As a Ukrainian at war since day 1 – I don't buy it. They will sell their gas at discount to China until the very end. Military force is the only way to get them to the death zone.
> They will sell their gas at discount to China until the very end.
Yes and no. There's a minimum price they need to sell it, and somewhere in between they may not actually make enough between the minimum and sale price to actually fund their military. Nevermind the awesome job you guys are doing blowing up refineries and other industrial facilities. It'll be good when Europe stops importing Russian gas and steps up their seizure of sanctioned ships too.
Sanctions can and will work against Russia. Part of the strain they face today is due to these sanctions, it just takes awhile and in the meantime, unfortunately, there are people dying.
I favor harsher sanctions against Russia but let's not be too optimistic. It doesn't take much funding to recruit a poor, desperate guy from the outer provinces, hand him a surplus rifle, and send him into a human wave attack. In a perverse sort of way, killing off those guys might actually be reducing Russian government expenses.
The bad thing is, they always did this and it worked.
The good thing is, those russians stopped growing back with birthrates being one of the lowest in the world.
We might just see a world without any russians in a few decades. What a dream
Probably the parent lives in one of the countries neighboring with Russia and unfortunately Russia is very unfriendly towards its neighbors, invading them when it wants, so you live in constant fear. From that perspective, this is just a variation of "I want to live in peace" expressed in an extreme way.
Many welcomed the Nazis when they invaded Eastern Europe because they relieved them from the Soviets. When literal Nazis are perceived as the better option you can imagine the alternative isn't very shiny.
Part of Russian propaganda over the years has been this view of the "clean Red Army". You see it all over the Internet. "American history books teach it wrong". It was the Soviets, they insist, that fought the good war and good victory over the Nazis and western powers only fought the frail, old German army in the west.
Reality on the ground is much different. While the Soviets did bear the brunt of the Nazi onslaught, what is often overlooked is their own culpability in the war (invading and splitting Poland in partnership with the Nazis, &c) and their evil annexations of peoples and countries that were nearby as part of their own power-grab. In other words, part of the reason they were in the war in the first place is because they joined the Nazis in effectively kicking it off, at least in Europe.
Soviet apologists also tend to forget that the United States and other anglo powers* simultaneously fought the Nazis in the west, took down the Japanese, invaded and liberated Italy, the Philippines, and more, fought and won in North Africa, and did all of this while providing the Soviets with the equipment they needed to stay in the war. Nevermind staging additional campaigns and operations, such as those in China to aid them against Japanese occupation.
* I don't intend to suggest that it was only the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada that fought the good fight because we undoubtedly received heroic contributions from numerous allies and friends during the war.
To be fair, American propaganda had the same effect. For example, in South America, if you ask the average person about WW2, people will talk about USA mostly. Most people would be surprised if you told them that URSS had 24 million deaths, almost 50x what USA had. I'm not saying that USA didn't play a major role, but it's weird how it is the only country besides Germany that is ingrained in America (continent) mind when you talk about WW2
That stuff isn't working very well at the moment though. The poor desperate guys are getting killed by drones faster than they can be recruited. And Russia's other thing at sending missile at cities is quite expensive.
Maybe you should update your epistemology and stop listening to the guys that said so; I listen to the experts who say (since 2022) sanctions hurt, but russia is like a big tree - even if you poison it, it won't fall on the next day; it doesn't help that russia has disproportionately big spy network - people will take more abuse before they rebel against their government.
It is a known strawman argument. The sanctions weren't introduced because someone was convinced they will make Russia fail or what not, they were introduced because this was the only thing we could do barring military action that nobody was ready for. We knew they will have a negative impact on Russian economy but nobody was hoping for a miracle. Countries like Iran or North Korea were living under sanctions for years and they are much smaller. I haven't seen anybody arguing otherwise, barring YouTube clickbaity "Russia is falling" videos.
I don't think there are strategic lies here. Russia's war machine and their economy have taken a massive hit from sanctions. The news/media cycle and "experts" obviously want to make money and recycle the same stories and "any day now" kind of rhetoric, but that doesn't make sanctions any less of a great option.
It's also possible to run an economy on empty for a long, long time provided there's a war on. Look at Germany, who literally ran the country on empty throughout all of WWII, books like Adam Tooze's "Wages of Destruction" cover this in great detail. There was a saying in the last few years, "enjoy the war, the peace will be terrible", and it was, because once you took the wartime tourniquet off all the toxins flooded your body. It wasn't until the Marshall Plan that the bare subsistence life was slowly eradicated.
Now, can you see anyone giving Putin's kleptocracy a few trillion dollars to rebuild Рашка? The Marshall Plan rebuilt Germany because the US realised that without that as the economic powerhouse of Europe the place would be a basket case in need of US support for decades, but when you're just a gas station masquerading as a country (McCain) no-one's going to bail you out except insofar as it keeps the gas flowing, and if you look at places like Nigeria you don't need much to keep the gas flowing.
> can you see anyone giving Putin's kleptocracy a few trillion dollars
Unfortunately, if the leaks are true, they might actually be discussing that.
"Fortunately" Putin is more bent on having the whole Donbas which Ukraine will not give so I don't believe this happens in the near future - which is bad for Russia as a country.
Russia has one of the biggest war chests in the world, huge reserves of carbon fuel that it can afford to sell under market rates, and is supported by China. It can sustain even hardest sanctions for a long while, lifting them certainly wouldn’t help.
> huge reserves of carbon fuel that it can afford to sell under market rates,
Under market rates sure, but it must still be profitable. China and India know that, so they're going to drive down the price to the extent they can so that it's just barely profitable. But you can't just profit from the oil and gas, you need to profit enough to buy fighter jets and tanks, and all sorts of other things.
Russia sells wheat too. Minerals too. Weapons. You will be surprised the oil part isnt at 100% as what western media is telling you. Plus this source is mostly based on what western finance can see. BRICS dont submit data to westrrn finance analysyst anymore since 3 years ago. Anything you want to buy stock or trade you must absolutely ignore western hypes. Incredibly unreliable.
Russia had been under sanctions since 2014 and in January of 2015 its economy was already "in tatters", as reported by Obama in the State of the Union that year. Then, in March of 2022, great Joe Biden proclaimed that he has turned "ruble into rubble". I am sure the 20 packages of sanctions since then destroyed anything that left and it's really just vacuum in place of Russian economy now... Why end the lies if you can call anyone pointing them out a Russian bot?
Any form of exaggeration is counter-productive. Russian economy is going slowly down, with the main cause being the war or Putin's need to fund it, and in a part also because of sanctions. But it can be low for decades, Russians will never go out on streets about it. But hopefully when Putin dies Russia returns to normal relations with the rest of the world and this bad epoch can end.
Saying the same thing without exaggerating doesn't make it true. Russian economy is growing, it's the rate of growth is going down. As for Russia returning to normal relations with the rest of the world: it's normal already. Russia cooperates with the majority of the world's population in China, India, Brazil etc.
Or, as Reshetnikov says, Russia's economy will continue to slow down in the first half of 2026. The prices will continue to increase, soldiers will continue to die in thousands. India announced they will not buy Russian oil, so the only major buyer will be China, driving the price even further down.
I have several friends in Russia, and I do wish them well, but it will be difficult to get back to normal as long as Putin is alive.
I am not sure where did you get this, there is no such announcement publicly available.
> but it will be difficult to get back to normal as long as Putin is alive
There won't be a return to the 1990s-2000s subservient state, which you seem to be calling "normal". Whomever comes to replace Putin is going to be way more nationalist than the guy who spent more than half of his life in the USSR, being a Party member, and working in the field of internationalist politics.
> 1990s-2000s subservient state, which you seem to be calling "normal".
No need to go that far, I visited Moscow a few times before 2014 and it was more or less fine. I'd say 2 decades behind the West but OK. What is now is a big mess with Russia being an international pariah. This is bad and also unfair to millions of people who don't care about imperialistic ambitions of Putin and just want to live their lives in peace.
As a strong supporter of Ukraine, I would say ultimately wars are won or lost by economic forces (the side that can't afford it any more loses). That's how the USSR lost the Cold War, and all I can hope is that all of Europe really has your back in this one.
World War 2 was not won due to the economy. And while it is true that the USSR "lost" the Cold War, they actually spent too much and entered a recurring debt from which they could no longer get out. There was no direct war here, which is different to e. g. world war 2 (at the least USA versus Germany). USSR and USA only fought some proxy wars.
World War 2 was won due to the economy. Only the Allied side had the economic strength to replace all of their material war losses and more. In some categories of munitions the USA out produced Japan by a factor of >1000. US Navy gunners could afford to fill the sky with steel because they had unlimited supplies. The enemy had to count every shot.
It was literally won due to the economy. The moment Germans failed to knock out Soviets and Japanese pulled Americans into the fight their days were numbered due to insane industrial base of the both countries. Soviet meat waves, industry + lend lease won Europe and US finished Japanese.
I agree it's an unfortunate way of presenting it but Stalin was a guy who didn't care for anyone's life and was literally sending people in waves to die with the NKVD sadists shooting scared young boys whenever they tried to run away from the horror of war. Dead if you go, dead if you don't. It's romanticized an celebrated today, but it was a mass tragedy incomparable to one that happened to ny other country in recent history.
Didn't their war in Afghanistan precipitate their downfall?
So many pivotal decisions in WW2 were economic in nature. Lend lease? Germany's late switch to a war economy? The Allies' much larger manufacturing capabilities?
You could also argue that the cold war stayed cold because of the West's economic might. It set a military and living standard that the USSR bankrupted itself trying to match.
Russia will win on this one. Productions are largely internal. What they lack they get from China. Ukraine loss so many men. Their populations will just go down from now on. USA and China are on the verge of recessions. I really doubt USA will prioritize Ukraine over Israel or China ignoring its own needs. Cede the land and rebuilt. Better to cut losses now than even more loss.
As per Clausevitz, wars end either when you kill every last soldier or the ones who are still alive decide not to fight. I can't see the former happening. So it's about ratcheting the pain of continuing to something unbearable. To the level where Russia can't make enough cash selling resources to make more tanks and bombs and also feed people.
The issue is of course that Russians seem incredibly resilient against the latter. They seem happy when Russia wins another 5m^2 of territory even if materially they are massively affected.
But even then if Russia can no longer recruit "marginal" people and the alternative to peace is even larger losses, people might reassess.
The higher the economic cost in the meantime, the sooner this moment comes.
But who? People watching the national TV and followers of war bloggers for sure. But for the rest the current situation is just a very dark fragment in the history of Russia and everybody is just waiting for it to end.
they are not happy, they are distracted and vaguely know it's not going well.
the "russian firehose" approach and vryanyo (institutional lying) means they're bombarded with info but also know most of it is BS, but not necessarily how or why.
they know it's not going well but at this point much of the economy is on war-footing and if they're not drafted they're probably getting paid okay. STFU and keep your head down and you won't get drafted.
It’s very difficult to utterly destroy a country’s military force, particularly a country as huge as Russia, which has also a sizeable population. Ukraine cannot do it on its own and I see no appetite from anybody else to do it, so I think it is unlikely to happen.
Of course, it is also very difficult to utterly destroy a country’s economic power. Unfortunately, in Russia’s case, they have the raw materials and a population they can basically enslave. Hitting hard at refineries is a good strategy, it’s a weak point in the whole structure. Hopefully it’ll be enough.
Honestly, I don’t see an easy or clean way out of this. One possibility is that they’ll grind themselves badly enough to become completely irrelevant. Unfortunately that means a good chunk of Ukraine gets ground down along the way. One can hope for a coup, but then whatever comes after might well be worse.
Then, hopefully Ukraine can rebuild as a free nation.
Russia's military force currently relies on men willing to die for money. That could change. But Putin seems reluctant to force the general population to die in Ukraine.
Classic economic theory suggests that the amount you need offer to people willing to die goes up over time.
For Ukraine the main thing is to get to the point that Russia doesn't attack any more. There is no need for Ukraine to concur any part of Russia. Even getting the currently occupied land back is mostly optional.
This war has already changed. Near-stalemate on the front lines, exchange of strikes on civilian infrastructure (Ukraine made to Belgorod what Russia made to Kiev). It‘s a nuclear war without nukes, aiming at strategic defeat without advancing armies. And Russia definitely has more resources for it.
A few days ago Ukraine knocked out central heating infrastructure in Belgorod, a regional capital with 350k people, which is unlikely to be repaired until spring. Two civilians repairing it from previous strikes were killed. Whether this is rare or not, it doesn’t change anything about what I said about changing character of the war: both sides largely gave up on trying to win on the battlefield and now attack energy infrastructure of each other, putting pressure on civilian population.
When you knock out primary energy source in a large city instead of attacking military consumers, it has one goal - terror. Most people suffering from it will be civilians. There will likely be deaths. Look at the recent terrorist attack in Berlin by far left extremists: blackout of a single district resulted in at least one known direct casualty. How many people will die of hypothermia or inability to get help being locked in a high rise residential building? This is happening now in many places in Ukraine as well as in border regions of Russia. I do think it’s the same as targeting civilians directly.
>When you knock out primary energy source in a large city instead of attacking military consumers, it has one goal - terror.
Not if that city's industry is contributing to the war effort.
>Most people suffering from it will be civilians. There will likely be deaths.
You can say that about Western sanctions on Russia too. How many people have died because of a single MRI scanner or cancer drug that couldn't be bought by a Russian hospital?
Was it the "nuclear war without nukes" since the day the West imposed blanket sanctions on Russian economy?
Or did that "nuclear war without nukes" started in 2014-2015 when the Ukraine cut electricity and water supply to Crimea? "It has one goal - terror", right?
I really don’t understand your point. Are you questioning the choice of metaphor?
Ukraine cutting supply of electricity and water to Crimea did demonstrate the attitude of the Ukrainian government to people it considered once their citizen. It obviously wasn’t a part of the current chapter of the war.
Yes, there is nothing like 'nuclear war without nukes' that is happening here. And I was trying to demonstrate that your logic seem to lead to conclusion that the 'nuclear war without nukes' started in 2014.
My argument is that you can't bring strategic defeat without leveling cities or utterly destroying the power generation and electric grid. And that's not what is happening in the Ukraine or even Belgorod for that matter
In this war strategic victory is not the destruction of the state, but the control over development trajectory of the rival for the foreseeable future. Russian objective is and was not to annex entire Ukraine, but to ensure that it does not become menacing part of NATO infrastructure (they are surprisingly content with Ukraine joining EU). This is political goal and thus can be pursued through hybrid warfare, which includes psychological pressure on Ukrainian population, to ensure that current administration will loose political support and will be pressured into a peace deal on terms favorable for Russia. Ukraine does the same to achieve the opposite goal, but of course with much less success.
The whole story with territorial question is part of this: possible peace settlement could include just splitting Donbas region on the current front line, so that Putin could claim victory and Ukraine could just say they did what they could. But Russia wants more, they need Donbas in original borders, which is unacceptable to Ukraine. Why? Because if this question will be settled in the peace deal, it may open Ukraine eventually path to NATO. They want to create permanent tension the same way as it happened to Georgia, deferring the final settlement by a hundred years (see Taiwan as an example, which occupies China for decades).
> Even getting the currently occupied land back is mostly optional.
That's only true in the short term.
If Russia gets out of the war with Ukraine with territory gains, that only serves as incentive to start up again after Russia can regroup. After all, Putin's stated long-term goal is to take the entire country (among others) and restore the USSR.
Of course, taking back the occupied land is also easier said than done, as it would severely weaken Putin domestically to have expended all these resources and lives for nothing. There's no way he can allow that.
There is the issue that Russia tends to attack weak countries. The Baltic countries are small and also something Russia would like to have. But part of NATO.
Ukraine was seen as easy to take over. But that was clearly a wrong assessment.
> "I have said many times that the Russian and Ukrainian people are one nation, in fact. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours [...] But you know we have an old parable, an old rule: wherever a Russian soldier steps, it is ours."
Also, looking at Russian track record specifically, is Georgia, which was militarily defeated in 2008, part of Russia? Did they formally annex Abkhazia or Transnistria? Does Lukashenko report to Putin?
That's misunderstanding the model of actors. "Russia" isn't "Putin". "Countries" act in the best interests of their power structure, not their leaders.
Basically: the way this ends is when the collective will of the power centers (generally the armed forces, though not always) decide that they'll be wealthier and happier with Putin gone than by following more orders.
And obviously that's an unstable/unpredictable equilibrium, because groups don't decide collectively like that and exactly how a coup works is never known until it does. But it's the way literally every other government of every other failed state has fallen[1], and there's no reason to think this one will fare any differently.
[1] Well, there's "unexpected death of the leader" thing too.
However putin is a good representative of russian people who easily travel to other country 5000+ km to die for cash and imperial narratives. If putin dies tomorrow war wouldn't stop.
> That's misunderstanding the model of actors. "Russia" isn't "Putin". "Countries" act in the best interests of their power structure, not their leaders.
No, I am not misunderstanding. For all intents and purposes, at the moment Putin’s will is Russia’s will. And it looks like he knows his weaknesses within the country and is willing to let marginal populations bear the weight of his ambitions while keeping his power base comfortable enough. Of course he might end up like Stalin, at which point who knows? But it might not be much better for Ukraine, and in the meantime Putin keeps giving the orders.
> Basically: the way this ends is when the collective will of the power centers (generally the armed forces, though not always) decide that they'll be wealthier and happier with Putin gone than by following more orders.
He can get most soldiers rich enough for this to drag on for quite a long time. They probably would be happier elsewhere, but they don’t have a say. The generals is another problem, but so far Putin is quite effective at finding loyal ones.
"There will not be a coup" is on the tombstone of like every failed leader ever. Economics doesn't change. Countries aren't people, even if the people running them try desperately to make you think so.
I'm not saying that Putin is going to be deposed next week, or year, or even ever. I'm saying that the Russian government is no less susceptible to the circumstances that produce coups than any other failed state, and failed states are the circumstances that produce coups.
At the end of the day, all government is ultimately by the consent of the governed. But predicting how and when that consent will be withdrawn that's is hard part.
Except that Russia isn’t failed state. It’s politically stable (even more than before war), can mostly serve its population. The fact that it’s currently engaged in an expensive war, changes nothing.
Every day that passes, Ukraine gets stronger: more domestic defense production of what's currently the cutting edge of warfare; deeper financial integration and relationships with Europe; more aid lined up; European powers taking more responsibility for supporting Ukraine and seeing it win, not just survive. They have the largest and most competent army in Europe that's fought Russia to a standstill.
Every day that passes, Russia gets weaker: more oil sold in crude form only, since they don't have refining capacity to export gasoline; foreign currency reserves shrinking, since China is their main customer; another 35k casualties every month, with mounting costs for enlistment bonuses and death benefits; outer provinces stripped of men of fighting age, North Korea unwilling to send more soldiers, African recruits drying up; inflation raging, industries shutting down, and all economic indicators heading south.
It's terrible that Ukraine is trapped in this slugfest, but at this point, time favours Ukraine.
Ukraine domestic defense production has the slight problem of being continuously bombed, lacking manpower, reliable (or any!) electricity. Are you sure it is growing? Perhaps explosively...
Their largest and most competent army is mostly dead and maimed, they rely on catching unwilling men on the streets and herding them to the front. You believe 35k Russian casualties each month, and at the same time you believe Ukrainian official figures of 55k casualties overall, right?
European powers taking responsibility for supporting Ukraine by continuously arguing where/how should they get emergency funds to 'lend' to Ukraine, so its finances do not collapse within the next 2 month.
Man, how can you believe this nonsense?
Time does not favour Ukraine. It does not favour Russia (or Europe) either, it favours mostly China.
It produces its own Neptune cruise missiles (100+), and developed the Flamingo cruise missile. It has its own self-propelled howitzer, and has built more than 200 to date. It rebuilt its bullet manufacturing, replacing the loss of its luhansk facility. They've massively expanded domestic production of 155mm shells.
Whether or not it's under constant bombardment, Ukraine is now supplying 50% of its consumable supplies; in 2022, it was under 5%. Ukraine actually exports some weapons and drone tech to finance other purchases.
Its manpower crisis has been continually overstated by Russian propaganda. At the moment, they have 800k+ in their army. They rejected a bill recently to lower the conscription age to 25 from 27. They have an untapped pool of manpower aged 18-27 that they're avoiding if possible (as has been possible so far).
Whether or not Europeans are arguing a lot, they're still providing massive material and financial aid to Ukraine, which still has a functioning economy and social welfare system. Their gov't pensions go out on time and in full. They're not experiencing hyperinflation. There's a reason that Ukrainians as a population aren't willing to accept the kind of crap settlements Trump is pushing.
> Man, how can you believe this nonsense?
You're the one spouting Russian disinformation, especially after looking at your other comments. If you're not getting paid for this, you should be.
I agree with your point overall but realistically speaking, its not like the death of Ukraine will fix Russias economy, even if it did: not in a single day.
You can exhaust yourself completely and be dead on your feet.
There is a strain of thought in Russian political circles that they'll be doomed anyway due to lack of defensible borders if they fail to capture Ukraine. This could explain some of their actions that otherwise seem irrational and counterproductive.
It doesn't seem to make any sense: nobody was invading Russia until Russia decided part of Ukraine was Russia (and then Ukraine invaded it), and why would Ukraine be a more defensible border than the actual border? Ukraine borders NATO, after all.
From the Russian perspective it actually does make a bit of sense, in a twisted sort of way. They were invaded from the west before, most recently by Hitler and before that by Napoleon. There are no good natural defenses to protect Moscow and so they seek to establish defense in depth with additional buffer territory. (I write this not to justify recent Russian acts of aggression but to explain some of their internal strategic thinking.)
Ukraine is also very hard to completely destroy, either militarily or economically. And Ukraine is in an existential struggle, I don’t see the Ukrainians caving.
But then what, become a part of China?
I don't think Russia could defend themselves from an attack of a lesser nation right now, and I truly wish one of them would take opportunity
They need Russia to guard their back, the last thing they need is a USA-friendly regime in Russia.
You are all talking about 'just a bit longer and Russia will implode'.
Look at the state of Ukraine, who is going to implode sooner, Russia or Ukraine?
Heck, look at the state of Europe and USA! USA is a political nutcase, and Europe has deep divisions and is overflowing with incompetence and impotence. Plus enormous debts, both in USA and in Europe.
China doesn't want Russia to implode. That would only create problems for no real gain. But they'll take advantage of Russia's weakness to get cheap raw materials and perhaps some territorial concessions.
Why do you imagine Ukraine's desire for sovereignty would be exhausted before Russia's stomach for economic hardship? Do you really think the Russia public has the stamina even for the 4 more years it will take them to capture the rest of Donbas?
As someone with no firsthand knowledge at all, I am inclined to believe your position is correct. But I also think the Economist is making an important point: Russia's continued prosecution of this war will shred their internal economy with consequences lasting for decades or centuries. What people often underestimate is just how much damage an economy can suffer before breaking down entirely.
But Putin doesn't care about that, so the war will continue until something changes militarily.
The EU is rich enough to support Ukraine for a very long time. During that time it is likely that Ukraine develops better and better weapons. This requires Russian army to improve as well.
It's not clear how the Russian army will improve when the economy declines.
The EU is rich enough but will they stay "willing enough"? Unfortunately, many EU parties that are gaining popularity are also against spending money on Ukraine
The EU as a whole is rich enough, the problem is that its the elites that are rich, not the ordinary citizens. However, the burden of support (via taxes and cutting welfare) will be places on ordinary citizens. Hence, the need to flame the war rhetoric. Still, there is no real support for forever war among EU citizenry.
Even if there is enough support for economic/material support of Ukraine, the matter of sending your man to die on the eastern front is an altogether different matter. Even Poland is not willing to do that. I mean, 'I am afraid of dying in a war, so I better go die in a war, to prevent that.'
The EU, well NATO has the problem what Russia will do when it is no longer at war with Ukraine. There is also the question what the US would if Russia attacks a NATO country.
So European NATO countries basically need to keep supporting Ukraine while they try to becomes militarily independent of the US.
EU just needs to support Ukraine until Russia has dug themselves into a hole that will take generations to recover from. Their might be a point where the war hasn't ended but Russia is no longer seen as a threat by the EU.
One issue is that Europe got caught with it pants down. It likely that Europe will keep improving its defense long after it is no long necessary from an economic point of view. Supporting Ukraine in destroying whatever Russia manages to produce is a sound strategy in this context.
If Russia really becomes weaker and the war winds down a bit, then supporting Ukraine is likely to become cheaper as well. But as long as Russia manages to send tons of drones and missiles to Ukraine, Europe should be worried. So Ukraine will remain a testing ground for air defense for a while.
There is also the issue with the Baltic countries and to some extent Finland. Those countries are terrified that Russia will do something stupid.
Thank you for your esteemed presence. I've got an unsatisfied hankering for kneeling since george Floyd died, but now that you're here, take that kneel.
The article is not as unrealistic as that, the author does point out that Putin is not just looking at the state of Russia, he’s also looking at the relative state of Ukraine and its support from the West.
The death zone isn’t the point at which they die, it’s the point at which they are consuming their own long term strength and capacity to recover in order to sustain their effort .
To our utter shame, we have never actually committed to Ukrainian victory or Russian defeat, but merely to tenuous Ukrainian survival. I firmly believe this war would already be over, or effectively so, if Ukraine’s allies had spent what we have up till now in the first 2 years. Even from a cynical financial point of view it would have been the better policy.
I don't think doubling the support would have been nearly enough to ensure Ukrainian victory.
The fundamental issue is that Russia has not fully committed to winning the war either. While losing the war would be an existential threat to the Putin regime, not winning it is not. As long as the war drags on, there are more effective uses for Russian resources to ensure the stability of the regime. But if the war becomes an existential threat, Russia could mobilize its entire economy.
A regime change in Russia is the only way Ukraine could win the war. Maybe by a coup or by military force. Or maybe by an arrangement, where the current regime can retire comfortably in a third country without having to answer for its crimes.
Also many westerns forget (or have no clue) that in ruzzian mindset suffering is one of the greatest virtues. The more you suffer - the better ruzzian you are.
By western standards ruzzian economy is in collapse, but their citizens are willing to endure anything beyond western imagination. Not to mention that even before 2022 apart from Moscow and Saint Petersburg there are many towns that are like timecapsules 50+ years into the past.
TL;DR: I will believe ruzzina state collapse/death when I will see it, but now I don't hold my breath.
When I see Activity Monitor that doesn't show tabs until you nearly go full screen – all I can think is that this shit product was built even before vibecoding was a thing. Truly ahead of its time.
I want my CI containers created per branch/PR to have their own Tailscale domain, so logging them in is useful via non-expiring key. Only good option I've seen previously is to notify every 90 days when key expires.
The best way to do that is using an OAuth client. These don't expire, and grant scoped access to the Tailscale API. You use this to generate access keys for the devices that need to authenticate to the network.
We use this for debugging access to CI builds, among other things – when a particular build parameter is set, then the CI build will use an OAuth key to request an ephemeral, single-use access key from the Tailscale API, then use that to create a node that engineers can SSH into.
Outscale is kind of the stereotypical bureaucratic French thing. It's made by Dassault, that's better known for industrial stuff (like SolidWorks), not for modern-ish software.
For a more of an AWS replacement, look at Scaleway. It really is more what we think about when talking "public cloud": self-serve compute, with lots of managed services, actual API and Terraform, actual K8s, etc. (managed services is why I don't mention OVH, which is often touted as a "cloud provider", yet lacks a large managed services offering).
I love Scaleway, been using it since micro ARM64 bare metal offerings they've now deprecated. Just saw Outscale in one of the announcements thus the reason I've checked them out.
Obviously, Hetzner is also great, as a European example.
I'd put Hetzner in the same bucket as OVH: solid infra company at a more than competitive price, but lacking in managed products. In my experience, they're more reliable than OVH though.
Outscale has the advantage of a huge pile of money behind them, as well as a natural endorsement from gov agencies. They'll lack the niceties, but provide certifications from day one. Different motivations. They're not really meant to be a public cloud in the same sense as the big three. It's kind of the same deal as the Lidl "cloud", which is more of a private cloud managed by someone else meant to run SAP monsters.
Didn't know about the logger script, looks nice. Can it wrap the launch of the scrub itself so that it logs like logger too, or do you separately track its stdout/stderr when something happens?
update: figured how you can improve that call to add logs to logger
I am also slowly preparing myself to the world where there is no SSH into the server machine. I am following what's happening around IncusOS. Already sold on Incus for my containers, it does make sense on a paper: safe auto-updates, no manual key management, all you need is managed via API in a cluster (usually).
Can you tell me a bit more on how you use Incus.. is it just personal use, or otherwise? What type of workloads do you run on it, and how is your networking setup / experience?
I use it for professional use, running production services which don't require 99.999 availability and have relatively low traffic, basically some internal dashboards and tools.
I develop my programs as deb/systemd packages and deploy in "fat" ubuntu/debian incus containers.
I have a cluster with three machines where one is used for build-containers and second for production containers. I am looking forward having time to have ZFS streaming incremental backup of the containers.
For big servers I use Proxmox, which is great, but Incus (and IncusOS) feel a bit more futuristic, where Proxmox is more bullet-proof enterprise solution.
We need privacy-focused Obsidian alternative (which doesn't store unencrypted text files on disk), excited to see a potential player written in my tech stack, meaning it should be easy to extend!
Ferrite is privacy-focused in that it's fully offline — no telemetry, no cloud sync, no accounts, no network calls (even Mermaid diagrams render locally in pure Rust).
However, files are stored as plain text, same as Obsidian/VS Code/any text editor. Encryption at rest isn't currently on the roadmap.
For encrypted storage, you might consider:
- Using Ferrite with an encrypted volume (VeraCrypt, LUKS, FileVault)
- git-crypt for encrypted git repos
That said, if there's strong interest in built-in encryption (vault-style or file-level), I'd love to hear more about the use case. Would you want password-protected vaults? Per-file encryption? Something else?
I want cold storage encryption which is cross-platform and doesn't require FUSE and such. Current solutions are all either non-cross-platform or overkill, so I'm still using Obsidian non-encrypted. It's a matter of default and ease of use.
That said, I've checked Ferrite out – unfortunately there's a very long way to go before it becomes Obsidian-ish (left and right panel, add tabs, hide the top formatting bar), better focus on those features. If it becomes close enough – I'll implement the encryption myself :)
Fair feedback! You're right — Ferrite isn't Obsidian-complete. Those are reasonable additions:
- Left panel already exists (file tree + outline), but could use polish
- Right panel (backlinks?) would come with v0.3.0 wikilinks work
- Hiding toolbar is a quick settings addition — I'll add that to the list
What's your priority order for those? And if you do implement encryption later, I'd love to see the approach!
The TODO list cursor behavior is exactly the kind of polish detail that matters. I'll add this to the issue tracker — cursor should respect line start position, not jump past the checkbox syntax.
These "many small details" are what v0.3.0's custom editor widget will unlock. egui's TextEdit doesn't give us fine-grained cursor control, but replacing it will.
Awesome, initially it looked like a quick AI-generated project but I see you care about it and plan investing the effort into it. Will be following on Github!
Main priority would be the editor itself to be similar to Obsidian (with links etc.) but maybe better, Obsidian is annoying for example when you edit a TODO list (which is 99% of the time for me), go to the beginning of the line, then press down to go to the next item -- Obsidian jumps into position between "- [ ] " and "item text", instead of staying at line beginning. Long story short, many small details to make this right.
Thanks for sharing! We’re definitely aware that Incus + Proxmox are very mature and full-featured.
Containarium is more of a "purpose-built, single-VM, SSH-first dev environment" approach:
- Lightweight: 1 VM can host 50–100+ LXC containers
- Quick provisioning: seconds instead of minutes per environment
- Focused on SSH workflows and dev sandboxing, not full datacenter management
- Minimal infra overhead: no GUI, no HA cluster required
Tradeoffs we’re aware of:
- Shared kernel (not VM-level isolation)
- Linux-only
- Less built-in tooling compared to Proxmox
We designed it to *optimize for cost efficiency and rapid dev onboarding*, rather than full-featured virtualization.
Would love to hear if you see any pitfalls with this approach compared to using Proxmox/Incus in a single-host scenario!
Sorry, we want to understand your use case better. Did you provision *one VM via Proxmox* and then run *multiple users via Incus* inside it?
We’re curious how you handled provisioning, isolation, and resource limits in your setup. More importantly, what’s the maximum scale you’ve been able to push?
I understand that. I'm saying that wrapping all the dev containers up inside a single VM serves to further protect the host system from the dev containers.
That's because it is, just like how this entire project is.
In fact, it is just using the same technologies as LXC and Incus. (It is exactly LXC and Incus)
So really nothing special at all. Perhaps people looked at the title and rushed to the repo.
When I saw "IMPLEMENTATION-PLAN.md" and "SECURITY-CHECKLIST.md" filled with hundreds of emojis, I immediately closed the tab and now replying to you that it is total slop.
2026 is the year of abundant "not invented here syndrome".
Containarium does indeed build on LXC/Incus and isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel. If you’ve run multi-tenant sandboxes at scale, we’d love to hear what pitfalls or limitations you’ve seen.
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