as the FT notes<\/a>, it is still struggling to secure the recruits it needs.<\/p>\nThat is not surprising; actual war is a deadly business, and the one with Ukraine especially so, particularly on the Russian side.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
I keep asking, why?<\/p>\n
If Russia is this depleted by war already, with a population that must have had enough of sacrifice, where is the threat coming from?<\/p>\n
And if Russia cannot beat one vulnerable neighbour, why is it going to take on another one?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
I look forward to the day when that happens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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
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<\/p>\n