In addition, it was rumored that more than 50,000 recruits in Russia were either killed or injured. More and more mothers and wives took to the streets to protest. Putin also noticed that public grievances were getting out of control. anger. Ukraine confirms Iranian military adviser killed in Crimea International organizations conservatively estimate that at least 15,000 Ukrainians are missing, and ongoing investigations will take years.
Putin rejects truce?Military experts point out the key
The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), led by Russia and composed of former Soviet countries, held a summit on November 23. Affected by the war between Russia and Ukraine, the member states not only lost confidence in Russia, but also urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to cease the war. Armenia Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan even refused to sign the joint documents of the summit, making Putin so angry that he threw his pen on the table and shocked the negotiation scene.
Although the countries are trying their best to bring about a truce, Putin obviously has no intention of peace talks. At this stage, he still believes that there is a decisive chance in winter. At the last moment, he is still unwilling to let go.
In particular, Russian civil war hawks continue to advocate terrorism. Some Russian military experts called on the program not only to attack Ukraine with extreme means, but also to target the ships of NATO member states.
Such remarks once again ignited international criticism. Eliot Cohen, an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in the United States, angrily criticized these people for their cruelty and fantasy, and even named Russia’s domestic problems as more serious than Putin’s personal problems.
The Russian hawks continued to advocate to intensify the tension, and the Russian artillery fire was still fierce, but they lost successively on the battlefield. Eliot Cohen pointed out the key point, thinking that Russia lacks everything. Due to internal corruption and lack of maintenance management, a large part of the weapons in the arsenal have already failed or been damaged.
Military spending has exceeded 100 billion U.S. dollars, burning 900 million U.S. dollars a day, how long can Russia last?
The Russia-Ukraine war is protracted, and both sides have combat readiness supplies and economic pressure. Ukraine has the support of the United States and long-term economic and military assistance from the Western camp, but the situation in Russia does not seem to be optimistic.
According to the Center for Economic Recovery, a group of economic experts, in the first 23 days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine alone, Russia’s direct military expenditures reached at least 19.9 billion U.S. dollars. The cost of facilities and hardware equipment is as high as 9 billion US dollars.
Sean Spoonts, editor-in-chief of SOFREP, a military news website, estimates that Russia is spending at least $900 million a day on the war.
The $900 million does not include losses caused by Western economic sanctions, but includes the payment of salaries to Russian troops fighting in Ukraine, giving them weapons, bullets and rockets, and repairing military equipment. In addition, Russia used thousands of cruise missiles in the war, costing about $1.5 million each.
As the situation continues to deteriorate, Russia’s investment in troops and weapons will increase, and direct war expenses will also increase accordingly.
The country’s defense spending has increased by at least $53 billion since the start of the war, while Russia’s military costs will be at least $110 billion or more, according to Heli Simola, senior economist at Bank of Finland’s Emerging Markets Institute.
Although Russia’s foreign exchange reserves (nearly 600 billion U.S. dollars) are among the highest in the world, most of them are now held in bank accounts in Western countries due to economic sanctions. At present, Russia’s war funds are nothing more than obtained from industries such as energy, food, and parts.
How long this war will last is unknown. Russia announced that its defense budget for 2023 will be about $84 billion, which is more than 40% higher than the 2023 defense budget first announced in 2021. In addition, in next year’s general budget, Russia also includes about 112 billion US dollars of confidential or unspecified funds, which is just approaching the end of the year, which is interpreted as increasing the budget for continuing war next year.
In addition, CNN reported that the endless sanctions have gradually prevented the Russian people from buying products made in Western countries, and the prices have soared further, severely hitting many Russian families. Sergel, a senior researcher at a Russian think tank, pointed out that the dissatisfaction among the Russian people over the authorities’ failure to address prices and military actions is rising. This sentiment is more critical than before. If the military actions continue, the Russian economy will continue to decline sharply.
Tens of thousands of recruits were sent to death with cannon fodder, and protests erupted in many places
Not only has the economy in Russia been hit hard, Ukrainian intelligence shows that more than 50,000 of the 300,000 recruits recruited by Russia’s previous mobilization orders were either killed or injured, which led to low morale of the recruits and growing dissatisfaction from the families of the conscripts.
A video revealed that Russian recruits were fighting in the ice and snow, but they could only camp with tarps. The family members were so angry that they scolded that they were maliciously releasing their lives. More and more mothers and wives took to the streets to protest in various parts of Russia, urgently demanding that the military Fang fulfilled Putin’s promise, related videos flooded Russian social media, and Putin seemed to have noticed that public grievances were getting out of control.
Reuters reported that Putin on November 25 received a group of Russian women whose children had been conscripted to fight in Ukraine. This is the first time since Putin ordered the Russian military invasion of Ukraine nine months ago.
In his speech, Putin said that he can “sympathize” with the pain in the hearts of those who have lost their family members. He told a woman, “I want you to know that I have this pain personally and that of the leadership of this country. We understand that nothing can offset the loss of a son, especially for a mother. . We can feel the pain.”
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (Sergei Shoigu) stated on September 21 that the total number of Russian soldiers killed at that time was 5,937, but most people believe that this number is far lower than the actual number of Russian casualties.
In early November, Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that it was estimated that more than 100,000 Russian troops sent to Ukraine were killed or wounded, while the Ukrainian military suffered similar damage.
Iran provided Russian drones and military assistance in the Russo-Ukrainian war, sparking criticism from all walks of life. The Guardian reported that it had previously been reported that 10 Iranian military advisers had been killed in a Ukrainian airstrike on Crimea. Oleksiy Danilov, secretary-general of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Affairs Council, confirmed that Iranian advisers were killed in Crimea, saying that these people were there to guide the Russian army to operate the “Shahed-136” suicide drone.
Not only that, Danilov emphasized that any Iranian military personnel who appear on the ground will be regarded as a target, “They should not appear where they should not appear. It is our territory, we did not invite them, And as long as they cooperate with terrorists to destroy our country, we have to eliminate them.”
Danilov also mentioned that it is not clear whether Iran has delivered ballistic missiles to Russia, “but if so, it proves two phenomena: one is that Russia does not have the ability to produce a large number of missiles to continue a large-scale war; two If a country has been sanctioned since 1979 and still manufactures weapons, how effective are those sanctions? That’s a big law enforcement question.”
It is conservatively estimated that the investigation of the disappearance of more than 15,000 Ukrainians will take years
More than 15,000 people have gone missing during the war in Ukraine, the Hague-based International Commission on Missing Persons said on Monday.
The International Commission on Missing Persons, established after the Balkan wars of the 1990s, opened an office in Kyiv in July to help Ukraine record and track missing persons.
Matthew Holliday, the committee’s European program director, said it was unclear how many people had been forcibly relocated, detained in Russia, separated from their families but alive, or dead and buried in makeshift cemeteries. The process of investigating missing persons in Ukraine will continue for years, even after the war is over.
The 15,000 figure is conservative considering that authorities estimate as many as 25,000 people were dead or missing in the southeastern Uzbekistan port city of Mariupol alone.
“The numbers are huge and the challenges facing Ukraine are huge. On top of that, they’re fighting an ongoing war against the Russian Federation,” Halladay said.
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