What makes Putin incapable of waging long war?

I'm shocked every time I read serious people writing that Putin is ready to fight for years to come. Because none of them even tries to analyse whether he will have something to fight with during these years.

In fact, the Soviet Union (economically many times more powerful than the Russian Federation) worked for this war with three quarters of its monster industry for 50 years before its death. And it passed on an incredible arsenal of weapons and ammunition to its descendants. 

Over the past decade, Russians have managed to destroy our warehouses, but they are still using their own ones in fighting. Of course, the hundreds of billions of oil and gas dollars of recent decades have also replenished their arsenals quite well, but quantitatively, these figures are incommensurable.

“And now tell me, have you seen in the analyses of the adherents of the "war for years" at least one justification for the production capacity (not to mention the funds that have become significantly less) that Putin's army can use to receive the 15,000 artillery shells that are fired daily? And a couple of dozen tanks? What about guns and barrels for them? What about thousands of missiles for MLRS and the missile launchers themselves?”

I'm not advocating underestimating the enemy, and I'm not talking about 2-3 weeks. I'm just saying that a long war between an economy with 1.5 per cent of global GDP and one with almost 50 per cent (the US and the EU) has little chance.

And I haven't even mentioned the tightening of export controls on elements of military equipment from the civilised world and the position of China, which is unlikely to endure a several-fold decline in GDP growth rate for Putin's sake due to the war-induced sanctions and economic crisis.

In my opinion, creating the illusion of Putin's extraordinary power is no better than underestimating him.

Source

About the author. Karl Volokh, political analyst, blogger.

The editors do not always share the views expressed by the authors of the blogs.