r/worldnews • u/UNITED24Media United24 Media • 11h ago

Russia/Ukraine CIA Chief Told Moscow Russia Is Getting Weaker—Putin Reportedly Canceled Their Meeting

https://united24media.com/world/cia-chief-told-moscow-russia-is-getting-weaker-putin-reportedly-canceled-their-meeting-22121
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u/Consistent_Ad3181 11h ago edited 11h ago

Russia has a GDP slightly larger than Spain.

Edit

Nothing wrong with Spain, it's a fine proud country but it's not considered a military and econonic super power.

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u/KatsumotoKurier 6h ago edited 2h ago

Russia has a GDP slightly larger than Spain.

With an economy roughly the size of Canada's yet with over 100 million more people, with an overall life expectation that's like 12 years less, a much lower overall quality of life, horrible corruption issues, and what some experts are calling an HIV epidemic.

Meanwhile it is enormously resource rich yet still insists on invading its neighbours for needless expansion wars. Like really - imagine being 150x the size of Norway and with a population 70x the size, and with all the same resources in enormous plentitudes, yet... not being a better country? Russia seems like a land of massively wasted opportunities and potential. It could genuinely be a serious and respectable world leader in so many admirable regards.

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u/Count_de_Ville 11h ago

Oof

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u/Consistent_Ad3181 11h ago

It's true, the military industrial complex needs an enemy, China is relatively benign unless you are a small neighbour in it's sphere of influence, it's happy making money, so there's not much threat, well yet. Who's the enemy? Russia apparently, and that's a paper tiger. Who else North Korea, Iran? They are scraping the barrel to justify outrageous military spending.

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u/LothorBrune 10h ago

I mean, under Trump, Russia is obviously not going to be the enemy, and corruption can justify itself.

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u/Dormage 10h ago

You bring up GDP thinking it somehow matters but it definitly does not. I wonder what Iran's GDP is and how that correlates with their military capability?

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u/Consistent_Ad3181 10h ago

Ah right right you want it both ways? Russia is powerful with lots of kit, Russia has no kit but is powerful in other ways. Look, countries with no GDP cannot invade others, they can mount a defence I suppose. But they become much less of a threat.

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u/Dormage 10h ago

The thing about GDP is that it does not actually measure military capabilities. For a prolonged conflict it might be better to count how many raw materials they have, how dependant they are on other countries to supply them and how many recruits they can bring in long term. I'd say Russia likely beats Spain on all of those. Recent studies also show a very low readiness to defend their country in case od conflict among young men.

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u/Consistent_Ad3181 10h ago

Yeah, talk it up all you want. But the facts remain. Every month Ukraine holds out Russia gets weaker. It can't refine its own petrol now. This doesn't have much to do with Spain to be fair I could have easy said another country with a ball park GDP, but it is a measure of industrial output and wealth.

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u/Dormage 10h ago

I do not dispute that. Ukraine has been doing great, which only strengthenss my argument regarding GDP. If you study historical conflicts( some before global trade ) it was more important for a country to have strong ideology and raw material/resource independence. My point is GDP is not a predictor for militaristic success be it Spain or any other country. We also measure GDP in dollars and with Russia almost fully isolated from world trade, switching to a war time economy and printing money to sustain it, even our GDP estimates are not comparable with other countries anymore.

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u/Consistent_Ad3181 9h ago

It's a measurement of economic output, there are other factors but if you have a very low GDP your ability to produce cutting edge technology is usually very low.

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u/RezzleG 11h ago

Yet still out produce the US and Europe combined in munitions (and almost outproduce all of NATO in munitions), outproduce the EU and US on tanks, missiles, combat vehicles and batteries for air defence systems.

Their GDP is so low because they are in full war-time economy with their production factories and oil refineries running 24/7, they have managed to sustain warfare since 2022 even with extreme sanctions.

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u/Consistent_Ad3181 11h ago

This is all rubbish, sorry to be blunt, they produce shonky crap, on a larger scale. They still can't deal with a second world neighbour using obsolete NATO kit from 50 years ago. They can't fly planes near Ukraine or make any progress on land. How would they deal with just one more NATO country on another front? Let alone all of them on three more fronts?

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u/CarlMcLam 11h ago

A full time war economy could also produce higher GDP, since it is a whetstone of relocation of resources and created value.

They are not getting much bang for the buck ey? In August, they captured, on net, 5 square km and lost approximately 40 000 soldiers.

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u/RezzleG 11h ago

Well there is a lot of nuance behind GDP during a war time economy, it can go either way, but in the long term it is more of a downward trend. Russia never had a great GDP to begin with and the sanctions have hurt it a ton, but it still manages to sustain warfare even with Ukraine receiving billions and billions of dollars worth of equipment via Europe

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u/CarlMcLam 10h ago

The longterm economic trend for Russia is a disaster. They are a carbon based economy in a world trying to reach post-carbon. They have a brain drain on an epic scale, and their demographic outlook wasn’t good to begin with. They have underinvested in education, infrastructure  and technological advancement, eh uh means they are falling further behind.

If they are lucky, they will be Kongo Kinshasa to the Chinese

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u/Prestigious-Cell-833 11h ago

Russia had a GDP of 1/2 of California before the war began

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u/RezzleG 11h ago

So? They still significantly out-produce the US on a huge number of military equipment.

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u/Prestigious-Cell-833 10h ago

Thats correct. Just pointing out the war is not what caused their low GDP

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u/OrderCarefuly 10h ago

I swear these are probably kids with this GDP takes lol. See it everywhere. They don't understand basics like cost of production to begin with.