Six reasons to ignore putin's threats.
At least six reasons.
Spoiler: 1. The kremlin always lies. The Oreshnik missile is not as new and impossible to stop as putin wants us to believe, and his revised nuclear weapon doctrine is not backed up with any credible nuclear weapon capability. 2. The missile cannot be mass produced by the low-technology, import-dependent muscovy economy working at full capacity. 3. muscvovy is the most corrupt country in Europe. Production, maintenance and repair of defence equipment are neglected or ignored since the allocated funds for those purposes have been siphoned off by corrupt militaries and government officials. 4. The muscovy economy is in a poor state and cannot produce new weapons or restore the old that are destroyed in Ukraine. 5. The democracies’ economies are larger and more innovative than the muscovy economy. Our industries can produce more advanced weapons more effectively than the muscovites. 6. The kremlin violates all agreements.
The internationally wanted war criminal’s red lines.
Source: Some clever guy on the Internet. Apologies for having forgotten whom.
The kremlin always lies.
The fascist regime in the kremlin is one of the world’s most frequent liars. They lie to their own citizens and to foreigners. The map below shows that the fascists lie frequently to foreigners.
muscovy is one of the world’s most frequent liars about other countries’ policies.
Source: Varieties of Democracy. Note: The indicator shows how often governments and its agents use social media to disseminate misleading viewpoints or false information to influence citizens of other countries abroad? It ranges from 0 to 4 where 0 indicates that it is extremely often. The government disseminates false information on all key political issues, and 4 Never, or almost never.
Lies about the Oreshnik.
The new missile, Oreshnik, is not impossible to intercept. The internationally wanted war criminal and illegitimate “president’s” rambling about his Oreshnik missile being hypersonic, unstoppable, and new shows how pathetic he is. All missiles reaching targets within that range are hypersonic and can be intercepted as Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California, pointed out:
all ballistic missiles of that range are hypersonic, and that missile interceptors such as Israel's Arrow 3 and the U.S. SM-3 Block 2A were designed to destroy them.
So, nothing novel and not unstoppable. And he also pointed out that the missile is not new.
"It's a series of old technologies that have been put together in a new way."
Fabian Hoffmann, doctoral research fellow at the Oslo Nuclear Project, agrees:
The Oreshnik is very likely derived from the Russian RS-26 Rubezh (NATO designation: SS-X-31), which itself traces its origins to the Soviet-designed and built RSD-10 Pioneer (SS-20 Saber).
Of course it is not new. Any child knows that knowledge is cumulative. Today’s knowledge builds upon yesterday’s knowledge. Goods and services today are elaborations on yesterday’s goods and services.
Lies about the nukes.
The little internationally wanted war criminal and illegitimate muscovy “president” recently tried to scare us by revising his nuclear weapons doctrine. He has played the nuke card so many times now that I’ve lost count. The threat of nuking us is only repeated by his apoligists who want us to kneel before the fascist in chief.
To begin with. After the end of the Cold War, USA and Soviet Union/Russia agreed to destroy a large number of nukes. The remaining nukes cannot cause a nuclear winter which used to be the worst case scenario. As for the remaining nukes, the best open source on nukes is The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, as Lars Wilderäng points out on his blog Cornucopia.se. According to the researchers, muscovy has 1,588 strategic warheads, some deployed on ballistic missiles and at heavy bomber bases. In addition to that an approximate additional 977 strategic warheads, along with 1,912 nonstrategic warheads, are held in reserve. The latter, 2 ,889 must be maintained and undergo services regularly to be of use. That has not happened. As documented overwhelmingly, corruption is the muscovy system. The money that has been allocated for that purpose over the years have been siphoned away and been used to buy dachas, yachts, expensive whisky, champagne, and prostitutes.
Anyway, out of the 1,588 warheads above, about 800 are designated retaliatory strikes. And some of these are stored as reserve and probably useless now since the money that were allocated for their maintenance and service has been spent on toys for boys.
And a lot of these strategic war heads, some 580, are deployed on stupid bombs which require bomb planes to be launched. There are more bombs than planes meaning that the fascists need to fly many times with each plane. Planes that are not maintained, repaired or serviced now due to both corruption and export sanctions on the components and parts of the planes which are made in the West because muscoy cannot produce that stuff themselves.
And some warheads are placed on submarines. Submarines that need to go out from their bases or are tracked by us which means that they are sitting ducks when they try to launch their missiles.
Both the article and the blog mentioned above are much more detailed and written by more knowledgeable people. I recommend you to read them.
The missile cannot be mass produced by the labour constrained economy, import dependent, and low-technology economy.
The internationally wanted war criminal and illegitimate president also said that muscovy will start to mass produce the Oreshnik. No they won’t. They can’t because the industries are working at full capacity, its industries depend on imported components and parts, and its industries are low-tech.
Increasing wages and high inflation in a full capacity economy.
The muscovy economy is over-heated due to lack of labour and excess demand for weapons. Unemployment rate is said to be between 2% and 3% which could be accurate since parts of the labour force is illegally in Ukraine. A lot of people also fled the country in the first half of 2022. The muscovy economy is a war economy, an excessive amount of government expenditures are devoted to producing products for the military. As the labour supply at the same time is restrained, there is an excess demand for labour which cannot be met at a the current low unemployment rate. Merely ordering mass production won’t make it happen becaue muscovy’s military industries are already working at full capacity in order to produce and restore all the equipment that the Ukrainain Armed Forces destroy every day. The announced drastic increase of military expenditures in the budget are not going to solve this problem. Fabian Hoffmann who keeps a close eye on muscovy’s missile production, reaches the same conclusion on his substack:
Moscow likely has a limited capacity to field Oreshnik ballistic missiles, as its missile production capabilities are already operating at maximum capacity.
And
Russia’s defense industry lacks the capacity for significant innovation, and its missile sector is already operating at maximum capacity. The industry simply does not have the resources to design, develop, test, and produce an entirely new missile.
The muscovy industries rely on imports of advanced products.
The best way, in my view, to show how reliant a country is on imports, is to calculate how much of final demand is made up by imports. The measure is expressed in terms of value added, i.e. value of production minus value of intermediate goods and services.
In 2020, foreign value added shares accounted for 20% in muscovy’s final demand for all industries. That is large for an economy that big. For USA, foreign value added shares in final demand only constitutes 10% of GDP. Normally, large countries harbour many industries producing a very large range of investment and consumer products for final demand themselves and do not have rely on foreign intermediate goods as much as small countries like Sweden. However, muscovy is far from a normal country.
The foreign value added shares in final demand are higher for total manufacturing goods, 41%, but much lower for services, 15% of total services and 20% of business services respectively. Foreign value added shares in final demand accounts for vary large shares in final Russian domestic demand, 68%, in Water Transportation Services. This explains why muscovy has to use a fleet of rusty uninsured tankers with flags of convenience to sell its dirty oil.
Many industries are involved in missile producion. Around two thirds of the value added of final demand of goods produced by Electrical equipment and Computers & Electronics are sourced from abroad. Goods produced by especially Electrical equipment, and Computers & Electronics are critical for shelling rockets and missiles at civilians like the Oreshnik.
Domestic and foreign value added shares in final demand in muscovy 2020. Percent.
Source: OECD database. Trade in value added indicators.
Foreign value-added shares account for almost 70% of Russian final demand for goods produced by Machinery industries which also are needed to produce missiles. And in other industries needed for this production, foreign value added shares account for substantial parts of final demand, e.g. Fabricated Metals manufacturing industries and Computer & Information services. My previous posts about this can be read here, here, and here.
The above also explains why suddenly exports to countries like Kyrgyzstan have increased dramatically, thereby evading sanctions.
Source: CEIC. Note: The graph above draws on IMF data for October 2023.
But not all countries have imposed export controls. China has not. China is a very important supplier of goods that muscoy needs to carry out its genocidal war. Relating Chinas shares value added share to total foreign value added shares in muscovy’s domestic final demand, shows that China holds a fifth of the foreign value added shares for all goods and services, almost a third of the foreign value added shares for all manufacturing goods, (13% of the value added in total final domestic demand), while the shares in services industris are smaller. Unfortunately, Chinese shares in foreign value added shares in muscovy’s final domestic demand for Electrical equipment and Computers & Electronics, and Metals are relatively high.
Chinese value added shares in foreign value added in muscovy’s final demand.
Source: OECD database. Trade in value added indicators.
Little innovation in muscovy’s low-tech industries
Hoffmann’s assessments
Fabian Hoffmann, mentioned above, who has studied muscovy’s capabilities to maintain old and build new missiles and nukes, knows a thing or ten about the industries making the missiles:
Russia’s defense industry lacks the capacity for significant innovation, and its missile sector is already operating at maximum capacity. The industry simply does not have the resources to design, develop, test, and produce an entirely new missile.
Yours truly’s assessments
muscovy’s industry is a low-technology industry. I covered this subject already in a post five years ago:
from where the following quote is telling:
The Russian economy’s capacity to produce high-technology products is very limited. Putin's military-industrial complex is not functioning very well as pointed out by Vladislav Inozemtsev, the Director of the Centre for Post-Industrial Studies in Мoscow. Inozemtsev argues that Russia in general and the Russian defence sector in particular faces at least three key challenges. Fírstly, the lack of innovation in the defence sector and the poor quality of engineering education. Secondly, Russia’s lagging in knowledge-intensive production such as micro-electronics, new materials and computer technologies. Thirdly, the defence sector consists of state-owned monopolies without any competition but suffering from financial mismanagement and corruption.
“Even though Russia’s military spending somewhat exceeds the U.S. one as a share of gross domestic product, the economic effect is strikingly different: in Russia the military expenses seem to be a burden on the national economy while in the U.S. they rather contribute to the country’s development.”
SITE’s assessments
More recent assessments by the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), corroborates Hoffmann’s and my assessments. The institute recently released a report about the kremlin’s fake economic statistics. The report, link below, also discussed muscovy’s dependence on imports for advanced products.
In short, the Russian economy in terms of trade relations can be described as exporting mainly natural resources, while importing manufactured items and being highly dependent on importing advanced products.
Because, as the authors of the SITE reporte conclude:
In short, the Russian economy has failed to create an environment conducive to long-run economic growth. Instead, it largely relies on wealth generated from natural resources to sustain economic activities.
Which confirms my description of the muscovy economy as a
rent-dependent economy (Gaddy & Ickes (2005,2010)). The rents are the profits earned from the extraction and exporting of oil and gas. These rents are redistributed by the regime which means that rents are distributed to where they are needed to balance the power elites. The beneficiaries of the rents are very often loss-making companies which are dependent on subsidies for their survival and represent important political support for the regime. This system creates a distorted allocation of resources, inefficiency and excessive costs of production that are borne by all actors.
Harvard Growth Lab’s assessments
The backwardness of the muscovy economy is also confirmed by Harvard Growth Lab. They have updated its Economic Complexity Index for all countries. It now also includes data until 2021, the year before the full-scale invasion. The index measures a country’s ability to produce advanced and complex products such as missiles and other lethat weapon systems. The little internationally wanted war criminal and illegitimate “president” has completely failed to increase his military industries’ capabilities to produce advanced products.
The putin effect on muscovy’s capability to produce advanced goods.
Source: Harvard Growth Lab, The Atlas of Economic Complexity.
This does not mean that there has not been and improvement at all in muscovy’s industries. It means that it has stagnated relative to other countries. The Oreshnik is after a development based on its predecessors.
As Iran and Syria, discovered, muscovy’s air defence systems S-300 and S-400 systems are useless against the Israel air force which probably drew on Ukrainian experience from destroying them. And since Ukraine daily converts muscovy’s tanks, helicopters, air planes, ships and other stuff to junk, nobody wants to buy muscovy’s weapons any longer.
Customers’s assessments
Weapons from muscovy? No thank you.
The muscovy system is not corrupt. Corruption is the system.
The pervasive corruption in muscovy’s armies helped Ukraine at the full-scale invasion in February 2022. The kremlin has spent millions of roubles to gather intelligence and bribe Ukrainains hoping to conquer Kyiv in three days. It turned out that the intelligence officers who was supposed to carry out that, has wasted the money themselves. They told the kremlin that the fascists would be greeted with salt and bread. Instead, the fascists were greeted by Javelins, and NLAWs. We also know that the fascists had old maps of roads and and infrastructure. Lack of fuel, neglected maintenance and repair, outdated communication equipment and more were other signs of corruption.
The corruption is so pervasive that it is not correct to say that the muscovy system is corrupt. Instead, it is more accurate to say that Corruption is the muscovy system.
As pointed out by for example Anders Åslund, who has a vast experience of bureacrats, politicians, and oligarchs in muscovy, muscovy is best described as Kleptocracy. People are hired and appointed to different positions in the bureacracy not because of them being competent, but because of their loyalty. Once in their positions, they are allowed or even expected to take bribes from and extort people and firms engaging with the bureacracy. They are even encourad to bribe and extort as long as they pay tribute to fascists higher up in the foodchain. Those, higher ranked fascists in turn, pay tribute to their superiors and finally to the fascist in chief himself who can use the money to build new castles with golden toilet brushes and movie theatres where he can watch movies made to match his preferences.
The kremlin only punishes someone for being corrupt if that person does not pay upwards or if the person embezzles so much that it is impossible to ignore and an example has to be made since the embezzlement has been so obvious.
The muscovy system is not corrupt. Corruption is the muscocy system.
Source: Transparency International.
This concerns the defence sector to a high degree. As mentioned above, when quoting Izomtsev, “Thirdly, the defence sector consists of state-owned monopolies without any competition but suffering from financial mismanagement and corruption.“
And he is not the only one pointing out that the corrupion is pervasive also, or perhaps, especially in the defence sector since so much money is spent on it. Below is a quite from my 2022 post about corruption in the muscovy defence sector, where an article in Politico by Polina Beliakova discussed how corruption erodes the Russian military capacity.
“For example, in 2012, a Russian arms company received about $26 million to develop an aircraft system for the interception of nonstrategic missiles, according to local press reports. But the research never took off, as the firm signed fraudulent contracts with shell companies, some of which were registered to the addresses of public toilets in Russia’s Samara region. In a separate case from 2016, another company which was responsible for the supply of radio navigation equipment and control systems for high-precision ammunition, was embroiled in an embezzlement scandal in which its leadership imitated research and development activities to steal money through fraudulent contracts”
Another assessment of the corruption in the Russian military industry is provided by Transparency International here. The authors conclude that:
“Russia’s defence sector is at high risk of corruption, owing to extremely limited external oversight of the policies, budgets, activities and acquisitions of defence institutions. Transparency is also restricted, particularly in procurement and safeguards to corruption for military operations are weak. Anti-corruption safeguards are, however, strongest in personnel management.”
Corruption is the system.
muscovy’s economy is in a poor state
Sometimes one reads that the muscovy’s economy is growing by three or four percent. Let’s assume for a while that muscovy is not cooking its books but provides accurate statistics for GDP even though the trade statistics and statistics on production for most manufacturing industries are classfied. In any case, that “growth” is mostly due to growth in those industries producing ammunition, weapons, torture instruments, and concentration camps. In normal countries, growth contributes to the population’s welfare in terms of new and or improved products, hospitals, medicines, schools, roads and so on and so forth. Not in muscovy. The Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), released recently a report assessing the muscovy economy: The Russian Economy in the Fog of War. In the report, a lot of muscovy’s claims are dismissed:
It is indeed a fog of war. The authors of the report dismiss the inflation statistics. The muscovy national bank recently raised its interest rate to 21%. The kremlin claims that the inflation rate is 8%, implying that the real interest rate is 13%. That is of course rubbish. Real interest rates are normally found in thre range of 3% to 4%. This translates to an inflation rate of 17% or 18%. No firms are willing to invest at the high interest rates which also cause housing markets and construction to collapse. This will be fun to watch.
During peaceful circumstances, inflation measured by consumer price indices (CPI) closely follow the gdp deflator, an index for GDP in nominal terms even though the latter is more encompassing than the former. During war time, inflation in the GDP deflator probably grows faster than the CPI, due to increased military expenditures that stimulates demand for ammuntion, weapons and other stuff needed to murder Ukrainain civilians.
GDP in real terms is GDP in nominal terms divided by the deflator. By falsely claiming a too low CPI inflation, the kremlin also falsely claims a too low GDP deflator inflation, and thus a too high real GDP. The authors of the report dismiss the offical growth rate of real GDP of 3.6% in 2023, and discuss different measures of inflation that yield alternative estimates the GDP growth.
Source: SITE, The Fog of War.
The economy is of course also constrained by the extremely high interest rates which make investments very expensive and risky. The interest rates also impact on the households via their mortgages. The banks have ceased offereing the previously cheap loans to households which have caused large declines of housing prices.
Our economies are larger and more effective.
This point is so obvious that I won’t devote much space to it. Besides, the discussion above has already gone into detail about the muscovy’s low-technology economy’s inability to produce advanced products. That is not a problem as Anasstasia Fedyk and Tatiana Deryugina shows in this op-ed in Project Syndicate:
And its crony-capitalist economy, rife with corruption and nepotism, is meager compared to the combined economic might of Ukraine’s allies, with a GDP equal to that of Texas. Compared to the beaten-down Europe of 1941, today’s EU is much more capable of resisting Russian aggression.
muscovy can only be trusted to violate any agreement or treaty it signs.
There are people that want us to stop sending arms to Ukraine and to force her to negotiate away territores and betray her people. They also want us to stop protecting ourselves and reinforce our defence against the fascist dictatorship.
The rest of us know that a used toilet paper is more valuable than any agreement of treaty signed by the kremlin. Economists for Ukraine have put together a database with verified russian lies, violations of treaties, and more. Against Ukraine, the kremlin has broken at least the following agreements. The 1994 Budapest Memorandum in which Ukraine's independence and territorial integrity were guaranteed by, among others, the kremlin.
Three years later, the countries entered into the russian-Ukrainian Friendship Agreement. In the agreement, the countries recognized the inviolability of the common border, pledged to respect each other's territorial sovereignty, and pledged not to use violence against each other as a means of resolving conflicts.
In the same year, 1997, the countries entered into an agreement where the russian Black Sea Fleet was allowed to rent a naval base in Sevastopol. The agreement also included an assurance to respect Ukraine's sovereignty. The agreement was renewed in 2010 under the name Kharkiv Pact.
In connection with the invasion of Donbas, the kremlin entered and broke Minsk I and Minsk II. According to the agreements, Ukraine would, among other things, be guaranteed the right to control its borders and all foreign troops would be withdrawn from Ukraine.
As is well known, the kremlin completely ignored this. The kremlin retained control of eleven border crossings between the countries. The OSCE was only able to monitor two of these, but was still able to observe between 2014 and 24 February 2022 that roughly 30,000 soldiers in russian uniforms crossed the border. In addition, there were those who traveled in vehicles with covered windows and were transported by rail over the unguarded railway crossings between the two countries.
Furthermore, the kremlin has violated the Helsinki Agreement, the UN Charter, the INF Treaty with the US, the Sochi Agreement with Georgia and more.
The kremlin was too weak to help Assad.
The last days’s developments were fast. When I began to write this post, the rebels had not yet approached Damascus. The kremlin who has been very helpful in bombing children’s hospitals, schools and helping Assad to bomb children and women with chemical weapons, is now desperately vacating its troops and emptying its bases in Syria. This is a loss of face for the little internationally wanted war criminal and illegitimate “president” in the kremlin. He is unable to both fight a genocial war against Ukraine and help his allies.