Russian special military operation in Ukraine #56

ALAMO wrote:Rise your hand, if your mummy dropped you twice - or more if one time was not enough?

and in his case head first into a pile of lead paint chips

mnztr wrote:

Arkanghelsk wrote:https://t.me/remylind21/21952

The big man arrived in China

What to ask for?

AESA radars?

Electromagnetic catapult?

Drone components?

We shall see, there's plenty of money to spend

https://t.me/ukraina_ru/200712

Who greeted him. Seems quite low key TBH. I expected Beijing to make a bigger statement. No Xi, no Wang Yi

Putin was greeted by a guard of honor in Beijing

Putin left Beijing airport in an Aurus, accompanied by Chinese police.

BEIJING, May 15 - RIA Novosti. A company of honor guard met Russian President Vladimir Putin at Beijing airport, a RIA Novosti correspondent reports.

Putin arrived in China on a two-day state visit.

After the welcoming ceremony, the Russian leader's motorcade left Beijing airport, accompanied by Chinese police and a detachment of motorcyclists. The President travels in an Aurus.

https://ria.ru/20240515/pekin-1946292899.html

Arkanghelsk wrote:https://t.me/remylind21/21952

The big man arrived in China

What to ask for?

AESA radars?

Electromagnetic catapult?

Drone components?

We shall see, there's plenty of money to spend

https://t.me/ukraina_ru/200712

Sometimes you say interesting stuff. And sometimes you say the most retarded shit.

I'm in awe of such a split personality you have.

Guns, butter and military Keynesianism. Experts on the “growth model” for Russia, 05.16.2024.

One of the priorities for the new government is to integrate the economy of the security bloc into the overall economy of the country, the president said. Can this approach be called military Keynesianism - in the RBC material.

On May 14, the updated composition of the Cabinet of Ministers began work . Key changes include the appointment of economist Andrei Belousov, who previously served as First Deputy Prime Minister, as Minister of Defence and the elevation of the status of Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov, who oversees industry (including defense) and technological development, to First Deputy Head of Government.

It is necessary “to integrate the economy of the entire power bloc and the Ministry of Defence as a key link in this bloc into the overall economy of the country,” said President Vladimir Putin.

Russia's military budget is growing every year, and in 2024 total spending on defence and security will amount to 8.7% of GDP, Putin said. “This is not 13%, as it was in the USSR, but it is also a significant amount. This is a great resource, and we are obliged to use it efficiently and effectively,” he said.

In addition, the importance of technological leadership for the country's defence capability is growing. “Today, the winner on the battlefield is the one who is more open to innovation, more open to the most rapid implementation,” said presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov.

A number of foreign experts have previously characterized the active role of the Russian state in economic policy and its transition to a “military footing” with the term “military Keynesianism.” Together with economists, RBC looked into whether such a definition was applicable to the course of the new government and what consequences it would have for the Russian economy.

What is "Military Keynesianism"

In economic theory, military Keynesianism is understood as an anti-crisis economic policy of the state, which is aimed at increasing aggregate demand by increasing military spending. The term belongs to the contemporaries and followers of the English economist: John Maynard Keynes himself did not have a division between military and civilian Keynesianism, points out Oleg Buklemishev, associate professor of macroeconomic policy and strategic management at the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University. Initially, Keynesian economic theory assumes that aggregate demand depends on many decisions, both public and private, and government intervention can smooth out fluctuations in economic cycles.

“Keynes has a very interesting transition: if at first he believed that civilian areas of appropriations should be used to activate rapid economic growth with the help of budget expenditures, then he came to the conclusion that no other Keynesianism, except military, is possible. In a democracy, there is no way to boost the economy except through military spending. This idea is clearly visible in his mind,” notes Buklemishev.

Today, when they talk about military Keynesianism, they remember two historical examples, the economist points out. The first is the Great Depression and Germany before World War II, which was supposedly able to overcome economic difficulties by preparing for military action. The second story is the United States, which, with the help of military spending at the turn of the 1930s and 1940s, spun the “flywheel of economic growth.”

“But on closer examination, neither one nor the other stands up to critical scrutiny, since in both cases economic growth began before military spending began, and for completely different reasons. That is, this is not an explanation, and it is unknown whether this is a recipe for economic prosperity,” Buklemishev points out.

Estimates based on data from the two world wars suggest that armed conflicts did not have a long-term positive impact on the trajectory of economic growth, even for the United States, a country whose “capital base” did not suffer significant damage in these conflicts, notes Bloomberg Economics economist for Russia and Central Asia. and Eastern Europe Alexander Isakov. Mobilization and the growth of government spending temporarily increased business activity, after which it returned to the trend - after the Second World War, for the United States this happened already in the second half of the 1940s.

Force spending as a way to stimulate economic growth is a method as old as the hills, says Anton Tabakh, chief economist at Expert RA. “Perhaps the US experience of the 1980s is the most striking, since many of the innovations achieved in the sector then pulled the American economy out of the crises of the 1970s,” he believes. At that time, “Reaganomics” was largely based on the growth of government orders for high-tech military-industrial companies.

Is this concept applicable to Russia?

The academic literature does not have a clear answer to how increased military spending affects economic growth, points out economist and scientific director of NES Ruben Enikolopov. If we talk about a “moderate” increase, this approach on average around the world probably does not work: “Increasing government spending on defense by $1 increases GDP by less than $1.”

“If any positive effect is observed, it occurs in developed countries during recessions and in countries with fixed exchange rates and low economic openness in terms of trade,” notes Enikolopov, citing recent studies.

Economist at Ulster University (Northern Ireland) Lukman said, in a 2023 paper (. pdf ), calculated on data for 133 countries for the period 1960–2012 that an increase in the percentage of military spending and GDP by 1 percentage point. leads to a reduction in economic growth by 1.1 percentage points. At the same time, American scientists Jeff Carter, Heather Ondersin and Glenn Palmer, in a 2021 paper , concluded that the impact of changes in military spending on GDP is nonlinear over time: the initial effect of increasing spending on GDP is negative, but after some time it becomes positive.

The maximum positive impact of defence spending on GDP is achieved two years after the start of its implementation. “That is, we are now approximately approaching these two years with the peak of the positive impact,” Enikolopov said on the RBC TV channel. At the end of 2023, Russia’s GDP grew by 3.6%, Rosstat reported, and in the first quarter of 2024 - by 4.6%, according to the Central Bank’s assessment.

Military Keynesianism is not entirely suitable for describing the current model of economic policy, Isakov believes. First, this theory assumes that military-industrial spending primarily aims to stabilize the economic cycle—that is, at the most primitive level, to reduce unemployment by mobilizing the unemployed population either into the armed forces or into industry.

“This description is poorly consistent with the observed reality, in which the government and the Bank of Russia are rather concerned about overheating of the labor market, abnormally low unemployment and labor shortages,” Isakov points out.

Secondly, according to military Keynesianism, other expenditures, such as financing transport infrastructure, education, and industrial policy, have lower efficiency than expenditures on the military-industrial complex. “This also does not fully correspond to experience,” the economist states.

Temporary effect

Whatever you call the current situation in the Russian economy - military Keynesianism or mobilization economics - one thing is clear: this is a temporary phenomenon that cannot last too long, says Alexey Vedev, head of the Laboratory of Structural Research at the Institute of Economics and Economy of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. According to him, in the medium and long term, exceeding the level of military spending above 3% of GDP is considered dangerous.

“There is a logical explanation for this - for example, the threat of inflation. Everyone gets real money for making shells, which are simply destroyed, and the money goes to the market. Naturally, a structural imbalance arises. Therefore, neither the mobilization economy nor military Keynesianism can continue for a long time - only two or three years,” says Vedev.

Indeed, about two years later, the positive momentum from increased military spending is beginning to fade, Enikolopov says. “Either we need to continue pumping in even more money, which is what we are seeing in fact, or there is a compression, because these are all temporary effects,” he noted on the RBC TV channel.

The expert emphasized that such economic growth can hardly be called “healthy.” “Healthy growth is an increase in productivity, an increase in the quality and quantity of labor, investment, and so on,” Enikolopov listed.

The development of the military-industrial complex sector can give several positive effects in the long term, noted Prokhor Tebin, head of the sector of international military-economic problems at the Central Committee of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, on the air of RBC. “At the next stage, [the military-industrial complex] may become an additional source for Russian high-tech exports. Plus <...> [there is] a synergistic effect for the civilian economy,” he believes. Recently, technologies, innovations and new approaches are increasingly coming to the military from the civilian one, Tebin clarified.

After the positive effect from the development of the military-industrial complex has been exhausted, Russia will face a “painful setback,” Vedev is pessimistic. The reason will be accumulated structural imbalances in the economy, excessively high salaries and increased social tension associated with the return of contract employees to their homeland, he points out. TsMAKP economist Dmitry Belousov previously warned about similar consequences : in his opinion, military personnel who receive high payments are unlikely to want to go to jobs with much less compensation.

Conditional division

Despite the fact that many call Andrei Belousov a statist economist, a follower of the Keynesian model, this is not entirely true, Vedev believes. “The division into “statists” and “marketists” is, in principle, very arbitrary and illegitimate. Because in fact, in the last 20 years in Russia there has been a conflict between “market people” and “market people”: the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank advocated excessive financial stability, and the Ministry of Economic Development advocated economic growth,” the economist points out.

According to Vedev, when 50% of state enterprises in the economy, which, in general, are obliged to obey the government as the owner, “you involuntarily become a statist.” “Although in fact - and Belousov admits this - adaptation to the crisis and forced import substitution occurs due to market factors,” he notes.

If we put forward hypotheses about what “school of thought” Belousov adheres to, most likely, his views were formed, like most economists, at the university - and his specialty was “cybernetics economist,” argues Isakov.

“Cybernetics was a popular area of ​​scientific thought in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, which proposed supplementing the planned system with a system for operational monitoring of indicators and reactions to their deviations from target trajectories,” explains the economist.

These developments were based, among other things, on the translated works of cybernetic economists such as Stafford Beer and others, and today a system similar in spirit has been implemented on the basis of the government’s coordination headquarters, which is engaged in constant monitoring of business activity indicators, notes Isakov.

https://www.rbc.ru/economics/16/05/2024/6644a9f89a794748d72c03e9

The above is a very interesting article but we also need to understand that Russia is at a very critical point where it is literally fighting for its survival. To survive this onslaught from the west you need good calm heads to run and guide the economy in the right direction. We don't want a repeat of the Cold War again. The new defense minister is an excellent first step to run this ship efficiently.

The Russians themselves know their history and they realize that some sacrifices will have to be made, but in the end they will survive.

No major progress has been made in the Kharkov region.  Currently, the northern grouping numbers several thousand soldiers.  They are not currently introducing new reserves.  It looks like there will be no major surgery in this direction. Russia still does not have enough soldiers. A minimum of 200,000 troops are needed for the Kharkov region, and there are about 50,000. A few thousand will capture a few villages and that's it. As we see in the current operation.

Telegram channel "Militarist (https://t.me/infantmilitario/126675)": Fresh analysis of the situation and forecast from the Turks:

Until next week there will be clear and calm weather on the Black Sea. Everything is suitable for cruise missile attacks, tactical ballistic missile attacks, UAV attacks, and exploding boats. The level of threat to Russian installations in the Black Sea, especially in Crimea and the Kerch Strait region, has increased incredibly.

Things are not going very well in Kharkov. After the assassination attempt on Fico, unrest in the segment of the anti-Ukrainian war in Europe reached its climax. It looks like NATO is about to do something big to distract attention, boost morale, and bring Western attention back to supporting Ukraine.

Since the target seems very clear, MI6 and GUR teams may try to do something in remote places behind the front lines, even towards Moscow.
via @vicktop55

Classic case of Ukrainian common sense

Arthur Morgan
@ArthurM40330824
7 #Ukrainian soldiers were sent home from #Germany for wearing right-wing extremist symbols - DW
Any Na_zi symbols are illegal in so Ukranian soldiers can't have an exception.

We are talking about military personnel who were trained in Germany.

Among them at least 7 cases of wearing Na_zi symbols were recorded.

The training of these soldiers was immediately stopped in agreement with the #Ukrainian Armed Forces, and they were sent home.

According to the #German government, upon arrival in #Germany, all #Ukrainian soldiers are warned about the inadmissibility of right-wing extremist symbols.
But you can't easily remove tattoos or change ideology

Arrow wrote:

https://twitter.com/distant_earth83/status/1791006952618631633?t=aD8LWRWi5BcXPxyPze01HA&s=19

Not really a surprise. Again, the goal is not land but to send Ukronazis to Unka Adolf and Grandpa Stepan. This whole war is Verdun. The strategy is to take enough ground to bait the Ukrainians into having to take it back in desperate hopes for a massive pr win, and then dig in and rain down hell for a couple months and wipe out most of the latest NATO standard men and weaponry. Then either fall back or start a new drive on the next few settlements. Really, it makes sense. Ukraine wants to dig in and fight defensive warfare because their wounds are covered with bandaids, cookies from Vicky, and the forlorn hopes of hell and more aid from the United Shits (I love my country but those in power in both parties are pure shit so I will let the autocomplete have its way). The gloomers a few months back told us that this was the master plan by Syrsky and how it was gonna be a game changer. Well, to defeat that plan, actually not a bad one on their part, you attack on new axes of the front because while you don't intend to take Kharkov you know that they know that they cannot lose Kharkov so do just enough to get them out of their positions and then bomb and attack them until there aren't so many as there were. Syrsky's plan of digging in could work, but the leadership in Ukraine cannot have bad optics. The idea of losing Kharkov is not something Zelensky can accept. So sound military thinking is trumped by pr expediency. At high cost to the Ukrainian army, losses they cannot afford, Russia, pretty much withdrawing on their own without pressure, will fall back because the bame of the game is killing nazis not taking land. Zelensky will pin medals on the poor bastards lucky enough to survive the hellscape and another 100 thousand get to shake hands with unka adolph and granpa Stepan.

kvs wrote:The phrase "game changer" is one of the markers of the retardation rampant in the NATzO west and its tool, Ukria.   If the behaviour of NATzO
deciders looks retarded it is because it is just that.   NATzO deciders are higher functioning autistics.   This explains their n-tupling down
behaviour.  Instead of cutting their losses, they will drive further with the same BS just like actual retards.  

The question is why are they autistic.   I think it is because of inbreeding.   This seems unlikely, but the elites are isolated from the proles and
their number is not that large.   We already had inbreeding in royal families in the past.   It is not as pronounced now but similar.   The other
factor is "meritocracy".   Autistics can be very "talented" in certain regards (idiot savants is an extreme case) so I see the n-tupling or no
reverse gear (as Mercouris puts it) behaviour as indicative of the subset that reaches the top.   This behaviour works in organizational
mobility, but it does not work to win wars.   There is no "triumph of the wills" that supersedes reality.  

I use the term in mocking derision.

I think KVS is referring to Blinkens retarded remarks here?