw on workers from these countries. That whole region becomes wealthy and peaceful.

 

[RobStark]

Moscow isn't going to let the oil producing regions go. This would reverse 1000 years of Moscow progress and put Moscow into pre-Mongol geo-political situation. Not going to happen IMO.

I think Moscow would rather nuke the locals and start again by sending workers from Moscow-St Petersburg. Nuking one rebellious regional capital will be enough IMO to terrorize the rest into towing the Moscow line.

Spain after Franco is the closest we have seen a country move from absolute dictatorship to full fledged democracy without military occupation by a democratic country. But Spain is a Western country that had been evolving from monarchy/dictatorship to democracy by taking 3 steps forward 2 steps back for over a century.

 

[lolachampcar]

I remember Maria Butina was just let go by the previous administration .... without a swap at all.

As was Flynn
As was Manafort
..........

Application for the next administration. Done crime? Wanna do more?

 

[petit_bateau]

Moscow isn't going to let the oil producing regions go. This would reverse 1000 years of Moscow progress and put Moscow into pre-Mongol geo-political situation. Not going to happen IMO.

I think Moscow would rather nuke the locals and start again by sending workers from Moscow-St Petersburg. Nuking one rebellious regional capital will be enough IMO to terrorize the rest into towing the Moscow line.

Spain after Franco is the closest we have seen a country move from absolute dictatorship to full fledged democracy without military occupation by a democratic country. But Spain is a Western country that had been evolving from monarchy/dictatorship to democracy by taking 3 steps forward 2 steps back for over a century.


View attachment 883990

Very valid points and a pertinent map @RobStark . We should be clear that Russia is currently a militaristic kleptocratic petrostate dictatorship with a failed social model, imploding demographics, and a failing economy. Oh, and at a point where the more difficult/marginal petroleum resources that are typical of Russia maybe have a decade left of positive value.

The European Union has a lot of experience regarding what it is involved in bringing countries through to a better place, provided they start off as willing candidates for democracy and the European social model including a mixed market economy and a rule of law. My observation is that this is a minimum 30-year effort requiring sustained committment, funding, and oversight/governance to bring countries from donkey carts, deprivation, and destroyed/crumbling (or no) infrastructure through to a point where they can begin to balance their own national economic books and are relatively well socially/politically/economically integrated and no longer a drain on collective resources. At this point the EU has about 70-years experience in these sorts of transformations. It is not just the former Warsaw Pact / Comecon countries that have been making this journey. It is also much of Western Europe including Portugal, Spain, southern France, southern Italy. Depending on how one counts one can say that the EU+ has collectively brought 20-30 countries successfully along this path. However even in the bits that started the journey early it has not always been fully successful as there are serious counter forces - witness much of northern UK that is an industrial and social wasteland, such that the UK has failed the EU journey, hence Brexit. Clearly the eastern fringes are still en route (primarily eastern Poland, Bulgaria, Romania) and the progressive integration of the Balkans is a long-running ongoing project (in the coming months Croatia will take the next steps as an EU nation : adoption of the Euro and full Schengen membership). The Balkans (and the UK) also show that one of the necessary preconditions is a minimum of external malign influences. But I say again the key lesson is it requires a minimum 30-year effort requiring sustained committment, funding, and oversight/governance .

In contrast the West basically gave up on Russia after less than 10-years of effort, and it is questionable as to whether the West fully tried in the first place given the determined (and successful) efforts by the robber-capitalists and the libertarian far-right to have their free go at Russia.

(The West also gave up on Iraq and Afghanistan without the necessary strategic patience. My take-away from that is you either have to be in-and-out in less than two years, or be prepared to stick it out for 30+ years. There is no value in the middle ground.)

So what this tells us is that in a post-conflict scenario, after evicting Russia from Ukraine, it is questionable whether the EU will even want to try to rebuild Russia until - if ever - the remants of Russia come forwards willingly. But equally Balkanisation on a far geater scale, and with loose nuclear weapons swilling around is an equally bleak prospect. Along with plenty of malign external and internal influences. At best I conjecture the West will be prepared to assist with minimalistic stabilisation efforts for Russia, provided Russia co-operates. But if Russia is not prepared to co-operate then I suspect the West will not lift a finger except in respect of keeping tabs on those nuclear weapons and wherever possible the military-industrial base that supports them.

China is likely to be the biggest winner from the resulting power vacuum in central Asia.

 

[nativewolf]

View attachment 883997
Very valid points and a pertinent map @RobStark . We should be clear that Russia is currently a militaristic kleptocratic petrostate dictatorship with a failed social model, imploding demographics, and a failing economy. Oh, and at a point where the more difficult/marginal petroleum resources that are typical of Russia maybe have a decade left of positive value.

The European Union has a lot of experience regarding what it is involved in bringing countries through to a better place, provided they start off as willing candidates for democracy and the European social model including a mixed market economy and a rule of law. My observation is that this is a minimum 30-year effort requiring sustained committment, funding, and oversight/governance to bring countries from donkey carts, deprivation, and destroyed/crumbling (or no) infrastructure through to a point where they can begin to balance their own national economic books and are relatively well socially/politically/economically integrated and no longer a drain on collective resources. At this point the EU has about 70-years experience in these sorts of transformations. It is not just the former Warsaw Pact / Comecon countries that have been making this journey. It is also much of Western Europe including Portugal, Spain, southern France, southern Italy. Depending on how one counts one can say that the EU+ has collectively brought 20-30 countries successfully along this path. However even in the bits that started the journey early it has not always been fully successful as there are serious counter forces - witness much of northern UK that is an industrial and social wasteland, such that the UK has failed the EU journey, hence Brexit. Clearly the eastern fringes are still en route (primarily eastern Poland, Bulgaria, Romania) and the progressive integration of the Balkans is a long-running ongoing project (in the coming months Croatia will take the next steps as an EU nation : adoption of the Euro and full Schengen membership). The Balkans (and the UK) also show that one of the necessary preconditions is a minimum of external malign influences. But I say again the key lesson is it requires a minimum 30-year effort requiring sustained committment, funding, and oversight/governance .

In contrast the West basically gave up on Russia after less than 10-years of effort, and it is questionable as to whether the West fully tried in the first place given the determined (and successful) efforts by the robber-capitalists and the libertarian far-right to have their free go at Russia.

(The West also gave up on Iraq and Afghanistan without the necessary strategic patience. My take-away from that is you either have to be in-and-out in less than two years, or be prepared to stick it out for 30+ years. There is no value in the middle ground.)

So what this tells us is that in a post-conflict scenario, after evicting Russia from Ukraine, it is questionable whether the EU will even want to try to rebuild Russia until - if ever - the remants of Russia come forwards willingly. But equally Balkanisation on a far geater scale, and with loose nuclear weapons swilling around is an equally bleak prospect. Along with plenty of malign external and internal influences. At best I conjecture the West will be prepared to assist with minimalistic stabilisation efforts for Russia, provided Russia co-operates. But if Russia is not prepared to co-operate then I suspect the West will not lift a finger except in respect of keeping tabs on those nuclear weapons and wherever possible the military-industrial base that supports them.

China is likely to be the biggest winner from the resulting power vacuum in central Asia.

I view Afghanistan and Iraq as political failures due to neo con, erroneous belief that the west could just impose will. No one has ever imposed will on the multi ethnic thing that is labeled Afghanistan. Not Alexander the great, nor the english empire. It was a terrible idea to be there and not required to begin with. Iraq the same. We should never have had a gulf war II.

To Russia, yes we failed. We didn't with the original Marshal Plans after WWII. We rebuilt Korea after the Korean War. What we don't want to see is a fracturing of Russia into petty states and tribal war. We should invest heavily in corridors through the caucus region to tie central asia at least partly to the West. To give those states flexibility to negotiate with China rather than be subsumed.

The oil and gas assets of Russia will implode as they are not low costs producers. I don't see where the money comes to fix Russias ills over 30 years. Me the early morning pessimists.

 

[wdolson]

Moscow isn't going to let the oil producing regions go. This would reverse 1000 years of Moscow progress and put Moscow into pre-Mongol geo-political situation. Not going to happen IMO.

I think Moscow would rather nuke the locals and start again by sending workers from Moscow-St Petersburg. Nuking one rebellious regional capital will be enough IMO to terrorize the rest into towing the Moscow line.

Spain after Franco is the closest we have seen a country move from absolute dictatorship to full fledged democracy without military occupation by a democratic country. But Spain is a Western country that had been evolving from monarchy/dictatorship to democracy by taking 3 steps forward 2 steps back for over a century.


View attachment 883990

Putin backed off on the nuclear sabre rattling after Xi Jinping talked to him. I think Narendra Modi may have had a word too. The southern and eastern parts of Asia are likely going to be downwind from any nuclear weapons Russia uses and there seems to be no tolerance for the Russians using nuclear weapons.

Coming out of this war with Ukraine, the Russian army will be very impoverished. Trent Telenko wrote recently there is evidence Russia is sending mobiks who they consider reliable to Belarus for training and Putin may be working on building up his internal security forces who were stripped of personnel for the war. But even if they do train up internal security forces, they are not going to have the same type of equipment they have had for previous internal conflicts like Chechnya. They pounded the Chechens with artillery, their ammunition stocks will be depleted at the end of this war, as will their artillery pieces.

Ultimately to bring a rebel territory to heel requires boots on the ground to prevent insurgencies. The Russians may have enough security troops to stop one or two uprisings, but if a lot of provinces all get the idea to break away at once, there will be too many fires to fight. Moscow will try to hold onto the oil producing regions, but China could get in the middle of a civil war by supplying arms to the rebels. They benefit from the rebels winning. Russian security troops using antique weapons vs rebels with new Chinese weapons would probably make holding the territory very difficult.

Perun's video this week is on the history of strategic bombing and how it doesn't work to break the will of the people. Especially if the people think they have a chance to win. A nuclear weapon would probably not work if that spurred the Chinese to start arming the rebels. And China may use that as a threat to prevent Moscow from going that route.

The EU has had a lot of success bringing countries into the fold, but all the countries involved have been European countries with different cultures, but histories that share many cultural roots. Most of the EU had been part of the Roman Empire and most of the EU had been part of the Roman Church for many centuries before the Reformation. This gives common threads that evolving democracies can use to learn from well established democracies.

Russia comes from a different cultural tree. Russia has historically wanted to look European and there has been some European influence, but the roots come from the Mongol Empire, not the Roman Empire. There are some core differences in cultural values. It can be seen in the differences between Ukraine and Russia. Most of Ukraine was a part of the Russian Empire for 500 years, but it retained a separate distinction from Russia culturally. The Ukrainian people are much more European than the Russian people. Russia is primarily an Asian empire with some European trappings.

Even if the Russians were willing to accept EU help like @petit_bateau suggests, I think it's likely going to take more than 30 years to bring them into the fold. Russia has a cultural arrogance of superiority. Some Russian scholars believe that Russia has inherited the mantle of the Roman Empire and Moscow is the new Rome. That kind of attitude is going to take a while to dissipate once the empire collapses.

The links I posted earlier talk about the differences between Ukrainian and Russian cultures. I can see Ukraine embracing the EU and once they have rebuilt after the war quickly becoming an economic force within the EU. In 10-20 years they might be challenging the larger EU economies for the biggest economy in the EU. They could easily be in the top 2 or 3.

 

[MC3OZ]

I view Afghanistan and Iraq as political failures due to neo con, erroneous belief that the west could just impose will. No one has ever imposed will on the multi ethnic thing that is labeled Afghanistan. Not Alexander the great, nor the english empire. It was a terrible idea to be there and not required to begin with. Iraq the same. We should never have had a gulf war II.

To Russia, yes we failed. We didn't with the original Marshal Plans after WWII. We rebuilt Korea after the Korean War. What we don't want to see is a fracturing of Russia into petty states and tribal war. We should invest heavily in corridors through the caucus region to tie central asia at least partly to the West. To give those states flexibility to negotiate with China rather than be subsumed.

The oil and gas assets of Russia will implode as they are not low costs producers. I don't see where the money comes to fix Russias ills over 30 years. Me the early morning pessimists.

Japan and Germany were rehabilitated after WWIi.

Russia odviously needs a new system of government, but that was also true of Germany and Japan.

Yes it will not be easy.

Handing over the nucs could be a precondition for getting help.

 

[wdolson]

Japan and Germany were rehabilitated after WWIi.

Russia odviously needs a new system of government, but that was also true of Germany and Japan.

Yes it will not be easy.

Handing over the nucs could be a precondition for getting help.

Germany and Japan also had military occupations and military governments for a while after the war. The new governments that were established were under the supervision of the military governments. Germany and Japan were also completely flat on their backs economically. There was very little infrastructure left and they were completely dependent on the occupiers just for basic survival.

Nobody is going to occupy Russia and Russia is not going to be as profoundly humbled as Germany and Japan were.

 

[MC3OZ]

Germany and Japan also had military occupations and military governments for a while after the war. The new governments that were established were under the supervision of the military governments. Germany and Japan were also completely flat on their backs economically. There was very little infrastructure left and they were completely dependent on the occupiers just for basic survival.

Nobody is going to occupy Russia and Russia is not going to be as profoundly humbled as Germany and Japan were.

Yes, odviously it is a situation that requires negotiation.

But we have something they need, a future.

 

[JRP3]

I think Moscow would rather nuke the locals and start again by sending workers from Moscow-St Petersburg. Nuking one rebellious regional capital will be enough IMO to terrorize the rest into towing the Moscow line.

You think the rest of the world would ignore Moscow using nukes?

 

[SwedishAdvocate]

Highly problematic for Ukraine's energy infrastructure...

EDIT: Don't they have any kind of air defenses that can be used against ballistic missiles?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1602218520644911105

 

[SwedishAdvocate]

EDIT: "...] The democratic world has grown accustomed to making concessions to dictatorships. [..."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1602288933441773573

 

[petit_bateau]

Highly problematic for Ukraine's energy infrastructure...

EDIT: Don't they have any kind of air defenses that can be used against ballistic missiles?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1602218520644911105

Basically, no.

Ukraine started the war with a variety of medium & long range surface-to-air (SAM) missile systems that were ex-Soviet. The longest range of these was the S-300 system, specifically the S-300PT, S-300PS, S-300PMU, S-300V1. If you look at the wiki article (link below) and study the family tree of the development of the S300 family, you will note that these are all earlier models in the S-300 with technology that is typically ex-1980s era Soviet. If you then look at the performance table you will appreciate that there is little or no utility against ballistic missile targets. And Ukraine does not have many of them. And at best the 'bubble' that might be defended by one system is maybe 20km or so radius. Therefore in practical terms Ukraine has somewhere between negligible and no defence against ballistic missiles.

(They have done some re-generation of their S300 systems since the Russian invasion of 2014, and some rather good indigenous upgrades, but the primary focus has been on anti-aircraft/cruise missile, not anti-ballistic missile).

S-300 missile system - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Even the media-darling the Patriot system is not perfect, nor is the European equivalent (PAAMs with Aster 30). These are very costly and sophisticated systems and it is going to be a very big decision if the West starts selling these to Ukraine. Personally I think it more likely that the West would first sell things like F16/etc than these things. Such aircraft would give Ukraine a real opportunity to first gain localised air control, then go after the Russian launchers, in a much more cost-effective manner. Anyway here are some further links to give you a flavour.

Is the SAMP-T (Aster missile) better than the US Patriot surface-to-air missile? Which is better than the other?

Answer (1 of 5): Both surface-to-air missile systems are inherently different and difficult to compare, but are incredibly capable within their own right. The MIM-104E Patriot PAC-2 GEM-T will be used for the analysis since the PAC-3 is a whole other beast. TLDR, The Franco-Italian system is a m...

www.quora.com

PAAMS - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[SageBrush]

The oil and gas assets of Russia will implode as they are not low costs producers

Any idea what fraction of these revenues filter down from the oligarchs ? I specifically ask about revenue and not profit so that employment is considered.

 

[nativewolf]

I don’t have any idea @unk45 ?

 

[iPlug]

Hopefully the US has been or now starts to train Ukraine how to operate Patriot missile defense systems. Reportedly these take somewhere on the order of a year to become fully trained on. Russia is likely to use ballistic missiles in the not-to-distant future and current missile defense technology there will not protect them against that threat. The Patriot system is expensive but cheaper than the alternative. Need to prepare better for the long game.

This also has the advantage of signaling to Russia that the West is truly committed to “as long as it takes“ which changes Putin’s calculus.

 

[unk45]

I don’t have any idea @unk45 ?

To make this both short and simple:
Rosneft produces more than 2% of the world's crude by itself.
It was formed in 1993 as Yeltsin privatized the industry.
In 1996 Putin came to the scene as Yeltin's security chief and three years later became Prime Minister.
So, Igor Sechin appeared who had been Chief of Staff for Putin when he was Deputy Mayor of Saint Petersburg.
Sechin is now the head of Rosneft and present or former owner of various yachts and much, much more.
So, as for 'trickle Down', yes, to favored foreign companies and people, Rex Tillerson's ExxonMobil one of them. Otherwise the financial gains seem to have been distributed among Putin's friends. Sechin is an able administrator who's talents are crucial to Putin's success.

As for 'trickle down' to anyone not personally favored by Putin.: NO
The Guardian published a short deice a few months ago:

Igor Sechin: the epitome of power in Putin’s Russia

As head of state-owned oil firm Rosneft, oligarch commands central place in the economy

www.theguardian.com

Since that time much has happened. Basically they're selling their oil to whoever pays them appropriately. I have no direct information. The indirect is from a source dealing with Saudi Arabia and perhaps 'elsewhere'. That suggests that once the financial side is taken care of in specific currencies the rest goes to supply of oilfield support and military goods. While I suspect that may be correct there is no data on which to base the judgement.

When I was involved with that industry long ago every large deal had many moving parts. There often was more under the table than above it.