The war between democracy and dictatorship is also a war between stagnation and innovation.
While muscovy fights with meat, Ukraine fights with innovation.
Spoiler: While the fascists fight with it with attrition and meatwaves, the democracy Ukraine defends herself with innovation. The little fascist in chief is also a control freak. He has put hard restrictions on the academia. By doing that, he has also stroke a hard blow against innovation. This is another reason why Ukraine will win the war.
The war between Ukraine against muscovy is not only a war between democracy and fascism, it is also a war between innovation against stagnation. muscovy, aka The Fascist Horde, fights a war of attrition. Massive flows of artillery shells, missiles, and rockets level childrens’ hospitals, villages and cities to the ground. This is followed or accompanied by meat waves of more or less trained and equipped troops. The little fascist in chief sacrifices more than 1,000 people everyday to in return for a few acres of agricultural fields in Donbas.
The Ukrainian incursion in Kursk was carried out with high-tech equipment used by well-trained soldiers in a carefully planned operation which involved troops both on the ground as well as in the air. A masterly coordinated operation which enabled the fast occupation of a large territory and thousands of POWs.
The available information indicates that the Ukrainan incursion was carried out by massive deployment of drones jamming muscovy’s drones and other surveillance equipment. Apparently, Ukrainain drones could avoid being jammed by changing frequences fast and often. This operation not only made the fascists blind but also allowed Ukrainan artillery and troops to move forward so fast that muscovy’s defence was completey overriden. The attacks were often carried out by small flexible units carrying out specific tasks, acting with large degree of independece within the overall goal for the operation.
The operation is much better analysed by the retired Austrailian army general Mick Ryan who has a substack here, and a Twitter account here.
A short analysis is provided by the Twitter account @Tendar
Source: @Tendar on Twitter
The assessment of Tendar shows clearly that the Battle of Kursk shows a high degree of both product and process innovation on the side of Ukraine Armed Forces. This is of course a reflection of the Ukrainian economy and society.
Innovation in Ukraine exceeds its conditions
The Global Innovation Index 2023 shows that innovation is Ukraine is increasing despite muscovy’s attempts to destroy all education and research facilities. In fact, it has now increased, (or improved), so much that Ukraine is now one of top three innovation economies in the low-income group.
Ukraine is one of the top three innovation economies among lower-income group countries.
Source: Global Innovation Index 2023. Note. The star indicates that Ukraine is a newcomer in the top three group.
muscovy’s war makes it difficult to create favourable innovation frameworks, but nevertheless, Ukrainans succeed. As the authors of the report write:
“Relative to GDP, Ukraine is performing above expectations for its level of development.“
Innovation in Ukraine is better than expected.
Source: Global Innovation Index 2023. Note. Bubble size reflects population size.
The index is composed of indicators reflecting institutional conditions, outputs, R&D expenditures, outputs in terms of product, human capital, and more. According to the report, Ukraine ranks higher than its total index in Creative outputs, Knowledge and technology outputs, Human capital and research, and Business sophistication. The index is dragged down by Market sophistication, Institutions, and Infrastructure. Ukrainian R&D expenditures are also relatively low. For obvious reasons.
The findings show that innovation “outputs” are higher than expected given the framework conditions and “inputs”. It also implies that policies aiming at improving framework could give innovation another impetus.
Democracy and Freedom are good for innovation. Fascism and Oppression are bad.
According to the Swedish saying “Nöden är uppfinningarnas moder” are hunger and dire conditions good for innovation. That is of course rubbish. But, Ukrainian deveopments of drones, and soon long-range missiles, show that the stupid saying has a grain of truth in it. Surviving attacks from an enemy with massively more manpower and weapons, forces you to come up with smart solutions. Not only that, you have to figure out how to work to make smart, and effective things as fast as you can. This is done by cooperation and exchange of ideas with others whom you trust in an environment that encourages free flows and exchanges of information. As Noah Smith puts it in his blog. Innovation: it takes a village.
When putin was made president by Yeltsin, the muscovy academia enjoyed a high degree of freedom. As is well-known, the little fascist in chief began to dismantle the fragile democracy as soon as he was in power. The restrictions, censorships that was imposed on the society also affected the academia. Further restrictions were imposed after the war against Georgia, the Bolotnaya protests againt the faked elections, the occupation of Crimea, and the full-scale invasion.
Though the war also has meant that martial law has been imposed in Ukraine, academic freedom is still relatively high.
Freedom of academic exchange and dissemination in Ukraine and muscovy.
Source: Varieties of Democracy. Note: The indicator ranges from 0 to 4 where 0 indicates exchanges and disseminations are completely restricted, 1 indicates that they are severely restricted, 2 that exchanges and disseminations are subject to censorship, 3 that they are mostly free and seldom subject to censorship, and 4 no restrictions.
The high freedom is one factor behind Ukraine’s highly dynamic ICT sector, as pointed out in this article.
Prior to the war, Ukraine was known for its thriving ICT and digital ecosystem. With over 4,000 local ICT companies, one of the largest 4G networks in Europe, and the fourth-highest number of certified tech professionals globally, Ukraine is highly digital. In 2020 approximately 80 percent of the population had access to the internet. The ICT workforce is dominated by young, driven, business-oriented, and tech-savvy professionals who are keen to develop the sector into the main driver of the Ukrainian economy.
Their skills have become very useful now as Ukraine has increased its production of drones, and other weapon systems. Cooperation and innovation works fine in free societies, but not in dictatorships as muscovy, and other autocracies as I wrote about here..
In muscovy, individual initatives are looked upon with suspicion by the authorities and outright forbidden in the military.
The negative attitude versus academic freedom, severely restricts innovation. The attitude is pervasive in muscovy where sustained growth without high fuel prices and inflated military expenditures won’t happen:
The reason is that sustained growth requires growth-friendly economic and political institutions because such institutions favour the creation of new firms but may threaten the incumbent economic and political elites’ business.
The Russian Middle-Income trap is made of Putin. It is a political economy trap which is characterised by institutions that favour the deals-based relationship between Kremlin and the oligarchs.
While this may seem counter-intuitive, it is deliberate. Putin doesn’t care about growth. He cares about sovereignty and stability.
The above is a quote from this post:
Conclusion.
Freedom and innovation will help Ukraine win the war.