The FT reports this morning that:
Russia's spending on Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine is on track to blow through its budget by Rbs2tn ($28bn) this year, forcing the Kremlin to contemplate deep spending cuts in the coming years.
Finance minister Anton Siluanov asked Russia's cabinet in February to freeze planned spending elsewhere to cover the mounting cost of the war.
The request highlights Moscow's struggles to finance the war despite budgeting Rbs16.84tn ($238bn), or almost 40 per cent of this year's budget, to defence and security.
And we are meant to live in fear of Russia and its supposed capability to take on the West, as a whole, despite the obvious fact that it has not the slightest capacity to do so.
Russia is at and beyond its capacity for war. And despite that, it cannot win.
In that case, why are we being told to sacrifice people, communities, health and social care, the arts and much more to defence?
Defence against what, I ask?
What we need is defence against the fevered imaginatuons of neoliberal warmongers. They are what threaten us most.
I am not saying we do not need defence, although much of what we have is utterly useless. I am saying we need the right defences, and we need to keep the scale of the threat in proportion.
It's small.
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My concern is that Putin is 73 so isnt going to be ‘Leader’ of Russia for much longer.
So there are major concerns about either what he might do to avoid being ‘removed’ or what might any potential replacement be like and what could they do?
Yes the Ukraine has shown how limited Russia’s power is but it could still be very destructive.
The question might be how we can deal with it politically and what a sensible military ‘deterrent’ looks like – the answer amongst other things looks like two people in an open cockpit biplane, the one in the back with a shotgun………….
Surely the conclusion is that Russia is pursuing the war because it sees no alternative. The West wants the war, which it started preparing decades ago. The Russians believe they can’t afford not to fight it. The Europeans refuse to talk to Russia, preferring instead to build their military strength. No one wins, except arms manufacturers and financiers. The mass of people in Russia, the Ukraine, and even Europe, suffer for the unexplained war lust of a few. Jeffrey Sachs has just published a letter to Chancellor Merz in which he sets out the context and the choices.
https://consortiumnews.com/2026/05/28/jeffrey-sachs-open-letter-to-chancellor-friedrich-merz/
About five years I started to follow Consortium news. They have some good commentators like Chris Hedges. I contributed a few comments. But there were a number of posts which contained inaccuracies. When I politely pointed them out , the comments were not posted. Some posts were little more than anti-American rants.
A couple of weeks before the invasion of Ukraine, Scott Ritter on Consortium news, asserted there would be no invasion; if there was the EU and NATO would be humiliated and the Russian armed forces were superior to NATO forces. There was an invasion, the EU and NATO stepped up and the Russian army despite overwhelming numbers and material has been poor.
Sachs has a number of posts on Youtube with a following which praises his honesty. He has a consistent line (not without some justification ) that the US causes most of the world’s problems and it is to blame for the war in Ukraine. He never considers an alternative view, as far as I have seen. And I doubt some of his facts.
So do these people. Reading through them, I generally agree. It is March 2023 but a lot still holds. However, people can make up their own mind.
https://voxukraine.org/en/open-letter-to-jeffrey-sachs
Absolutely spot on!
In my opinion, the problem with Russia is not necessarily its conventional military capability but its nuclear military capability (about 5459 warheads according to Wikipedia)
Sure, it’ll end in absolute disaster for Russia as well (at least France (290 warheads) and the UK (225 warheads) might retaliate fast) but if Putin feels pushed back against a wall and thinks that he has no other means left he might very well use this.
Yes, the rockets could be intercepted but I don’t think an intercepted nuclear warhead is necessarily a good thing.
Also we have seen how “easy” it is to intercept rockets for even the most expensively equipped army in the world in the Middle East.
And I also think that Ukraine’s massively sugarcoating it’s numbers.
Then again, if we end up with this scenario, all that massive spending in conventional defence instead of building a sustainable society was even more utterly useless, as you say.
What is left from society surely won’t have it any easier in a nuclear wasteland where weapons are everywhere.
….
What I hope for is a WW1 Ending to all this:
Russia accepting defeat because it can’t uphold these self-defeating costs of war.
However this time all of Wilsons 14 Points will be implemented for all sides (well, in my opinion it’s only 6 points (I – V and XIV according to Wikipedia), the rest is too WW1 specific).
I mean this would then even be a great win for everyone.
The horrible loss of life can’t be forgotten but at least it’ll have a meaning, as horrible as it sounds that a death was “meaningful”.
But politicians seem to need that to end wars.
Two things.
As the Russian Federation issues it’s own currency, I’d imagine they do put MMT into practice, and the FT story is just that, a story, because…
Secondly with our own blood thirsty warmongers, there is *always* enough money to prosecute war – the allies didn’t fight up to Paris and say “oh well, that’s it, ran out of money, let’s go home”.
The issue, as you and other MMT proponents have pointed out, is the availability of real resources.
And this budget is reflecting that, I suspect
War
What is it good for?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
(Other than showing us that the state can print money if it wants to).
I think I have read that line before.
Are you digging into soul now?
I like all genres of music – good music is not a genre issue for me. That was a gift from my toolmaker Dad – his record collection was a world music collection. Minor / major, dominant, sub dominant, mixolydian, harmonic minor – it’s all made of the same stuff. Like the humans who create it. AI will never make music like human beings do.
Agreed
For once, I disagree.
There are two countries that are “super-powers” with respect to drone use, Ukraine and Russia. With Ukraine somewhat ahead (both on tech and doctrine).
Sweden, spring, war games – Ukraine taking part. They had to be repeatedly restarted, because the Swedes were repeatedly wiped out, by Uk’ drones.
The point? Each side in the Russia-Ukraine war is learning from the other, with Ukraine appearing to have the edge in terms of speed of adaptation and manufacturing/supply chains. Russia is somewhat behind – but has a tendancy (as 4 years of war have shown) to catch up. Drones change the economics of warfare. Yes Russia is struggling @ the moment and given Ukranian strategy & tactics seems to be on a losing wicket. Nevertheless, it will (with Putin @ the helm) struggle on. The question to answer is what happens wrt Russia post war? A country that goes “OK we lost – life goes on” or a country thirsting for revenge (a la Germany 1920s) and one that is No 2 wrt drone warefare. Also worth keeping in mind – we are but at the start of “drone-war”, the war-tested tech is less than 4 years old &, sadly it will continue to develop. Furthermore, it is cheap. Is Russia a threat a la WW2-style tank hordes? No. Is it a threat a la drone hordes? Yes. Can it afford drone hordes? Yes.
As I said, we have the wrong defence systems
Unfortunately, the current argument might well be that the threat comes from our West rather than from the East – Trump is potentially a bigger threat to Western Europe than Russia under a Trump autocracy.
Part of the point of spending more would be to move away from military equipment dependencies on the US, which may be costly since we’ve been too willing to rely on the US as a hardware supplier as well as holder of military equipment. Additionally, recent wars have suggested that the hardware we’ve accumulated my not be sufficiently effective, and spending to increase availability of things like drone technology my be beneficial for security.
However, the depletion of military supplies against Iran suggests that even as large a military as the US has struggles to wage more than a short-term war against another country. If one country stands alone, moderate support from several other countries should make things very difficult for them. It’s also been clear that low-cost equipment may be a sensible focus over having hugely expensive munitions, so the cost of sensibly re-equipping for a modern battlefield might not be as high as defence suppliers might want. If anything, we might benefit from looking at manufacturing facilities rather than purchasing, given a key issue has been maintaining or replenishing stock – that’s probably not what those defence contractors want, though.
Aside from being sensible about any change in equipment balance, perhaps what’s needed more is a focus on the D-7 kind of agreement proposed to have a new coalition ‘of the willing’ that collectively has comparable economic and military effectiveness to the likes of the US or China without a single disproportionate influence like the US.
More partnership with European countries, less panic about defence spending.
What we need is someone with the minerals to just stand up and call out war for what it is – a waste of resources – especially if you think you have to swap adult social care for tanks or drones. How can you justify rebuilding what you have after war when there is not enough of that!?
I honestly believe that we should try a tactic of contrition with Russia – the West should admit that it got it wrong as Russia came out of communism and take responsibility for advising them badly. Say sorry for goodness sake. I would like to see Europe do this. Why? Because without Russia, WWII could well have gone on much longer. We owe Russia OK, – we owe Russia big-time. Instead we turned them into the bogey state and let the Fascists dissipate into our societies where they could be awakened again – like now for instance.
I detest the way the Russian state under Putin is set up. But is it really any different from the monopolists who dominate the West – Big Tech, the FIRE sectors, who would surely have started to take much of Russian output for themselves as they have done to the UK and South & North America and elsewhere. At least much of Russian output is owned by Russian criminals, not American ones – some consolation I know.
We’ve had enough of this tough guy nonsense. It is based on monopolization and we don’t need that anymore. We now need to work together and share the burden of the difficult future we have manufactured for ourselves. Or we’ll be toast within – what – less then two/three generations from now.
At most…
Agree. The actions of “the west” in the 1990s led to the rise of Putin & his ability to capitalise on a deep and burning resentment, plus the “the west” had facilitated the rise of the oligarchs (Russina mafia was already well established, western neo-libtards gave them a foot up. I blame Clinton and the dixiecrats. The problem now is that saying sorry will cut no ice with Putin and his mobsters and will not cut through to “ordinary people” who a) are unlikely to hear the “sorry” b) have been groomed for +/- 26 years on the evils of the west.
I am sure you have seen “Mr Nobody against Putin” …disturbing.
Russia, these days seems much misunderstood. Britain, as eminent economist Robert Skidelsky points out, traditionally demonises the Russians. Of Russia, pre-2022, I was guilty!
I now grasp Yeltsin & the dire Yegor Gaidar, together with the West, crippled Russia. Putin led to reverse that. Several years later, from books & many articles, etc., I am in the ‘belief’ camp of the likes of: US ambassador Chas Freeman; Prof. Mearsheimer; Jeffrey Sachs; Craig Murray, and many learned others.
Russia was effectively painted into a corner, by 2021, long persecution within Russian-speaking oblasts; increasing neo-nazification, a corrupt Ukraine, and every sign that it would become a NATO member and play host to nuclear weapons close Russia’s 2,000km border. All diplomatic efforts were rebuffed, hence, the illegal invasion.
I know Putin’s speeches on European security including of February’22 to the UNSC explaining Russia’s ‘SMO’; about the 2014 CIA coup, the West’s betrayal of Minsk Accords (to safeguard Russian- speakers of the Eastern oblasts). Day three of the SMO, Russia began a peace process and talks started at the end of March into April. These were stymied by the Bucha massacre and Johnson urging Zelensky not to sign any peace.
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/04/04/questions-abound-about-bucha-massacre/
Ukraine’ amounts to the West’s proxy war. Russia wants a non-NATO, neutral, de-nazified Ukraine and a new security framework in Europe. We are lied to by our neoliberal Government, by our mainstream – manufacturing consent- media. The CIA-MI6-NATO ‘stick’ is dangerously poking the Russian bear. Diplomacy not drones! UK militarisation stupid.
Between wanting to know and being able to invest time to discover is always a challenge. I confess: often guilty!
I marvel at your mastery on so many fronts but I plead: consider there maybe some areas of ‘belief’ about which you may be mistaken.
I post this without necessarily agreeing.
I think your version also lacks nuance