This might be a little tougher than Putin thought...
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For Some In Russia's Far-Flung Provinces, Ukraine War Is A Ticket To Prosperity
Far from the glittering glass skyscrapers, sprawling boulevards, and swanky restaurants of Moscow and St. Petersburg, out in Russia’s often neglected regions, something important is happening.
There’s the toll of death and mutilation for hundreds of thousands of Russian men sent off to fight in the war against Ukraine. Poor regions like Tyva, Buryatia, and Chuvashia have suffered disproportionately.
But men keep signing up to fight, drawn by extraordinarily high wages. That also goes for well-above-average wages at defense factories working full-tilt to churn out tanks, guns, bullets, and other gear.
And those wages -- plus death benefits for widows and children, and compensation for the wounded -- are flooding into regions, fattening bank accounts, and jolting local economies in a way not seen possibly since the Soviet collapse -- this time for the better.
“There is a restructuring ongoing, from west to east,” said Ekaterina Kurbangaleeva, a Russian political scientist now living outside the country. “The country has undergone a major restructuring…turning to the east and that’s where the streams [of money] are flowing.”
“The two-headed eagle, it’s now beginning to look in a different direction,” she said in an interview, referring to Russia’s state emblem.
“Some sectors and some regions have been winners in Russia’s new war-oriented economy,” according to a paper published last month by the London-based Center for Economic Policy Research. “This is especially true for some of Russia’s poorest regions, where the war has offered many people upward social mobility that was not available in the preceding decades of Russia’s reintegration into [the] global economy.”
What’s resulted isn’t just economic. It’s also political, buttressing support for the war despite the toll: more than 315,000 dead and wounded, according to U.S. estimates. British estimates put the toll closer to 500,000.
And for Russians who revile the millionaires who emerged overnight in the chaotic 1990s or those who have benefited less from the growth in prosperity in the 2000s, it’s added to a sense of righting past wrongs.
“A large-scale redistribution of resources in favor of the less well-off has prompted a widespread shift in perceptions of justice for the first time since 1990,” Denis Volkov, the director of the Levada Center polling organization, wrote.
Peace, Land, And Bread
During his 25-year tenure, President Vladimir Putin built his popularity in large part on the prosperity the country saw in the 2000s, as Russia expanded its oil and gas exports and rode the wave of high global prices.
The growth created a genuine middle class, but the prosperity was uneven, largely concentrated in the country’s traditional centers of wealth, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and to a lesser degree in regional cities like Yekaterinburg or Novosibirsk. The Kremlin stuffed its national “rainy-day fund” coffers with excess revenues.
The economy was knocked off kilter by the 2008 global economic crisis, and then six years later, by Western sanctions, imposed after the Kremlin annexed Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula.
The Kremlin has tried to spur investment in the distant hinterlands, with Putin launching a six-year, $400 billion effort in 2019 called the National Projects, targeting areas including education, health care, science, roads, and other infrastructure.
The jury is out on their impact.
Then came the all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
War: What Is It Good For?
What the Kremlin and military commanders anticipated would be a quick rout turned into a grinding slog in the face of determined, capable, and Western-armed Ukrainian forces.
In September 2022, Putin announced the first mobilization of the war, drawing in 300,000 men -- mainly reservists -- to replenish serious troop losses. Military recruiters also began hiking wages and benefits for volunteer soldiers, as did private military companies like the now-defunct Wagner Group.
With the recognition that the Ukraine conflict was becoming a long war, the Kremlin also retooled large parts of the industrial economy, to arm and equip Russian forces.
In August 2022, the average wage across Russia was around 62,000 rubles a month ($700 in today’s dollars). But in poorer regions, wages were markedly lower in some cases, according to research by the Bank of Finland’s Institute for Emerging Economies. In the North Caucasus, the average monthly wage in 2022 was just 35,000 rubles. ($400).
Signing bonuses for men volunteering to fight in Ukraine, meanwhile, have been climbing toward 700,000 rubles ($7,860 in today’s dollars) -- more than an entire annual salary for many men.
Under a March 2022 decree signed by Putin, soldiers injured on the battlefield receive 3 million rubles ($33,700 in today’s dollars) in compensation; families of killed soldiers, meanwhile, receive 5 million rubles. Both are princely sums, particularly in lower-cost regions of Russia.
By paying high wages for fighters, the Kremlin has avoided what would be a deeply unpopular second round of mobilization. Putin himself bragged about how many volunteers were signing up to fight during an economic conference last week.
“Instead of strict mobilization, the government is paying huge amounts of money to those who signed military contracts,” Kurbangaleeva said.
One 21-year-old woman from Cheboksary, the capital of the Volga River region of Chuvashia, said her brother was reported killed in early April near Avdiyivka, a focus of heavy fighting in Ukraine. She said her sister-in-law, now a single mother of two young children living in a village outside Cheboksary, had been told to expect 5-million-rubles ($56,000) in compensation for her husband’s death.
“They were never particularly luxurious – they lived modestly, and never went to any resorts or on vacation,” the woman, who did not want her name published for fear of repercussions, told RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service. “They saved and saved. There was money, but it was never enough, so my brother went to fight. He went there because of the money. Where can you earn money like that in Chuvashia?”
Russia also now counts some 6,000 military-industrial factories and related enterprises, a threefold increase from before the 2022 invasion, according to Elina Ribakova, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and senior director at the Kyiv School of Economics.
More than 3.5 million people work in those factories, manning around-the-clock shifts and six-day workweeks.
Salaries, meanwhile, have increased from 20 to 60 percent since the invasion, Ribakova said in an article published by the Financial Times. Moreover, many companies offer exemptions from being sent to fight in Ukraine.
One illustrative example, Kurbangaleyeva said, was for a low-skilled seamster or seamstress working in a factory: In late 2021, he or she might have a monthly salary of 15,000-20,000 rubles; now salaries run around 120,000-130,000 rubles.
Pavel Luzin, an expert on the Russian military and defense industry, said he doubted the income flowing to poorer regions was creating fundamental change in local economies.
If anything, he said, it is fueling inflation, which stood at 7.3 percent last year, and is projected to exceed 5 percent this year.
“Payments for [war] losses are not being transformed into the financial capital,” he told RFE/RL. “Money is just spent to cover bank loans and urgent needs of family members -- for instance, parents -- for the purchase of apartments or building…houses, for purchase of cars and so on. Among other things, these payments contribute to the high monetary inflation all around Russia.
Still, the ongoing distribution of wealth might be compared -- inversely -- to what happened in the 1990s, when high inflation, privatization, the plummeting ruble, and systemic disruptions sucked prosperity out of Russia’s provinces, said Laura Solanko, a Bank of Finland researcher.
“But if we think about the Putin era, nothing comparable easily comes to my mind,” she told RFE/RL.
For Some In Russia's Far-Flung Provinces, Ukraine War Is A Ticket To Prosperity
“Hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine. But in far-flung, less-well-to-do provinces, war wages and benefits being paid to soldiers, veterans, and survivors is transforming life, providing a ladder for economic prosperity.
www.rferl.org
First time below 1k in probably a month or more...
I think trying to keep the flames away by going fast. Wonder if it worked.
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More on the French aircraft.
The Super-Étendard was France’s first combat aircraft featuring modern weapon outfits. For Dassault, after the Mirage Milan experience it is also a foothold in new serially-produced weapon systems. On January 19, 1973, the then Minister of State in charge of national defense Michel Debré chose the Super-Étendard as the French Navy’s multipurpose weapon aircraft that would ultimately replace the Étendard IV, Crusader and Alizé.
It awarded the contract for 100 Super-Étendard aircraft on September 4, 1973. That was the first fixed-price contract Dassault was awarded for an airplane.
Jacques Jesberger flew the Super-Étendard 01 (Étendard 68) for its maiden flight out of Istres, on October 28, 1974. That aircraft was used to develop the engine and aerodynamic tests.
https://www.dassault-aviation.com/en/passion/aircraft/military-dassault-aircraft/super-etendard/
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Yeah, there you go again absolving Trump of creating the conditions that resulted in the chaotic withdrawal. He set the overall failure into motion himself by conceding too much to the Taliban in the agreement and plan. The Taliban had already reestablished control of nearly half the country by the time Biden was in the WH, well before the withdrawal commenced. Couple that with the military brass' overly optimistic beliefs in the Afghani Army to control the situation themselves internally and we get the shit-show that resulted.
FTFY
April 19, 2016
The Taliban have a significant footprint in Afghanistan, according to Bill Roggio, the editor of The Long War Journal, an online publication that is tracking Taliban control. Mr. Roggio has been able to confirm that about one-fifth of the country is controlled or contested by the Taliban, but he emphasized that this was a conservative estimate. “They probably either control or heavily influence about a half of the country,” he said
Fake news from the NYT?
Interesting anti-drone vehicle from China. I hope they won't be supplying Russia.
1. Not sustainable economically.For Some In Russia's Far-Flung Provinces, Ukraine War Is A Ticket To Prosperity
Far from the glittering glass skyscrapers, sprawling boulevards, and swanky restaurants of Moscow and St. Petersburg, out in Russia’s often neglected regions, something important is happening.
There’s the toll of death and mutilation for hundreds of thousands of Russian men sent off to fight in the war against Ukraine. Poor regions like Tyva, Buryatia, and Chuvashia have suffered disproportionately.
But men keep signing up to fight, drawn by extraordinarily high wages. That also goes for well-above-average wages at defense factories working full-tilt to churn out tanks, guns, bullets, and other gear.
And those wages -- plus death benefits for widows and children, and compensation for the wounded -- are flooding into regions, fattening bank accounts, and jolting local economies in a way not seen possibly since the Soviet collapse -- this time for the better.
“There is a restructuring ongoing, from west to east,” said Ekaterina Kurbangaleeva, a Russian political scientist now living outside the country. “The country has undergone a major restructuring…turning to the east and that’s where the streams [of money] are flowing.”
“The two-headed eagle, it’s now beginning to look in a different direction,” she said in an interview, referring to Russia’s state emblem.
“Some sectors and some regions have been winners in Russia’s new war-oriented economy,” according to a paper published last month by the London-based Center for Economic Policy Research. “This is especially true for some of Russia’s poorest regions, where the war has offered many people upward social mobility that was not available in the preceding decades of Russia’s reintegration into [the] global economy.”
What’s resulted isn’t just economic. It’s also political, buttressing support for the war despite the toll: more than 315,000 dead and wounded, according to U.S. estimates. British estimates put the toll closer to 500,000.
And for Russians who revile the millionaires who emerged overnight in the chaotic 1990s or those who have benefited less from the growth in prosperity in the 2000s, it’s added to a sense of righting past wrongs.
“A large-scale redistribution of resources in favor of the less well-off has prompted a widespread shift in perceptions of justice for the first time since 1990,” Denis Volkov, the director of the Levada Center polling organization, wrote.
Peace, Land, And Bread
During his 25-year tenure, President Vladimir Putin built his popularity in large part on the prosperity the country saw in the 2000s, as Russia expanded its oil and gas exports and rode the wave of high global prices.
The growth created a genuine middle class, but the prosperity was uneven, largely concentrated in the country’s traditional centers of wealth, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and to a lesser degree in regional cities like Yekaterinburg or Novosibirsk. The Kremlin stuffed its national “rainy-day fund” coffers with excess revenues.
The economy was knocked off kilter by the 2008 global economic crisis, and then six years later, by Western sanctions, imposed after the Kremlin annexed Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula.
The Kremlin has tried to spur investment in the distant hinterlands, with Putin launching a six-year, $400 billion effort in 2019 called the National Projects, targeting areas including education, health care, science, roads, and other infrastructure.
The jury is out on their impact.
Then came the all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
War: What Is It Good For?
What the Kremlin and military commanders anticipated would be a quick rout turned into a grinding slog in the face of determined, capable, and Western-armed Ukrainian forces.
In September 2022, Putin announced the first mobilization of the war, drawing in 300,000 men -- mainly reservists -- to replenish serious troop losses. Military recruiters also began hiking wages and benefits for volunteer soldiers, as did private military companieslike the now-defunct Wagner Group.
With the recognition that the Ukraine conflict was becoming a long war, the Kremlin also retooled large parts of the industrial economy, to arm and equip Russian forces.
In August 2022, the average wage across Russia was around 62,000 rubles a month ($700 in today’s dollars). But in poorer regions, wages were markedly lower in some cases, according to research by the Bank of Finland’s Institute for Emerging Economies. In the North Caucasus, the average monthly wage in 2022 was just 35,000 rubles. ($400).
Signing bonuses for men volunteering to fight in Ukraine, meanwhile, have been climbing toward 700,000 rubles ($7,860 in today’s dollars) -- more than an entire annual salary for many men.
Under a March 2022 decree signed by Putin, soldiers injured on the battlefield receive 3 million rubles ($33,700 in today’s dollars) in compensation; families of killed soldiers, meanwhile, receive 5 million rubles. Both are princely sums, particularly in lower-cost regions of Russia.
By paying high wages for fighters, the Kremlin has avoided what would be a deeply unpopular second round of mobilization. Putin himself braggedabout how many volunteers were signing up to fight during an economic conference last week.
“Instead of strict mobilization, the government is paying huge amounts of money to those who signed military contracts,” Kurbangaleeva said.
One 21-year-old woman from Cheboksary, the capital of the Volga River region of Chuvashia, said her brother was reported killed in early April near Avdiyivka, a focus of heavy fighting in Ukraine. She said her sister-in-law, now a single mother of two young children living in a village outside Cheboksary, had been told to expect 5-million-rubles ($56,000) in compensation for her husband’s death.
“They were never particularly luxurious – they lived modestly, and never went to any resorts or on vacation,” the woman, who did not want her name published for fear of repercussions, told RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service. “They saved and saved. There was money, but it was never enough, so my brother went to fight. He went there because of the money. Where can you earn money like that in Chuvashia?”
Russia also now counts some 6,000 military-industrial factories and related enterprises, a threefold increase from before the 2022 invasion, according to Elina Ribakova, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and senior director at the Kyiv School of Economics.
More than 3.5 million people work in those factories, manning around-the-clock shifts and six-day workweeks.
Salaries, meanwhile, have increased from 20 to 60 percent since the invasion, Ribakova said in an article published by the Financial Times. Moreover, many companies offer exemptions from being sent to fight in Ukraine.
One illustrative example, Kurbangaleyeva said, was for a low-skilled seamster or seamstress working in a factory: In late 2021, he or she might have a monthly salary of 15,000-20,000 rubles; now salaries run around 120,000-130,000 rubles.
Pavel Luzin, an expert on the Russian military and defense industry, said he doubted the income flowing to poorer regions was creating fundamental change in local economies.
If anything, he said, it is fueling inflation, which stood at 7.3 percent last year, and is projected to exceed 5 percent this year.
“Payments for [war] losses are not being transformed into the financial capital,” he told RFE/RL. “Money is just spent to cover bank loans and urgent needs of family members -- for instance, parents -- for the purchase of apartments or building…houses, for purchase of cars and so on. Among other things, these payments contribute to the high monetary inflation all around Russia.
Still, the ongoing distribution of wealth might be compared -- inversely -- to what happened in the 1990s, when high inflation, privatization, the plummeting ruble, and systemic disruptions sucked prosperity out of Russia’s provinces, said Laura Solanko, a Bank of Finland researcher.
“But if we think about the Putin era, nothing comparable easily comes to my mind,” she told RFE/RL.
For Some In Russia's Far-Flung Provinces, Ukraine War Is A Ticket To Prosperity
“Hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine. But in far-flung, less-well-to-do provinces, war wages and benefits being paid to soldiers, veterans, and survivors is transforming life, providing a ladder for economic prosperity.
2. You get what you pay for. Drunken, semi illiterate soldiers get blown up at a 1000 per day clip.
Finally. This type of action is long over due.
For fun I Google Lurked on some of the air bases in the newer NATO nations and some still show the Soviet Era condition, but airfields in Bulgaria and Romania show marked improvement of the runways, servicing areas, and main aprons. Around the edges they look a little rough. To your life experience the two bases in Poland that have F-16s have runways that look as smooth as the prom queen's thighs. Lask and Poznan in Central Poland. Go up to Gdansk, and just north there is an airfield undergoing serious upgrades. On line it says there are helicopters and missile defenses stationed there, but no jets. Clearly it's being prepped for something. The aprons and tarmac that leads to the hardened shelters to the north of the runway extend into heavily wooded areas with trees covering them. That looks rugged, still. The airfield is about 50 miles across the Baltic from Kaliningrad, so I assume the Poles will put something there, but it might be a little too close for comfort to put the F-35s they are buying. I assume you'd put those back beyond rocket artillery range of Russian held Kaliningrad.
A former commander of Russia's airborne forces has slammed the lack of quality equipment given to soldiers. Keep in mind that very strict laws prohibiting speech against the regime and military were passed in Russia, so it's kind of a big deal for this guy to speak up.
Side note, I wonder how much he skimmed over the years?
https://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-shamanov-russia-ukraine-war-military-uniforms-quality-1911602
Side note, I wonder how much he skimmed over the years?
https://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-shamanov-russia-ukraine-war-military-uniforms-quality-1911602
And they controlled nearly all of it by the time Biden became POTUS, due to the inactions of Trump and his buds.
Let’s hope for an early Christmas present for the Ukes.
The dogfights between that plane and the sea harriers during the Falklands war are legendary. The entendards sunk the hms sheffield.
A bit one sided in the outcomes.
The 26 Sea Harriers from HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible inflicted serious losses on the Argentine Air Force destroying 23 aircraft in air to air engagements, for the loss of not a single Sea Harrier in air combat.
I have the same question I asked over a year ago and several times since then: Why are there still sanction targets that haven't been sanctioned?
Were the folks we are sanctioning now all good guys until just recently? Seems unlikely. And if not, why weren't they already under sanction?
(Russian with head and shoulders on fire at end warning.)
"Good Morning, Vietnam!!!!!Another ordinary day in and the smell of burnt roasted coffee in the morning, remains the same....We begin.Glory to Ukraine !!!!!
"Good Morning, Vietnam!!!!!Another ordinary day in and the smell of burnt roasted coffee in the morning, remains the same....We begin.Glory to Ukraine !!!!!
It does help explain why the unwashed Russian masses haven't rebelled against this war...which has been predicted repeatedly.
"Canada will supply Ukraine with rockets, small arms ammunition and remote-controlled weapon mounts for vehicles, Canadian Defence Minister Bill Blair announced in Brussels on Thursday.
"Canada will provide Ukraine with 2,300 Canadian Rocket Vehicle 7s or CRV rocket motors," Blair said. He added, "Canada will send an additional number of rounds of small arms ammunition, as well as 29 Nanuk remote systems," which are remote-controlled weapon mounts for military vehicles.
He said the CRV7s were "formerly used by the Royal Canadian Air Force on our CF-18 aircraft." Meanwhile, "the Nanuk is a remotely-controlled weapon station used by the Canadian Army on our own light armored vehicles."
He added, "this week, Canada is beginning the shipments of a new fleet of 50 armoured vehicles to Ukraine. The first four vehicles are departing Canada this week, and they will be delivered to the Ukrainian armed forces in the coming weeks."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/canada-announces-rockets-other-military-090441134.html
A SUU-5003 bomblet dispenser adapted to fire four CRV7 rockets. Four rocket tubes are visible, while shackles for six practice bombs are located underneath. Given both stores, pilots can train rocket and bomb fire on a single sortie.
"Canada will provide Ukraine with 2,300 Canadian Rocket Vehicle 7s or CRV rocket motors," Blair said. He added, "Canada will send an additional number of rounds of small arms ammunition, as well as 29 Nanuk remote systems," which are remote-controlled weapon mounts for military vehicles.
He said the CRV7s were "formerly used by the Royal Canadian Air Force on our CF-18 aircraft." Meanwhile, "the Nanuk is a remotely-controlled weapon station used by the Canadian Army on our own light armored vehicles."
He added, "this week, Canada is beginning the shipments of a new fleet of 50 armoured vehicles to Ukraine. The first four vehicles are departing Canada this week, and they will be delivered to the Ukrainian armed forces in the coming weeks."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/canada-announces-rockets-other-military-090441134.html
A SUU-5003 bomblet dispenser adapted to fire four CRV7 rockets. Four rocket tubes are visible, while shackles for six practice bombs are located underneath. Given both stores, pilots can train rocket and bomb fire on a single sortie.
It took these idiots a half million casualties and a failing trip through 20th century arms to realize this?
I think most of the dogfights were with A-4 skyhawks.
One of the most notable dogfights involving the Sea Harrier took place on June 8, 1982. A pair of RAF Sea Harriers, lead by RAF Flight Lt. David Morgan, engaged four A-4 Skyhawks following up on an attack that had inflicted severe damage on the landing ships HMS Sir Galahad and HMS Sir Tristan.
How the Sea Harrier defeated more superior fighters during the Falklands War
In essence, the ability of the British to take back the Falklands rested on pilots and aircraft fighting while outnumbered six-to-one.
www.wearethemighty.com
