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People often say that seems to be the rationale, but I don't quite buy it. Artificially prolonging the war has much bigger risks involved as it lets Russia not only learn from their mistakes (which they have been doing, regardless of what people often seem to think. Not that they've suddenly unfucked themselves but still), and it also gives them time to regenerate their forces and move their country more and more towards a war economy.
If the assumption is that EU and US leaders are just cold and calculating but still want Russia to lose, it's hard to imagine they'd choose this drip feeding tactic
I agree that West is doing really a half assed support of Ukraine with like minimum effort possible. Instead of arming them for good. But OTOH how can Russia survive war time economy on the mid to long run? Add plenty of active working force casualties, treating wounded, sanctions and so on, it will hurt them plenty. 🤷♂️
Oh it absolutely will hurt them plenty even if they "win" this war, but the problem is that the more of their strategic aims they accomplish the more emboldened they'll be. Sure, it'll take them a while to regenerate their forces (and their demographics being what they are it won't be easy), but I don't think that they're nearly as screwed as commonly assumed.
Russians are no strangers to misery, and the masses are generally more than happy to live with a boot on their necks as long as they believe they have their boots on somebody else's neck as well. Casualties (wounded or dead) really don't factor into it, especially considering that it's the non-ethnic minorities who are dispropotionately getting the short end of the stick in the war – which is how it's always been with Russia starting from imperial times. It's a colonial empire but with contiguous borders, and they have no compunctions about throwing minorities in the meat grinder.
There's only so many forces that can exist. You wear them down, they'll run out of people. It's already happening. They conscripted prisoners and that's not even enough, so they are coercing people from other countries to come to Russia and then conscripting them.
It's a pretty morally reprehensible thing to do, but I could see them thinking that's worth doing.
But the thing is that Ukraine is getting worn down as well, and the longer this drags out the more emboldened Russia will become, not to mention the fact that right now Ukraine doesn't have the capacity for retaking territory – if the war ends with Russia making territorial gains, you can bet your ass this won't be the last Russian invasion in Europe in the near future.
But who could they invade it with? The betting, as I see it, is that they are essentially sacrificing Ukraine to save their own asses. Russia is just running out of people to put on the lines.
Russian population growth isn't 0, though. Yes, the war's going to make a demographic dent, but they've turned their schools into military indoctrination machines
It isn't zero but it takes a long time to replace a decimated military. Even if you take conscription down to 16, you can only lose so many people per year before you can't replace them before they age up quickly enough.
Its probably because,
1, war assets are expensive to aquire and maintain. Training costs are also significant- you can't just put a cargo pilot into a fighter and expect them to preform. Goes again fir all support staff and logistics.
2, armed forces spending is 1-2% of GDP, which isn't alot by comparison but a significant amount when countries are low on funds and the population are struggling to afford to live. Everything lost has to be replaced.
3, they are not the only conflict on the horizon.