Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has reaffimed his firm refusal to cede any territory, resisting U.S. pressure for a painful compromise with Russia as he continued to rally European support for Ukraine.
“Undoubtedly, Russia insists for us to give up territories. We, clearly, don’t want to give up anything. That’s what we are fighting for,” Zelenskyy said in a WhatsApp chat late Monday in which he answered reporters’ questions.
“Do we consider ceding any territories? According to the law we don’t have such right. According to Ukraine’s law, our constitution, international law, and to be frank, we don’t have a moral right either.”
How would you look at the Russian economy?
The best measure I can think of is GDP growth. It can be hard to estimate but it shows the change in an economy over time. The most accurate data I know of for that is the World Bank.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2024&locations=US-RU-CN-JP-IN-GB-FR-DE-IT-CA&start=2019
You’ll notice that for most of that period, which includes the entire Ukraine war, Russia’s economy has been solidly on par with the other 9 largest economies in the world. They still have active trading relations with most of the world https://www.volza.com/global-trade-data/russia-export-trade-data/russia-export-trading-partners/
At the current rates, Ukraine will bleed out before Russia does.
Increased spending on war machines increases GDP. It’s not good for the country though. The opportunity cost is huge
Do you have a better measure of the economy?
Both Russia and Ukraine are destroying each other’s infrastructure do you have some data that shows Russia is suffering more from it than Ukraine is?
Real private consumption or net national product
I never claimed Ukraine was suffering less, don’t twist my words. Russia invaded Ukraine, twice.
The whole point of looking at their economies instead of the front lines in this thread is to find an alternate estimate of the trend of the war. The fronts are steadily moving west. If the hope is to end the war by waiting for Russia’s economy to collapse, it has to happen before Ukraine’s does.
Russia doesn’t need to have a strong economy for that, just stronger than Ukraine’s.
And? Did you look at those measures?
Gross National Income
Sure. That’s a very reasonable measure too. Can you find GNI data that suggests that Russia’s economy will collapse soon enough for it to be useful for Ukraine?
Not going to waste my time. How about Russia dipping into its gold reserves?
Western propaganda machine constantly pumps out information on Russia’s economy being on the verge of collapse. I recall buying into it years ago and, well, we’re still waiting.
I think it’s a bit of old world thinking at work. In the post WW2 period the West controlled the vast majority of global capital so being blocked out of trade by us meant guaranteed economic despair (if you weren’t big enough). The world is very different today but many Westerners (even in leadership) still perceive the world as if we’re still in that era.
I think it’s a combination of factors.
There’s some amount of propaganda. Governments often try to convince people to confuse fact and fiction.
There’s also an institutional momentum effect. Once you get a group of people together, they tend to recruit more people who think like them, so once an idea gets hold, it’s hard to get rid of.
And there’s the sensationalism effect. There are many possible predictions for the future; the extreme ones are more fun to read.