Russia has a population of around 143 million people. That makes it, in population terms, just over twice the size of the UK.
That population is declining based on UN data:
The median age is 40, as it is in the UK.
And Russia is now believed to be losing 30,000 soldiers a month in the war with Ukraine. The monthly figure is rising, not falling.
The total loss is now thought to amount to more than 500,000 people.
Many more have been wounded, some with lifetime disabilities, of course.
The situation is now so desperate that Russia is paying recruits the equivalent of around £40,000 to sign up to fight.
Despite that, as the FT notes, it is still struggling to secure the recruits it needs.
That is not surprising; actual war is a deadly business, and the one with Ukraine especially so, particularly on the Russian side.
With that many losses, there can be almost no one in Russia who does not know someone, or the family of someone, who has died.
And the net gains are negligible. The lesson from all this is that Putin's war is an exercise in vain folly pursued at cost to the people of Russia.
And despite this, we in the so-called West are told that Russia is the great threat that requires us to increase our defence spending considerably, although on what we do not know, except that this must come at the cost of sacrificing support to many of the most vulnerable people in the UK.
I keep asking, why?
If Russia is this depleted by war already, with a population that must have had enough of sacrifice, where is the threat coming from?
And if Russia cannot beat one vulnerable neighbour, why is it going to take on another one?
I accept that cyber warfare is a real risk because it can destabilise at a distance, and I think that possibility is real. But conventional warfare? I just don't get it.
So why are we going to spend so much on armaments for no good reason? And who is going to talk about what we might really need to do, and why, including how we can help people in need, except by spending fortunes to get them up to go to war?
If anyone would do that, we might get politics that was relevant to the needs of people in this country, rather than politics that simply panders to a thug in Washington and the military-industrial complex.
I look forward to the day when that happens.
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Back in the 80’s I visited what was then the USSR twice, the scale of death in the siege of Leningrad is almost unimaginable and of course seeing the tank traps on the motorway from Moscow Airport into Moscow brought home the reality of WW2 for the Soviet Union.
My father who had gone to Europe as part of the first wave of support troops after D-Day commented on the lack of old men and said that he shed a silent tear for the people of the USSR.
But now history is repeating itself. Putin is 73, he clearly isnt going to go on for ever and the war with Ukraine is gradually hollowing out the Russian economy. There are several risks
He could launch some kind of ‘Banzai’ charge against Europe – unlikely but not impossible
Who will replace him? And how? This could be interesting.
What are the likley threats from Russia? The evidence seems to suggest that there is a lot of activity going on that can be destabilising – and quite cheap eg fanning the flames of right wing activity, ‘accidental’ damage to undersea electricity and telecoms cable, other forms of ‘sabotage’ s and a persistent if low level and undefined threat along Europes borders.
Plus of course it has a massive stock of nuclear weapons
My immediate suggestions might be that we need to boost our resilience and tackle the factors that have allowed the right wing to grow – primarily but not only poverty – as happened in the Cold War and which would be worth doing anyway.
I think it was last year, drone panic in Belgium – the authorities had no idea where the drones came from. Bunch of students found out – Russian freighter off the Dutch/Belgian/French coast chugging along flying drones. UK has a big coastline. I will stop at this point. Those with any sort of imagination can see what comes next & if you can’t I am not going to use public fora to inform you. The defence of the UK is not about weapons, it is working towards a lasting peace in Europe. Guns (or “a better drone”) will not do that.
Banzi charge? with what? Putin has burned through 12,000 tanks (most of the stock), front line is static for a reason (drones), Putin can’t re-deploy his drone guys to e.g. attacking the Baltics – that would open the gates on the Ukraine front. So, stalemate. Russia & Ukraine bleed and the Euro weapons industry gets a free & realistic weapons testing ground, China picks up info on what works & does not. That is the current reality. On a related note, as somebody in the House of Lords remarked to me back in 2023 – Biden is giving enough weapons to Ukraine so that it does not lose, but not enough so that it wins. Nowt much seems to have changed (& what does “winning” mean?).
That is what i don’t get with the defense spending. Are we arming to make Ukraine win the war? No. Clearly not. We are collectively providing material to Ukraine so that Russia doesn’t win. So what are we arming for?
Part 2 – I overdid the words
We need the ability to protect our seas. Not necessarily a massively expensive project
We need to stop acting as concierge to the holders of dubious money – either return or seize it – which wont cost anyone other than The City.
Finally we need to watch, wait, learn and understand so we are prepared for what comes next and are in a position to understand and influence Putins Successor and those around us who are dealing with him – or her. .
Thanks
The figure for July was 42k (dead & wounded). Russian threat? probably revenge, somehow, sometime. The actual nature of the threat? Take a look at what is bring Russia to its knees (slowly): the attacks on oil refiners, warehouses etc etc. Power stations next, probably. Of course, what we really need against these threats is aircraft carriers, yup, that’ll do it & ballistic missile subs, etc.
There is currently no obvious end point in the war by Russia against Ukraine. What happens after the end point will determine if Russia is “a potential threat” or like Nazi Germany, reduced. There is some consensus (within Ukraine and elsewhere) that a lasting peace = breakup of Russia (an event that might suit China). Required reading: “The Closing of the Russian Mind” by Andrei Kolesnikov who Russian, lives in Russia and was only allowed to have the book published provided it was only in English. It is not a happy read. Russia is a long term problem. How we (not the USA, we Europeans) deal will it will show how more or less human we are.
Thanks, Mike
Thanks for the head’s up Mike – that will be added to my reading list.
I would also recommend Timothy Snyder’s ‘The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe and America’ (2018) for a more concise summary of where Putin’s ideas come from. Believe you me – it’s really ugly.
My view is that Europe should free itself of the U.S. shackles and take Russia in hand as it should have done from 1989. All Russia got after communism was loans – in dollars of course – which really rubbed it in that Russia had somehow ‘lost’. The EU development model might have been better. This loans business – to a country that essentially helped end the war in Europe and would also have followed us into Japan – was the biggest insult in the world. No wonder they reneged on it -and I don’t blame them.
It was not about ‘bringing in Russia from the cold’ – and becoming mates – it was about exploiting it – the American way.
I still don’t think the West understands Russia at all. The fact that Stalin ruled it is being paid for by ordinary suffering Russians even today. And Mike is right – it is about revenge. The end of communism was treated as our revenge; Putin then countered.
And who continues to have the last laugh in all of this? Why of course, Adolf Hitler and his Nazis who left a poisonous legacy that still reverberates around Europe, the Levant etc. The vanquished as victor! What a story, eh?
And the Chicago economic school of neoliberal/neoclassical economic advisors to Yeltsin to do the big bang deregulation that left those in power/ criminals to scoop up the industries and leave millions of pensioners in poverty. All aided and abetted by the US State department that wanted to destroy Russia. This wild west was tamed by Putin and his cronies, low level corruption and disorder swapped for high level corruption and some low level order and a now fragile compact with the people after 4 years of war with Ukraine.
see Jeffrey Sachs Brings Real Politics to the EU Parliament
https://youtu.be/_RNE3X41IvM?t=6
My biggest beef with defence spending is this rubbish about defence versus social security. We could actually have both, given what I have learnt here. Russia’s supposed threat is being used to make people take jobs they do not want or which provide meagre pay or are not really there at all.
The only reason I advocate defence spending at all is because the politics of care should also apply to it. I am haunted by how often we have sent our people to fight wars or get involved in conflicts with sub-standard equipment and supplies. Lightly armoured Snatch Landrovers in Iraq; European theatre greens instead of desert camouflage; plastic assault rifles that seize up and host of other stuff that due to the crappy Neo-liberal procurement processes at the MoD put fathers, mothers sons and daughters in harms way even before they engage with the other side. And that is not on.
I don’t want a huge army or regular parades of military hardware etc. All I want is to know that our military has the best that it needs – aftercare too – which is also sadly lacking (we see this in social housing all of the time). And I’d also like to see the military fit out as ‘home grown’ too.
We need to buy better and smarter as far as military investment is concerned. And this is not about that coming before anything else either.
“My biggest beef with defence spending is this rubbish about defence versus social security. We could actually have both, given what I have learnt here.”
Correct
Might the attached article be of interest/relevance when considering who our “Presented Enemies” and our “Actual Enemies” are?
https://michael-hudson.com/2026/07/americas-war-on-an-independent-world/
Why do the “Spend to Arm” representative choose to transfer money for weapons from the seriously disadvantaged instead of making our tax set-up equitable and transparent etc.?
The assymetry of costs between a drone and the missile to take it out sets a new question of what defence is. The technology effect of smaller, faster, lighter, cheaper changes the defence challenge.
It does seem to be getting out of hand. In the early days, the idea that Ukraine would attack deep into Russia seemed to be unimaginable, if not suicidal.<p>
Putin now seems more likely to do something crazy – such as over-stepping the hybrid ‘accidental’ attacks into Europe. The notion of bombing him to the negotiation table seems counterproductive.<p>
Maybe some skilled diplomatic contacts with Xi and Trump – who both have some leverage on Putin – could help?
Richard, you have put your finger on something that has been glaringly obvious for some time, yet is almost never discussed with any honesty in the mainstream. The numbers you cite on Russian losses and recruitment struggles are stark. A country already facing demographic decline, haemorrhaging tens of thousands of men every month, and reduced to paying eye-watering bounties just to keep bodies in the trenches, is not about to steamroller across Europe. Conventional military threat looks, on the evidence, wildly overstated.What we are left with is the familiar pattern: scare stories that justify ever-larger defence budgets while the real needs of people here – housing, health, care, a functioning infrastructure – are treated as secondary. Cyber risks and hybrid interference are real enough, but they do not require the same scale of hardware or the same sacrifice of social provision. The insistence that we must prioritise the military-industrial complex over domestic resilience feels less like sober assessment and more like habit, or worse, deference.The thug in Washington sets a tone that too many find convenient to follow. It keeps the old narratives alive and the contracts flowing. Until politics here is prepared to look at the actual condition of Russia, the actual costs of endless militarisation, and the actual priorities of the population, we will continue to get the same hollow answers. Your question is the right one. When the pandering stops, perhaps we might finally get policy that serves the people who live here rather than the interests that profit from perpetual fear.
Thank you
Too often people start with military capability and not context.
War is the continuation of politics by other means said Clausewitz. Post war USA often forgot that.
What is the nature of Russian -and other-objectives?
and what other emergencies might arise which are unexpected?
I groan when I see arguments based on percentages of GDP. 2.85 % ‘we need to spend more’. Or 3.15 %, ‘we must cut something,’ sort of mind set. We need to establish what is needed -an adequate capacity to deter and deal with the consequences if it does not.
The armoury includes diplomacy, alliances, productive capacity as well as the right mix of hardware. The capacity to respond is part of deterrence. A Europe with a functioning alliance system able to act independently of the US if necessary, weapon ‘kits’ suitable to fight a modern war ( such as to protect undersea cables and defence against missile and drone attack – of which there are large gaps) and enough trained people to be able to rotate units.
Europe has enough people and GDP to provide all this in a few years but it will need spending as much of it doesn’t exist in some areas or is in too small quantities. It doesn’t just depend on what happens in Russia though I agree with Mike Parr that Russia could be a long term problem. And with John Boxall about countering the Far Right. We don’t know the future so we need options. Thinking along these lines is in progress, but it doesn’t seem to have reached most politicians and media as yet.
Much to agree with
It’s more about world order shift, consolidation and readiness for troubles ahead. Regarding Europe: funny they don’t want to be seen as federal state but are treated as such and it is getting late to start acting as such given the chinna and USA already set their playgrounds there.
I’d never wish to see the Fourth Reich but now just hope it’s not too late.
I am posting this, but I am flagging my doubts, as I am not sure what you are talking about.
The Trump administration wants the West to rearm for its fantasy war against the East. That’s what we are dealing with. Fortunately Trump and his cronies are destroying the West so it will never happen. Speaking of fantastic thinking, the BBC reports today that an MP has written to Burnham to prepare for the impact of El Nino. Not climate change in general, just a specific thing. This is another example of the media and politicians avoiding the real issue, probably pandering to Trump’s ban on mentioning climate change.
El Nino is a going to be a massive threat
Thinking about it a bit more, what we need are people who understand Russia, who understand what makes Russians tick, what they have been through and what is important to them.
We realise that China is very much another world and that they see things very differently, our mistake is – in part to treat Russia as though its European when the reality is that it has a very different history and culture.
Perhaps than we might have a way forward
Much to agree with
Part of what they went through post USSR was the transition to capitalism which saw savings destroyed and average age of death come down several years. They still die younger than we do. It wasn’t just the ‘Chicago boys carpetbaggers.’ Russians were also involved in that transition. What was shattered was the cultivated sense of being a super power and great nation. Many similarities to MAGA America. Much of Putin’s appeal is his attempt to restore it but as the cracks show, so alternative views are simply crushed.
The people of the Baltic states, Finland and Poland have conscription with popular consent. And spend more. They are well informed of what happened in Chechnya and is happening in Belarus. They don’t want war but ‘Belarus’ status is not a future they want.
The December 2021 proposals from Putin were to essentially neutralise eastern Europe. And get the US to disengage from Europe. Hence cultivation of Trump. If they were accepted he would have won without firing a shot. The proposals Russia made were not really because of the military threat but because of practices and values of the EU. For all its faults elections do change things. The Media can give other narratives. Minorities have more rights. Putin’s state promotes very different things, a sort of mystical nationalism ( see Snyder) and obedience to the state.
The best defence is to develop an appealing alternative political economy and wait for change. However, if one side is effectively disarmed then the guys with the guns/weapons have what they call ‘leverage’ these days. Georgia could tell us how that works.
Not entirely relevant but I look forward to two large aircraft carriers stopping rubber dinghies in the Channel in accordance with Reforms plans.
Replying to John Boxall for a mo: I did my staff college dissertation on “Ethnic Factors in the Soviet Armed Forces”, and then went to the MOD Central Staffs. I developed a lifelong interest/obsession with Russia, the USSR, and its leaders: Putin obvs. Sadly, after 1989, Russian desk experts went, shortly afterwards to be replaced by Arab experts – who’d been ousted in the 1970s in favour of Russian experts… Honestly.
I probably have more of an understanding of the Russians, the many ethnic groups/countries in Russia’s orbit and their mindset than the average lay person, but not as much as current experts.
As ever, “Know your enemy”. If you don’t understand their culture and thinking, you cannot formulate any sensible response.
Thanks
‘Where is the threat coming from?’ Well it’s already been a successful resource/land grab by Putin ‘According to Forbes, approximately 70 percent of Ukraine’s estimated $14.8 trillion in critical mineral resources are concentrated in Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, and Luhansk.’ (+Crimea and Sea of Azov). Another potential area might be the Suwalki Gap (between Belarus and Kaliningrad). On the economic analysis, Konstantin’s ‘Inside Russia’ worth a look.
This may be a fruitless endeavor, but here goes.
Putin has the grandiose vision of restoring the Soviet Union’s global superpower status. This includes recovering the Baltic nations that were betrayed by Stalin, and Ukraine. So say Anne Applebaum, Fiona Hill, Timothy Snyder, Michael Kimmage, Angela Stent, General Sir Mike Jackson, probably others. They often cite Putin’s calling the collapse of the USSR as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” as evidence of his intention to restore the USSR’s geographic reach and power.
The people of the Soviet Union under Stalin and the undefeatable power of the Russian winter stopped the Third Reich’s advance, at massive cost. The Russian people lost more than any other nation in World War II. The Siege of Stalingrad alone cost more than one million Russian lives, and was the turning point of the European front – it ended the eastward German expansion.
The Russian peoples have every right and reason to be proud of their place in history.
The present is not a proud moment for them. British defense intelligence and allied assessments put the Russian death toll in the Ukraine war close to 500,000, driven by high-attrition frontal assaults. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine regularly reports cumulative personnel losses exceeding 1.4 million, a figure that combines both killed and wounded soldiers.
Putin has created a generation of widows and orphans, single women and old men, in two nations. Let us again remember the 900,000+ soldiers of the British Empire who died during World War I. The future of the women and orphans of Ukraine and Russia is probably in all our hands.
I am more concerned about the USA than Russia but also see the possibility of them joining forces in the not too distant future and threatening the rest of the world.
To this end the UK must work with the EU to build a defensive military capability that supersedes the USA in NATO and is sufficient to mitigate that risk. In essence, the replacement of NATO minus the USA, Turkey, Hungary and Slovakia is now necessary. The structure should also allow for a member to be removed if there is a majority concern about their conduct.