Can Russia afford a long war despite sanctions?

Russia can afford to wage a protracted war in Ukraine despite being hit by Western sanctions aimed at crippling its ability to support its war campaign, analysts say, according to Reuters.

Russia’s invasion has pushed up the price of oil, gas and grain it exports, providing it with a significant extra income to fund its “special military operation” – which is now entering a new phase as Moscow focuses on eastern part of Donbass, after failing to break up Ukraine’s defense in the capital Kyiv.

As the war continues, increasing casualties and the need to deploy new troops to the conflict may prove to be more pressing challenges than financial costs.

“This type of war can be financed almost entirely in rubles, which means they can continue to drop troops and heavy artillery into Ukraine at least until there is a general collapse of the economy,” Jacob Kirkegaard, an economist at the Peterson Institute, told International Finance in Washington.

Johan Norberg, a senior analyst at the Swedish Defense Investigation Service, said: “The sanctions will not affect this war in the short term, because the Russian army is fighting with tanks it has already built and soldiers it has already trained.”

Sanctions are expected to shrink the economy by more than 11% this year, according to the World Bank, but revenues from energy exports are actually rising. Russia’s finance ministry said on April 5 that Moscow expects to earn $ 9.6 billion in additional revenue from energy sales in April alone thanks to high oil prices, which remain at around $ 100 a barrel.

There is no doubt, however, that Russia’s famous military machine has suffered a huge and costly blow.

The United States estimates that Russia has lost about 15-20 percent of its military power during its invasion of Ukraine, a senior US defense official has said. This includes everything from tanks, armored vehicles, artillery systems, fighter and bomber aircraft and helicopters to surface-to-air missiles and ballistic missiles, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Lost tanks

According to Oryx, a military website that records casualties on both sides based on verifiable visual evidence, Russia has lost at least 2,770 pieces of military equipment by Tuesday, including at least 476 tanks that were damaged, damaged, abandoned or abandoned. by Ukrainian forces.

That, says Yohann Michel of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), is more than the combined force of two NATO members, France (222) and Britain (227).

Russia, which had about 3,000 tanks before the war, according to IISS, is not going to run out of tanks. But experts say some of them may be old, in poor condition or kept for spare parts, so the actual number available for combat is smaller.

Mathieu Boulegue, a Russian military expert at Chatham House, said Moscow had so far retained its state-of-the-art weapons, which it did not want to lose, and relied heavily on a wealth of more Soviet-era consumables.

He said it could take “at least a decade or two” to rebuild equipment levels to pre-war levels – a task complicated by a number of factors, including design and innovation challenges, corruption, over-indebtedness of defense companies and lack of access to Western technology due to sanctions.

Defense spending

Russia’s military spending should increase both because of the war with Ukraine and because of the sharp rise in tensions with NATO, which has sent thousands of troops to Eastern Europe, said Richard Connolly, a RUSI correspondent in London. director of the consulting company Eastern Advisory Group.

He said that defense spending as a percentage of GDP could increase significantly from the current level of about 4%, possibly doubling in the coming years.

Connolly said ordinary Russians would feel the impact, but the state could easily pay for the war effort, even if the country’s economy plunges into recession. If needed, it could order resources such as fuel from state-owned companies.

The most pressing question, he said, is the level of casualties and the difficulty of maintaining a war involving up to 150,000 soldiers at a time.

Russia has so far recognized only 1,351 soldiers dead and 3,825 wounded, although Ukraine and Western governments believe the toll is much higher. Its army and airborne troops have a combined force of about 325,000 men.

Eventually, Connolly said, she may have to make the politically unpopular decision to take refuge in her reserves, which IISS estimates number 2 million men under the age of 50 serving in the military for the past five years.

“If you have 150,000 troops in Ukraine, you have half your effective army right now in military operations, many of which have suffered significant losses,” Connolly said.

“So he will have to replace them, he will have to take turns. Basically, they will use their entire army if the war goes on for much longer,” he said.