Live Conflict Ukraine-Russia War

[contricusc]

Short of Russia's assets being confiscated to the tune of $175 Billion usd and the EU essentially taking over payment of the Ukrainian military using those funds, I have no idea where Ukraine is going to get money needed to attract quantities of additional soldiers.

That would be a possibility. Ukraine doesn’t have the money to properly pay its soldiers, but Europe has. Since Ukrainians are defending the whole continent, Europe should pay the fighters a proper wage that would encourage voluntary enrollment.

It’s pathetic that the righteous Europeans, who cry about climate change and human rights, are hiding behind slave soldiers to defend themselves, and conveniently remain quiet, because they would rather have conscripts dying for them instead of spending more money to pay volunteers.

 

[Soldier30]

Unique footage of a Russian FAB-500 aerial bomb equipped with a UMPK module flying past a drone. The video was filmed near the village of Andriivka in Ukraine's Sumy Oblast. A Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber carried out the strike on Ukrainian army positions with three FAB-500 aerial bombs.

 

[Spitfire9]

Oil and gas exports have been a mainstay of Russian government revenue for a long time. It seems that customers are hesitant to place orders for crude subsequent to the recent sanctions against Rosneft and Ukoil. Jo Blogs (link below) observes that to maintain production of crude Russia has started loading tankers and sailing them away with no customer or destination port. However many 'shadow tankers' Russia has, it will not be long before all land storage capacity and tanker storage capacity will be consumed, at which point Russian crude production will need to be reduced.

Of course, all the crude stored in Russian tankers on the high seas does not give the Russian government any revenue. I can imagine some buyers exploiting the situation to buy Russian crude at a massive discount to the world price. If Russia was getting, say, 50 USD per barrel on average so far in 2025 for 4 million barrels a day, anything becomes possible when Russia has nowhere to store its production. At that point Russia may have to sell at almost any price the buyer offers.

My 'back of envelop' calculation:

4 million bpd @ 50 USD per barrel = revenue of 200 million USD per day or around 75 billion USD per year.

2(?) million bpd @ 20 USD per barrel = revenue of 40(?) million USD per day or around 15(?) billion USD per year..

The war should rapidly become unaffordable for Russia. Yippee!

And you have people like Putin and Trump thinking they can force a 'peace' deal onto Ukraine just as things look to get far, far worse for Russian finances and GDP in the very near future!

IMO Zelensky should politely study the peace proposal at great length to humour Trump. The longer he studies it, the better.