Given that Russia is cut off from the benefits of globalism, and that the mobilization is removing the young and strong from the already faltering economy, aren't the Russians in danger of mass starvation?
If (and when) the war finally ends, the next leader of Russia (or Putin, by some bizarre margin of him being still in power) will have to solicit the wider part of the world to lift sanctions to save itself; if not, it'll have to rely on its "allies", but that will go only so far if Russia outright admits defeat or basically informally does so.
China will be one of the firsts to diverge away from Russia in a large way. As of late, the relationship between Russia and China has been one of China increasingly being the "dominant" one, while Russia became more of a lackey (instead of them being peers as they were years ago). Now that dynamic will exacerbate after Russia's fiasco in Ukraine. China will also be pissed at Russia for losing so badly, because all it did was strengthen NATO's resolve and combat readiness for any future conflict (i.e Taiwan).
Iran and Russia are average allies at best. They help each other because they have the common interest of "beating back the West" (also, let's not forget they both had differing reasons for keeping Bashar al-Assad in power during the height of the Syrian Civil War). Iran has been reported with supplying Russia with drones this week, so it obviously wants Russia to come out on top here. Iran, like Russia, will be eventually subsumed in China's sphere of influence due to no other options.
Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan see Russia's wavering military power and take that as a cue to begin fighting each other, despite both being in CSTO. Not only that, even with Armenia being directly attacked by Azerbaijan, Russia is lukewarm to do anything substantial to do anything against Azerbaijan; which makes sense, considering all its current concentration in Ukraine right now; though even before the initiation of the Special Military Operation, Russia only ever did the bare minimum in supporting Armenia.
Russia skirted a line between supporting both Armenia and Azerbaijan, while deferring more support to Azerbaijan... which was a stupid move, as Azerbaijan has repeatedly displayed it takes advantages of Russia's bizarre overtures toward it, sometimes covertly or outright overtly doing actions that supports the West. Especially now, with Azerbaijan acting as an alternative energy supplier while Russia tried to cut Europe off to gain more leverage.
Due to Russia being so flaky in aiding Armenia in general, it's pivoting alignment toward the West (as it was doing before, but at a more accelerated pace).
I won't be surprised if CSTO outright collapses after this.
India, besides Russia, has no real "major ally" and with it being so clingy with Russia despite its ever coming downfall, it's losing a lot of so-called "goodwill" with the West. India's clinginess to Russia makes sense, given how many times when it was the USSR that it helped India in multiple conflicts. India also is trending toward an illiberal quasi-totalitarian streak, which makes it have a much closer outlook with Russia than any of the Western states.
Russia also is a major weapons supplier to India... which is pretty bad from what're seeing and the general performance of the Russian armed forces in general. India has always tried to sway Russia in its orbit in a case where a conflict between India-and-China goes hot.. but that notion has always been stupid, as Russia depends more on China both militarily and economically than India could ever provide.
India should have dropped Russia sooner as their military incompetence became more evident, just as fast Russia would have probably dropped India if it ever got into another major conflict with China. Now its anchored itself to a sinking ship, all the while alienating itself from West even further.
Kazakhstan is what I see being a major detractor from Russia lately. With Russia's day-by-day depleting military prowess, prestige, and general loss of power projection, Kazakhstan will (and currently is) become more distant. Even if Russia tried to reinforce some of its soft-power and MAYBE imply the Russian populations that live in the northern part of Kazakhstan need some "liberation" or their rights are being "infringed upon", China has given security guarantees to Kazakhstan now. Any plans Russia might've had for Central Asia in the future have been decimated by China upseating its sphere of influence.
Russia's overall demographics have been REALLY bad since World War II, with their being an average of more females-to-males due to the tremendous loss of manpower to defeat Nazi Germany. Coupled with Russia's low life expectancy rate for males, highest rate of alcoholism, poor economic power beyond selling natural resources such as gas or oil.. Russia WILL face a major catastrophe of epic proportions from Putin's misguided gamble to wage a full-on attack on Ukraine.
I feel like their will be a mass migration of young and middle-aged people (like what's happening now with the announcement of "semi-mobilization") from Russia; a mass migration similar to what we saw with the Syrian civil war, but on a more devastating scale. This will be interesting to witness, considering the very negative sentiments Europeans have to Russians now.
The poor who will remain because they cannot afford to leave, will have the burden of trying to look after and care for the remaining elderly demographic of Russia. It will be a nightmare.
Don't be surprised if the whole "mail-order bride from Russia" stereotype becomes strengthened, as the monstrous ratio of women-to-men in Russia will be heightened by the future losses of the failed mobilization, along with the women in general wanting to flee the basically vanquished economy of Russia.
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Topic: Emotional Responses to War in Ukraine - Personal Diary & Mutual Support (Read 118563 times)