google had a little blurb and accompanying chart purportedly forecasting which countries shall reign supreme economically by the 2030's. an interesting short article accompanied it, predicting the output of various countries in trillions of u.s. dollars.
the countries at the top of the chart were, in order of supremacy, 1.)china, 2.)the u.s.a., and 3.)india each with approximately an annual economic output of $30 trillion. that's a lot of economic activity. japan and germany were positioned pretty high, but no other countries even flirted with the predicted output of the top three. (the forecasts did not account for economic/political collapse, declining birth rate, war, revolution and/or contagion, factors known to have proven disruptive to past economies.)
russia is not even in the top ten. it simply is not now, nor is it predicted to be, an economic powerhouse. this is pretty astounding in its own little way, given that the country of russian spans 11 time zones, and occupies about 10% of the earth's land mass. there simply isn't much economic production out of a country with such enormous natural & material assets, to put the matter bluntly. inefficiency and corruption pretty much cripple the russian economy. nor is there much societal energy devoted to settling and making productive all that area.
economically, the russians are notorious underachievers.
and, this goes a long way towards explaining why the russian military is struggling so miserably in its war efforts in the ukraine. at first glance, the ukraine appears badly over matched by the russians. (and, somewhat beset by the same cultural lassitude's.) but, the russian military is beset by the same failings as russian society and economy.-- they have fast planes, but many fighter bombers have rudimentary fire and guidance systems for the missiles they carry, so they cannot hit targets with any precision. (maybe that's why they bomb apartment buildings, because those they can hit.) there troops suffer shortages in food, gasoline, and in ammunition and artillery shells, because of russia's lackadaisical logistics and production. and, the troops suffer horrible morale, having simply abandoned tanks and artillery because they have run out of supplies and ammunition ..... this explains why so many russian generals have been killed in combat, something that has rarely happened in modern armies, because they are near the battle zones trying to spur on laggard troops.
more importantly, it goes a long ways in explaining why the russians have been so extremely deficient in replacing destroyed tanks, planes, artillery pieces, and, most importantly, replacing troop casualties with freshly trained troops. and, this is why, with a little help from western militaries, the ukraine has to be favored in a war of attrition.
thus far in the war, the russians have shown no urgency in replenishing either trained troops, or equipment, or weaponry. and, it shows up in "strategy and tactics" in the southeast, where they have simply dug in, and entrenched, and seemingly abandoned any design or ability to launch fresh attacks by infantry and/or armor. they simply shell the ukrainians unceasingly with artillery ..... heaven knows what they will do if they run out of shells for the artillery pieces.
and, this is why the ukrainians desparately want missiles and artillery that can find, locate and reach out to destroy russian artillery emplacements. if they get that (and ukrainian troops are in the united states being trained in these assets, prior to them being shipped to the ukraine and used against russia. and, this is why putin is using every tactic he can think of to prevent the ukrainians getting a hold of u.s. weapons systems ..... they are simply superior to the russian stuff.
it is, fundamentally, a war of the russian economy waged against the west, and the russian economy cannot match the assets that the west can produce, almost as an after thought. and, if putin reads google, he has to know that the situation only gets worse for russia as time goes on.
john jay @ 06.15.2022
p.s. as time goes by, as they say, certain people are going to start looking at russia's natural resources, being totally unexploited in a relative sense, with a very covetous eye. and, certain people are going to note that russia's economy cannot devote a meaningful portion of its economy to the production of weapons and war assets. and, there is the matter of russia's declining birth rate, and the general overall health of its citizenry.
someone, or a consortium of someones, is someday going to take a run at russia, with conquest in mind. and, if the west can figure out how to nullify russia's nukes, russia will face an almost certainty of invasion and attempted conquest, which it will be ill equipped to counter. germany knew this in the 1940's, and only marshall zhukov and adolf hitler combined to save russia: zhukov by intelligence, and hitler by being drug addled and something less than the modern day napeleon that he thought he was. even so, it was a close thing.
russia is not well poised for long term survival in this world. you read it here.