Probably not for long given the state of the Rouble and the economy. Tech-wise Russia has nothing to offer and when it comes to the stuff China might be interested in, such as ores and oil, well you'd have to not send miners to the front to continue producing them. That Russia of all countries is importing metals should make you stop and think.

Lenin is rotating in his mausoleum.

[–] 420blazeit69@hexbear.net 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The funniest part of this comment is the idea that Russia will get so desperate for troops that they'll be unable to operate mines

Soviet industrial capacity greatly increased over the course of WWII

[–] Frank@hexbear.net 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, but that was the Soviets. These are capitalists. Capitalists suck at war economics and I'm not even sure it's plausible under modern finance capitalism. I agree they're not likely to run out of troops any time soon, but I don't think we're likely to see economic gains like WWII.

[–] 420blazeit69@hexbear.net 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I also don't think we're going to see industrial development on par with WWII. My point is that during WWII:

The USSR suffered something like 25 million deaths, orders of magnitude above even the wildest propaganda about current Russian losses
They still had the labor power to not only run their industrial base, but to build much of it from scratch

It's a country of around 143 million, and I saw an (undoubtedly cautious) estimates of 11 million+ military age men. They had something like 1.2 million military personnel before the war.

Just a basic understanding of demographics and even one historical example should tell anyone that "they are so short on people they can't even run their industry" is absurd.

[–] Frank@hexbear.net 5 points 1 year ago

rat-salute-2

[–] KurtVonnegut@hexbear.net 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Tech-wise Russia has nothing to offer

Oh no, their Twitter and Facebook exports are too low. They'll have to scrape by on checks notes one of the world's largest supplies of oil, precious metals, and other natural resources. Surely, the Russian economy will collapse any second now!

[–] Frank@hexbear.net 20 points 1 year ago

Plus their weapon systems are probably looking pretty good after surviving a sustained assault from a NATO trained, led, and supplied army.

[–] UnverifiedAPK@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 year ago

Russia provides a buffer, it's the same thing as North Korea. China aids NK to keep US allies as far away from themselves as possible.