Financial Times: How long can Russia continue the war in Ukraine?

When Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the war against Ukraine, he envisioned that Russian forces would capture Kiev within days.

But a year later, the Russian army did not come close to achieving the desired victory, but rather lost part of the lands it tried to annex last September.

A report in the British Financial Times said that Russia's losses on the battlefield are so huge that Western officials doubt it can launch an offensive of the same magnitude again.

Meanwhile, sanctions have hurt the Russian economy and its isolation from essential supply chains has affected Putin's war machine.

The report added that despite the dire state of the Russian forces and the crisis the Russian economy has been facing for years, Putin showed no sign of backing down from his goals or looking for a way out of the war, insisting that Russia's victory was "inevitable" and that "his goals will be fully achieved."

ammunition stocks

The newspaper revealed that the Russian defense industry is facing an uphill battle to compensate for Moscow's heavy losses during the war.

According to British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, since the war began, Russia has lost no less than 4,500 armored vehicles, 63 aircraft, 70 helicopters, 150 drones, 12 ships, and more than 600 artillery systems.

Ukraine's estimate of Russia's losses was higher, including 6,388 armored vehicles, 2,215 artillery systems, 294 aircraft, 284 helicopters, and 796 cruise missiles as of early February.

Although Russia currently deploys about 1,800 tanks and has another 5,000 tanks in reserve, many of them date back to the Soviet era and are often in poor condition.

In a sign of desperation, Russia has turned to the S-300 air defense system for long-range strikes, explains the Financial Times.

On the front lines themselves, the situation was equally difficult.

Last December, the United States said that Russia's stockpile of ammunition is sufficient for it until the beginning of 2023, in light of the dwindling stocks of fully usable ammunition, which prompts Moscow's forces to use deteriorating ammunition.

According to the British newspaper, the losses indicate the potential difficulties in continuing the new attacks, but Russia can find its hope in Beijing.

Over the weekend, the Biden administration said it was "very concerned" that China would begin supplying weapons to Russia, relieving some pressure on its depleted stockpiles.

The Financial Times said that when examining Russian weapons and equipment, Ukraine's armed forces found components from household appliances such as washing machines, an indication that Russia is looking at consumables to make up for shortfalls.

financing

Last month, Putin proudly told his economic cabinet that predictions of a Russian economic collapse were unfounded.

Putin noted that "the real dynamics turned out to be better than many forecasts of experts ... Remember, some of our experts here in the country thought that GDP would fall by 10, 15 or even 20 percent."

The newspaper stated that Russia's gross domestic product fell by only 2.1%, as record oil and gas profits amounting to 11.6 trillion rubles ($ 168 billion) helped the Kremlin compensate for Western efforts to isolate Russia from global markets and supply chains.

But in January, energy revenues fell 46% year-on-year, while military spending swelled, driving up the deficit.

Russia expects its energy income, which accounts for about 40% of government revenue, to fall by 23% this year.

Although China and India helped offset the damage by buying more Russian oil, Western sanctions began to cut back on profits.

In order to compensate for the increase in defense spending - which currently accounts for a third of the total expenditures of the approved budget for 2023 - the Kremlin is preparing to significantly reduce its financial expenditures and rely on international capital markets.

The war has forced Russian policymakers to increase borrowing, mainly from state-owned banks.

Besides the Russian National Wealth Fund and borrowing, Russia could carve out a share of corporate profits as it did by imposing a $20 billion tax on profits on Gazprom in 2022.

Army

The Financial Times report explained that before the war began, the Russian army numbered between 740,000 and 780,000, according to a military expert from Tufts University, much less than the official figure of 1.15 million.

Only up to 168,000 troops were permanently combat-ready in battalion tactical groups, while 100,000 or so were in reserve units and the remainder were support units.

Russian forces deployed in Ukraine suffered heavy losses in the first weeks of the war.

On September 21, Putin announced a draft call-up of 300,000 soldiers to the front.

Given the apparent lack of forces on the battlefield, Ukraine has begun to prepare for counterattacks that would liberate swathes of territory that Russia occupied only a few months earlier.

Demographic expert Dmitriy Zakotyansky estimates that the Russian army could theoretically recruit up to a million more men, although this "would require a lot of financial and political pressure as well, and would come at the cost of yet another shift in public opinion."

However - according to the Financial Times - there are other major restrictions standing in Putin's face, starting with the army's ability to house, equip, train and pay the new forces, to the Kremlin's willingness to remove these from economic life and spark new waves of panic and mass emigration.

 general opinion

The Financial Times said that the weakness of popular enthusiasm about the developments of the war indicates that Russian society is still suffering from anxiety.

Despite the crushing of all internal opposition to Putin and the war on Ukraine, the difficulty of embodying manifestations of support for the regime is an issue that the Kremlin will pay for before the presidential elections next year, when Putin is expected to run for a new term.

And while Putin says that the "military operation in Ukraine" enjoys overwhelming support, analysts assert that Russia's unprecedented crackdown on the opposition has made it difficult to know the true size of public opinion support.

Putin had signed a new law providing for prison sentences of up to 15 years for "defaming the reputation of the armed forces" for those who describe the conflict as "war", according to the Financial Times.

The newspaper says that government censorship has largely destroyed the independence of the Russian media, and eliminated all anti-war activities, and this means that the support for the war that appeared in opinion polls does not reveal all aspects of the truth.