Articles like these are a good example that while Russia often tries to downplay or outright deny the sanctions have any effect on them, they do work. This is only one specific example with a specific plane model, but their whole airline industry is facing similar issues on many fronts. Many repairs that used to be business as usual are now either prohibitively expensive or downright impossible due to the sanctions. Similar problems exist across a wide range of industries in Russia. There's a reason why they closed off their stock market, they can't afford to let the full impact be visible.
The point of modern sanctions is not that it makes import impossible (look at Russian circumvention for dual-use military technologies), but that it makes import at whole-economy scale more expensive and unreliable.
And ultimately that's what imposes economic costs.
It'll be curious how much of the gap is filled by substitute Chinese goods. (E.g. the domestic CFM-alternative engine projects [0])
With the wrinkle that Russia and China are united by their geopolitical opponents more than their friendship, and Xi doesn't seem thrilled about shackling the Chinese economy to the consequences of Russian war.
Massive difference between airliners and aircraft. Russia has not shown itself capable of mass manufacturing airliners. (Or even advanced aircraft for that matter.)
That said, as a petro state, they’re fine running inefficient engines across their skies.
The SSJ-100 contains far more important systems (not parts) [1] than e.g. Embraer’s regional jets. It was designed with consultation from Boeing, including throughout manufacturing. Russia’s indigenous jets are terrible, and there is no reason to expect them to improve, they can’t compete against the Chinese for the anti-Western market.
To be fair to Sukhoi, this is how Boeing builds planes. If America were sanctioned by its allies, I’d similarly argue that Boeing, too, is incapable of mass manufacturing airliners.
Russia officially built only one SSJ in 2024 – RA-89192. But in fact it was originally built in 2022 and it is probably the last SSJ-100 ever produced.
Dear untech,
1. I am both a Russian and a Russian citizen.
2. I comment a lot on Russia-related topics because I'm a Russian and I know quite a lot about Russia.
3. I'm also a software developer so I enjoy reading most HackerNews content.
4. Talking with people and learning their opinions seems worthwile to me. It's not really a waste of time.
“Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.”
No, Russia doesn’t. Those engines are tested, i.e. still in development, not in serial manufacturing. The first shipments were pushed back by 3 years and the planned production volume reduced recently. There’s still risk that this is going to happen again, so we won’t see first commercial flights on those engines for several years. And existing fleet degrades faster.
Foreigners are not allowed to sell on the Russian stock market from the Russian side [0] and they're generally not allowed to buy from the sanctions side. This means that as a foreign investor you're barred from trading in any useful meaning of the word. Buy and hold in the hopes that you might be able to maybe some day sell, whether that's in a year, ten years, or a hundred, is not really a viable strategy. That's also the reason why investment and asset management companies of all sizes are trying to find their exits from the Russian market, see for example Van Eck [1], just the latest addition in a long line of many:
> Regulatory and market conditions do not currently permit the Funds to conduct transactions in the local Russian market.
The post you are quoting did not say they closed the stock market. They said they “closed off” the stock market, which implies denying access to certain classes of investors.
That said, I’m not finding anything about Russia prohibiting foreign investment, but I am finding a lot about sanctions prohibiting dollar and Euro investment in Russia.
“Closed off” means “restricted access to”. It doesn’t mean “closed”. I have no idea what restrictions the parent was referring to, but they weren’t saying that the stock market shut down.
As a "westerner" you will need a Russian residence permit I think to trade. I at least would not know how you can actually buy something in MOEX as someone based in Europe.
The sanctions don't have a goal. So anyone can say anything. Besides Air Transport is a small ass part of GDP. Their MIL complex is on over drive, more than compensating for whatever hits the other sectors are taking. Their GDP is growing faster that all other major Western Economies. The US & EU are not serious about winning this war, mostly because they don't have confidence in themselves that they can.
> Their GDP is growing faster that all other major Western Economies
Growth that depends entirely on government spending can only last so long... First you blow all your reserves, then if/when you start printing money and hyperinflation kicks in even if the nominal GDP in the domestic currency appears to be rising, real GDP falls fast.
Because Russia's essentially a petro-state, they had sizable cash reserves with which to prop up their economy. Now you can see with the price of the Ruble that they've run out of the will to prop it up using foreign reserves (probably running low on foreign currency) and most estimates of their economic growth is that it'll stall or they'll see a recession for 2024 and beyond.
> The US & EU are not serious about winning this war, mostly because they don't have confidence in themselves that they can.
You're right that the west isn't serious. It's not that they don't think we can, it's that they're afraid the slightest hit to our living standards will erode support. While they might be right, we're sleepwalking into an even worse scenario...
>Now you can see with the price of the Ruble that they've run out of the will to prop it up using foreign reserves (probably running low on foreign currency)
It’s not that simple. I don’t think Russia is low on foreign currencies. Due to sanctions and effects of war spending Russian economy doesn’t behave as a normal one. Recession is going to happen, sure, because the current high demand on domestic market is matched by credit-driven growth of supply. As soon as war spending drops, demand weakens and interest rate drops, but some of the businesses which play the chicken game with central bank will have problems. So yes, recession is going to happen. But they will not burn foreign reserves to zero, simply because some of them are frozen and some are in rupees and yuan, which are not easily convertible.
How is it clear? Their foreign currency reserves decreased just by 15% since December 2021 and their total reserves actually increased. Yes, some of that huge pile of money was frozen, but it’s nowhere close to “giving up” trying. So no, you are wrong, they did not give up, they simply did not have intention to keep ruble strong. The central bank intervenes to prevent high volatility, but that’s it, since 2015 they focus only on inflation.
It's clear based on the exchange rate. You absolutely can't trust whatever data they put out there, but you can see based on their behaviour. I mean, they're literally asking North Korea and Iran for help, trading oil and gas directly...
There's no advantage for them to have the Ruble so weak because they absolutely want to import Chinese and Western products, namely technology, to fund their war machine. Even against the Yuan, the value of the Ruble has nearly halved since June 2022. That's not good for a nation that needs to import things...
You make wrong assumptions about the exchange rate. I suggest you learn more about Russian economy, rather than speculate.
The fact is, they do not target exchange rates in their policy, only inflation. Their trade balance with China is positive (unlike USA), so yuan reserves are growing and they have no problem to buy Chinese goods. The weakness of ruble has nothing to do with it.
> This is correct. The Russian economy is doing fine.
The Russian economy is doing "mixed". It's a war economy which can be propped up for quite a while but it has significant structural issues that will take years to repair. The country won't fail, but it will further struggle because of the decisions made my leadership.
I find this general attitude of "Russia has no issues" that are going around on the internet quite confusing if pretty much every economic indicator says otherwise. Let alone the fact that a meaningful part of the working population is fighting or left the country rather than engaging in the economy.
> country won't fail, but it will further struggle because of the decisions made my leadership
It’s removing itself as a conventional threat to Europe for generations to come. And as much as Beijing is a rival to Washington, they’re rational in a way Moscow is not. Russia as a Chinese suzerainty is probably a better world configuration than Russia as a sovereign regional power.
> find this general attitude of "Russia has no issues" that are going around on the internet quite confusing if pretty much every economic indicator says otherwise
The sanctions’ goal was to cripple the Russian economy in a militarily-relevant way. On this they failed and that has been widely discussed. Folks might be extrapolating that discussion inappropriately.
What? The EU and US aren’t in the war at all. We’re almost 3 years into Russia being unable to conquer a country 1/3 their size right on their border.
On top of all the damage done to them, and their advanced EW capabilities that have been captured and sent for analysis in the US, and exact knowledge of things like Kinzhal, the lost flag ships and submarine, the modern sea drones - this war is a disaster for Russia.
The US and EU aren’t even involved and Ukraine is holding its ground. Russia is doing so poorly that they’re not even considered a threat anymore in the West.
Their “GDP” numbers belie systemic economic weaknesses that show up when they have to BARTER for food. That’s how worthless their currency is.
Russia is basically completely pathetic at this point - they can terrorize countries that share a land border with them but can’t project power even past Ukraine.
They had to import starving North Koreans with antique shells and Iranian RC toys. Some superpower.
The US and EU don’t care about the war in the same way someone with a Ferrari doesn’t have to race someone with a Honda Civic - because they’re not a threat. Let the person in the Honda rev their engine and scream that they’d win - they’re just stupid. They look stupid.
They’ve lost what, 500k soldiers? They’re so much weaker than the Soviet Union it’s laughable.
The rest of the world disrespects them so much that they had $300B worth of Russian assets outside their country - and they were all seized. That was half their famed “sanction proofing”! What are they going to do about it? Nothing.
They have “hot” GDP based on faux demand for wartime goods - as they trade Rubles for oranges because nobody wants their currency. Does that sound viable to you? Laughable.
Good point. Worth noting that the Russian newspaper reporting this, Kommersant, is the most liberal/independent of the three business dailies in the country and is sort of the Babylon Bee of Russia, if the BB wasn’t satire: it spells its name with pre-Revolution Cyrillic and uses creative neologisms, wordplay, metaphors, and legally imposed euphemisms in its stories to maintain a degree of independence in periods of severe state censorship
This will be Europe’s first post-War test of security integrity.
My suspicion is it will fail—that Europe as a single force, versus collection of countries crowded on a continent, is an American invention, and without American strength will dissolve divided. But my hope is it will succeed.
There's an argument that the US did everything to prevent Europe from coalescing into a single force and only want Europe to be a single market, not much more, for instance by convincing Eastern European countries to trust their protective umbrella rather than the French-German domination.
> the US did everything to prevent Europe from coalescing into a single force and only want Europe to be a single market, not much more
I mean yes, we did. Western Europe was unifying under Berlin in the 1940s.
> by convincing Eastern European countries to trust their protective umbrella rather than the French-German domination
Militarily speaking, modern Germany is irrelevant. (Partly due to how it’s been managed post-War.) Especially to Eastern Europe, whose security concerns require a nuclear umbrella.
In the 90s the US scuttled an EU plan to create an EU military force that would be relatively small--around 50,000 personnel--but would be the umbrella military organization under which national forces would come together if needed.
Trump and conservatives complain mightily about EU underspending on defence, but that's been by American design. While the EU was/is dependent on the American security umbrella, the US had a lot of leverage over Europe. The carrot was "you don't need to spend so much on defence, we've got you covered" and the stick was "shame if we didn't have you covered anymore, since you've been underspending for so many years.
I guess we don’t say that USA had “sanctions” against the Soviet Union, but there was a monumental improvement in economic relations after the Soviet Union collapsed, no? So we have a direct example from history from the same region.
I would say that Vietnam also shows that economic relations can improve a lot even without a fundamental change in the regime.
China is also an example where economic relations improved.
I don’t see any reason to think that sanctions can’t be lifted. But it may require a complete collapse of Putins regime/party for it to happen on a short timescale. Is there any reason to think USA wouldn’t be willing to open up to a new leadership if they have a radically different attitude and pull out of Ukraine?
If Russia turns into something like North Korea or Iran, then yeah, the outlook is not good. But why should it be?
From a game theoretical point of view: I don’t think any leader of any country wants to end up like North Korea, so the precedent being set is good.
> but there was a monumental improvement in economic relations after the Soviet Union collapsed, no?
No. None of the sanctions levied against the USSR were lifted and still technically apply to Russia. (Enforcing them is another matter.)
> I don’t think any leader of any country wants to end up like North Korea
North Korea is doing better than South Korea on every metric except "consumer goods availability" and "international relations". Not sure you're making your case here.
> ...or Iran
Iran is more modern, developed and free than any other middle eastern country. (That includes Israel.)
Your ideas are wildly out of sync with actual reality.
> None of the sanctions levied against the USSR were lifted
It's a lie. Sanctions actually began to be lifted in 1989 (Jews were finally allowed to emigrate) when we received 80486 processors. In 1990, we got our first SS7 switches and equipment for the first two mobile networks. It was a big thing.
> North Korea is doing better
Too bad they are not allowed to tell this here, because internet access is available only to several hundreds people :)
> Iran is more modern, developed and free than any other middle eastern country. (That includes Israel.)
Nice joke :)
What is "the fleet"? This hits different companies in different ways. S7 which prior to the war was a very well received and modern airline has a meaningful number of those. For S7 31 out of 39 planes (with those engines) are out of service or about to go out of service. The total fleet today is only around 85 planes depending on how you count, and most of the planes that were ordered are not being produced for S7 at the moment. That's a pretty significant blow to the airline.
Total fleet of civilian airplanes.
Specifically S7 seems to be quite impacted (and they're about the only company impacted), but it sounds like it's mostly due to the low quality of these planes.
The problem is not the planes, but the maintenance requirements for the engines on those planes and Russia cannot do any maintenance due to the sanctions.
In general flying in Russia has been a pretty questionable experience since the beginning of the war. Their regulator is still barely functional at this moment and a lot of secrecy is happening. For instance you will find barely any incidents reports any more.
We have been intentionally avoiding Russian airlines for flights in and out of Russia for our family for the last few years due to safety concerns.
I haven't heard of any accidents in civilian air traffic in Russia in last few years. Of course you're free to make your choices.
Anyway, don't overestimate the issue: 2.5% of the fleet seems to be grounded right now.
Hmm, I think you may have just not been paying attention? There was the Superjet that crashed and burned at Lukhovitsy just a few months ago, the A320 that ran out of fuel and landed in the field near Novosibirsk a year ago, the AN26 that crashed in 2021, the Superjet that crashed and burned at Moscow in 2019…
> I haven't heard of any accidents in civilian air traffic in Russia in last few years.
Not very hard, now that reports are no longer publicly available. Prior to 2022 you would still find that information on avherald and other places. That said, even with the little amount of information going out, in the last 5 years alone Russia had at least 8 hull losses with more than 80 fatalities.
They didn’t mention of Boeing fleet but the situation is supposedly the same. Together, while only small percentage, they are more efficient, can transport more, go farther, need less maintenance, so more desirable.
Belsat's article[1] is a bit more detailed and I found this fragment interesting:
>According to Andrei Kramarenko, a leading expert at the Institute of Transport Economics of the Higher School of Economics, passenger traffic in Russia has almost stopped growing due to insufficient supply. In September, Russia's Ministry of Transport revised its annual forecast to last year's level of 103 million passengers carried by aircraft.
>Seat occupancy on Russian passenger planes this summer reached 93-95 percent. The expert believes that the situation will fail to improve next year, which may prompt airlines to simultaneously reduce average annual flight times and maximize redistribution of their share of seat supply toward the summer when effective demand and ticket margins are several times higher.
So basically it seems that their airlines are stretched thin.
The comment you replied to says that they can’t meet demand due to insufficient supply (due to grounded aircraft). Very high occupancy is consistent with that. If Delta suddenly had half as many aircraft they would always be full too.
In theory yes, in practice deliveries of domestic aircraft have stalled. The Sukhoi Superjet 100 for instance hasn't had a delivery in 2 years and I think the Tu-204 also did not get any deliveries though they expected some this year. It is however also very hard to find out what exactly is going on, because the information regarding civil aviation is quite restricted nowadays.
They have a big problem with producing modern engines and won’t catch up with the demand without Western suppliers for at least a decade, which means that in a couple of years this is going to be a huge problem.
At this point, what would Russia have to do to get back onside with the rest of the world? Obviously, ending the conflict with Ukraine is the first step, but what else would they need to do? How long would it take for them to get out of the doghouse, so to speak?
But that would imply Russia becoming a neo-colony of the US, like the two mentioned countries. Which I don't think would ever happen, I think Russia would chose MAD over that if forced to make that choice. Russia under Yeytsin was already drifting towards becoming something like that, and has been firmly going in the other direction ever since
Then maybe we can just forget about the genocide, give Russia time to rebuild their forces and recover their economy, so they can repeat the process in a couple of years?
(While allowing them to continue their genocide on occupied territory. But at least we don't have to read about it!)
Articles like these are a good example that while Russia often tries to downplay or outright deny the sanctions have any effect on them, they do work. This is only one specific example with a specific plane model, but their whole airline industry is facing similar issues on many fronts. Many repairs that used to be business as usual are now either prohibitively expensive or downright impossible due to the sanctions. Similar problems exist across a wide range of industries in Russia. There's a reason why they closed off their stock market, they can't afford to let the full impact be visible.
The point of modern sanctions is not that it makes import impossible (look at Russian circumvention for dual-use military technologies), but that it makes import at whole-economy scale more expensive and unreliable.
And ultimately that's what imposes economic costs.
It'll be curious how much of the gap is filled by substitute Chinese goods. (E.g. the domestic CFM-alternative engine projects [0])
With the wrinkle that Russia and China are united by their geopolitical opponents more than their friendship, and Xi doesn't seem thrilled about shackling the Chinese economy to the consequences of Russian war.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACAE_CJ-1000A
Russia is a civilian aircraft producer. There's no need for Chinese airplanes (which they have troubles with).
> Russia is a civilian aircraft producer
Massive difference between airliners and aircraft. Russia has not shown itself capable of mass manufacturing airliners. (Or even advanced aircraft for that matter.)
That said, as a petro state, they’re fine running inefficient engines across their skies.
Are you serious? Look up SSJ-100 production numbers.
> Look up SSJ-100 production numbers
Now look at them post sanctions.
The SSJ-100 contains far more important systems (not parts) [1] than e.g. Embraer’s regional jets. It was designed with consultation from Boeing, including throughout manufacturing. Russia’s indigenous jets are terrible, and there is no reason to expect them to improve, they can’t compete against the Chinese for the anti-Western market.
To be fair to Sukhoi, this is how Boeing builds planes. If America were sanctioned by its allies, I’d similarly argue that Boeing, too, is incapable of mass manufacturing airliners.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190402154855/https://www.uacru...
Russia can't make more SSJ-100. End of story.
Compared to other airliners those production number are small.
Russia only needs to supply herself, not other markerts. Which manufacturers do you compare with?
Russia officially built only one SSJ in 2024 – RA-89192. But in fact it was originally built in 2022 and it is probably the last SSJ-100 ever produced.
[flagged]
Dear untech, 1. I am both a Russian and a Russian citizen. 2. I comment a lot on Russia-related topics because I'm a Russian and I know quite a lot about Russia. 3. I'm also a software developer so I enjoy reading most HackerNews content. 4. Talking with people and learning their opinions seems worthwile to me. It's not really a waste of time.
For what it's worth, I appreciate your comments and find them civil and informative. (American. Comment a lot because Ukraine is my pet war.)
What is a pet war?
“Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.”
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I don’t think they are shilling, but they look a bit obsessed with the topic. I wanted to point out to them how this looks from the outside.
Thanks, Russia has its own engines. SJ-100 and MC-21 are about to be tested with new PD-8[0] and PD-14[1] engines.
[0] https://www.aex.ru/news/2024/10/23/276972/
[1] https://www.aex.ru/news/2024/11/21/277964/
No, Russia doesn’t. Those engines are tested, i.e. still in development, not in serial manufacturing. The first shipments were pushed back by 3 years and the planned production volume reduced recently. There’s still risk that this is going to happen again, so we won’t see first commercial flights on those engines for several years. And existing fleet degrades faster.
>There's a reason why they closed off their stock market That's a completely false information. The stock market isn't closed.
Foreigners are not allowed to sell on the Russian stock market from the Russian side [0] and they're generally not allowed to buy from the sanctions side. This means that as a foreign investor you're barred from trading in any useful meaning of the word. Buy and hold in the hopes that you might be able to maybe some day sell, whether that's in a year, ten years, or a hundred, is not really a viable strategy. That's also the reason why investment and asset management companies of all sizes are trying to find their exits from the Russian market, see for example Van Eck [1], just the latest addition in a long line of many:
> Regulatory and market conditions do not currently permit the Funds to conduct transactions in the local Russian market.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/limited-russian-sto...
[1] https://www.vaneck.com/us/en/blogs/emerging-markets-equity/r...
The post you are quoting did not say they closed the stock market. They said they “closed off” the stock market, which implies denying access to certain classes of investors.
That said, I’m not finding anything about Russia prohibiting foreign investment, but I am finding a lot about sanctions prohibiting dollar and Euro investment in Russia.
I have an investor account and I know for sure the stock market isn't closed.
“Closed off” means “restricted access to”. It doesn’t mean “closed”. I have no idea what restrictions the parent was referring to, but they weren’t saying that the stock market shut down.
As a "westerner" you will need a Russian residence permit I think to trade. I at least would not know how you can actually buy something in MOEX as someone based in Europe.
Perhaps you're right. English isn't my native language - thanks for explaining.
The sanctions don't have a goal. So anyone can say anything. Besides Air Transport is a small ass part of GDP. Their MIL complex is on over drive, more than compensating for whatever hits the other sectors are taking. Their GDP is growing faster that all other major Western Economies. The US & EU are not serious about winning this war, mostly because they don't have confidence in themselves that they can.
> Their GDP is growing faster that all other major Western Economies
Growth that depends entirely on government spending can only last so long... First you blow all your reserves, then if/when you start printing money and hyperinflation kicks in even if the nominal GDP in the domestic currency appears to be rising, real GDP falls fast.
Because Russia's essentially a petro-state, they had sizable cash reserves with which to prop up their economy. Now you can see with the price of the Ruble that they've run out of the will to prop it up using foreign reserves (probably running low on foreign currency) and most estimates of their economic growth is that it'll stall or they'll see a recession for 2024 and beyond.
> The US & EU are not serious about winning this war, mostly because they don't have confidence in themselves that they can.
You're right that the west isn't serious. It's not that they don't think we can, it's that they're afraid the slightest hit to our living standards will erode support. While they might be right, we're sleepwalking into an even worse scenario...
>Now you can see with the price of the Ruble that they've run out of the will to prop it up using foreign reserves (probably running low on foreign currency)
It’s not that simple. I don’t think Russia is low on foreign currencies. Due to sanctions and effects of war spending Russian economy doesn’t behave as a normal one. Recession is going to happen, sure, because the current high demand on domestic market is matched by credit-driven growth of supply. As soon as war spending drops, demand weakens and interest rate drops, but some of the businesses which play the chicken game with central bank will have problems. So yes, recession is going to happen. But they will not burn foreign reserves to zero, simply because some of them are frozen and some are in rupees and yuan, which are not easily convertible.
> But they will not burn foreign reserves to zero
No, of course not. But it's clear they've burned through enough that they've given up trying to prop up the Ruble, as they did in 2022.
How is it clear? Their foreign currency reserves decreased just by 15% since December 2021 and their total reserves actually increased. Yes, some of that huge pile of money was frozen, but it’s nowhere close to “giving up” trying. So no, you are wrong, they did not give up, they simply did not have intention to keep ruble strong. The central bank intervenes to prevent high volatility, but that’s it, since 2015 they focus only on inflation.
It's clear based on the exchange rate. You absolutely can't trust whatever data they put out there, but you can see based on their behaviour. I mean, they're literally asking North Korea and Iran for help, trading oil and gas directly...
There's no advantage for them to have the Ruble so weak because they absolutely want to import Chinese and Western products, namely technology, to fund their war machine. Even against the Yuan, the value of the Ruble has nearly halved since June 2022. That's not good for a nation that needs to import things...
You make wrong assumptions about the exchange rate. I suggest you learn more about Russian economy, rather than speculate.
The fact is, they do not target exchange rates in their policy, only inflation. Their trade balance with China is positive (unlike USA), so yuan reserves are growing and they have no problem to buy Chinese goods. The weakness of ruble has nothing to do with it.
I don’t think it’s lack of confidence. Rather, the public wouldn’t support the costs and sacrifices necessary.
> sanctions don't have a goal
You missed the goal of sanctions on Russia?
> MIL complex is on over drive
This is correct. The Russian economy is doing fine.
> mostly because they don't have confidence in themselves that they can
This is wrong. It’s a resource-commitment problem. Not one of capabilities or confidence.
> This is correct. The Russian economy is doing fine.
The Russian economy is doing "mixed". It's a war economy which can be propped up for quite a while but it has significant structural issues that will take years to repair. The country won't fail, but it will further struggle because of the decisions made my leadership.
I find this general attitude of "Russia has no issues" that are going around on the internet quite confusing if pretty much every economic indicator says otherwise. Let alone the fact that a meaningful part of the working population is fighting or left the country rather than engaging in the economy.
> country won't fail, but it will further struggle because of the decisions made my leadership
It’s removing itself as a conventional threat to Europe for generations to come. And as much as Beijing is a rival to Washington, they’re rational in a way Moscow is not. Russia as a Chinese suzerainty is probably a better world configuration than Russia as a sovereign regional power.
> find this general attitude of "Russia has no issues" that are going around on the internet quite confusing if pretty much every economic indicator says otherwise
The sanctions’ goal was to cripple the Russian economy in a militarily-relevant way. On this they failed and that has been widely discussed. Folks might be extrapolating that discussion inappropriately.
> It’s removing itself as a conventional threat to Europe for generations to come
How? Surely not in military sense. If anything, they gained experience of modern drone warfare and tested and refined their technology.
What? The EU and US aren’t in the war at all. We’re almost 3 years into Russia being unable to conquer a country 1/3 their size right on their border.
On top of all the damage done to them, and their advanced EW capabilities that have been captured and sent for analysis in the US, and exact knowledge of things like Kinzhal, the lost flag ships and submarine, the modern sea drones - this war is a disaster for Russia.
The US and EU aren’t even involved and Ukraine is holding its ground. Russia is doing so poorly that they’re not even considered a threat anymore in the West.
Their “GDP” numbers belie systemic economic weaknesses that show up when they have to BARTER for food. That’s how worthless their currency is.
Russia is basically completely pathetic at this point - they can terrorize countries that share a land border with them but can’t project power even past Ukraine.
They had to import starving North Koreans with antique shells and Iranian RC toys. Some superpower.
The US and EU don’t care about the war in the same way someone with a Ferrari doesn’t have to race someone with a Honda Civic - because they’re not a threat. Let the person in the Honda rev their engine and scream that they’d win - they’re just stupid. They look stupid.
They’ve lost what, 500k soldiers? They’re so much weaker than the Soviet Union it’s laughable.
The rest of the world disrespects them so much that they had $300B worth of Russian assets outside their country - and they were all seized. That was half their famed “sanction proofing”! What are they going to do about it? Nothing.
They have “hot” GDP based on faux demand for wartime goods - as they trade Rubles for oranges because nobody wants their currency. Does that sound viable to you? Laughable.
Good point. Worth noting that the Russian newspaper reporting this, Kommersant, is the most liberal/independent of the three business dailies in the country and is sort of the Babylon Bee of Russia, if the BB wasn’t satire: it spells its name with pre-Revolution Cyrillic and uses creative neologisms, wordplay, metaphors, and legally imposed euphemisms in its stories to maintain a degree of independence in periods of severe state censorship
The Russian Ruble is also starting to do very bad again:
https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=RUB&view=5Y
Great to see sanctions working. Withdraw from Ukraine and sanctions end.
> Withdraw from Ukraine and sanctions end
This will be Europe’s first post-War test of security integrity.
My suspicion is it will fail—that Europe as a single force, versus collection of countries crowded on a continent, is an American invention, and without American strength will dissolve divided. But my hope is it will succeed.
There's an argument that the US did everything to prevent Europe from coalescing into a single force and only want Europe to be a single market, not much more, for instance by convincing Eastern European countries to trust their protective umbrella rather than the French-German domination.
> the US did everything to prevent Europe from coalescing into a single force and only want Europe to be a single market, not much more
I mean yes, we did. Western Europe was unifying under Berlin in the 1940s.
> by convincing Eastern European countries to trust their protective umbrella rather than the French-German domination
Militarily speaking, modern Germany is irrelevant. (Partly due to how it’s been managed post-War.) Especially to Eastern Europe, whose security concerns require a nuclear umbrella.
In the 90s the US scuttled an EU plan to create an EU military force that would be relatively small--around 50,000 personnel--but would be the umbrella military organization under which national forces would come together if needed.
Trump and conservatives complain mightily about EU underspending on defence, but that's been by American design. While the EU was/is dependent on the American security umbrella, the US had a lot of leverage over Europe. The carrot was "you don't need to spend so much on defence, we've got you covered" and the stick was "shame if we didn't have you covered anymore, since you've been underspending for so many years.
Surrendering because 2.5% of the fleet may be not working sounds reasonable to me!
> and sanctions end
Source on that? No documented cases in history of U.S. sanctions ever ending.
(Which is why from a game theoretic point of view the only winning move is import substitution, not kowtowing to whatever terrorist demands.)
Sanctions against Apartheid South Africa ended: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during...
Sanctions on Iran were relaxed in exchange for partial cooperation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_agains...
I guess we don’t say that USA had “sanctions” against the Soviet Union, but there was a monumental improvement in economic relations after the Soviet Union collapsed, no? So we have a direct example from history from the same region.
I would say that Vietnam also shows that economic relations can improve a lot even without a fundamental change in the regime.
China is also an example where economic relations improved.
I don’t see any reason to think that sanctions can’t be lifted. But it may require a complete collapse of Putins regime/party for it to happen on a short timescale. Is there any reason to think USA wouldn’t be willing to open up to a new leadership if they have a radically different attitude and pull out of Ukraine?
If Russia turns into something like North Korea or Iran, then yeah, the outlook is not good. But why should it be?
From a game theoretical point of view: I don’t think any leader of any country wants to end up like North Korea, so the precedent being set is good.
> but there was a monumental improvement in economic relations after the Soviet Union collapsed, no?
No. None of the sanctions levied against the USSR were lifted and still technically apply to Russia. (Enforcing them is another matter.)
> I don’t think any leader of any country wants to end up like North Korea
North Korea is doing better than South Korea on every metric except "consumer goods availability" and "international relations". Not sure you're making your case here.
> ...or Iran
Iran is more modern, developed and free than any other middle eastern country. (That includes Israel.)
Your ideas are wildly out of sync with actual reality.
> None of the sanctions levied against the USSR were lifted
It's a lie. Sanctions actually began to be lifted in 1989 (Jews were finally allowed to emigrate) when we received 80486 processors. In 1990, we got our first SS7 switches and equipment for the first two mobile networks. It was a big thing.
> North Korea is doing better Too bad they are not allowed to tell this here, because internet access is available only to several hundreds people :)
> Iran is more modern, developed and free than any other middle eastern country. (That includes Israel.) Nice joke :)
> North Korea is doing better than South Korea on every metric except "consumer goods availability" and "international relations".
This is very, very false and a pretty strong signal there's no useful discussion to have here.
The article also notes that A320/A321neo only make up 5% of the fleets of Russian airlines.
So essentially this news is about 2.5% of the fleet. The article also talks about early airplanes of these models being unreliable.
What is "the fleet"? This hits different companies in different ways. S7 which prior to the war was a very well received and modern airline has a meaningful number of those. For S7 31 out of 39 planes (with those engines) are out of service or about to go out of service. The total fleet today is only around 85 planes depending on how you count, and most of the planes that were ordered are not being produced for S7 at the moment. That's a pretty significant blow to the airline.
Total fleet of civilian airplanes. Specifically S7 seems to be quite impacted (and they're about the only company impacted), but it sounds like it's mostly due to the low quality of these planes.
The problem is not the planes, but the maintenance requirements for the engines on those planes and Russia cannot do any maintenance due to the sanctions.
In general flying in Russia has been a pretty questionable experience since the beginning of the war. Their regulator is still barely functional at this moment and a lot of secrecy is happening. For instance you will find barely any incidents reports any more.
We have been intentionally avoiding Russian airlines for flights in and out of Russia for our family for the last few years due to safety concerns.
I haven't heard of any accidents in civilian air traffic in Russia in last few years. Of course you're free to make your choices. Anyway, don't overestimate the issue: 2.5% of the fleet seems to be grounded right now.
Hmm, I think you may have just not been paying attention? There was the Superjet that crashed and burned at Lukhovitsy just a few months ago, the A320 that ran out of fuel and landed in the field near Novosibirsk a year ago, the AN26 that crashed in 2021, the Superjet that crashed and burned at Moscow in 2019…
I forgot about the incident at Lukhovitsy - that was w/o passengers. 2019/2021 incidents are completely out of scope of "recent years".
> I haven't heard of any accidents in civilian air traffic in Russia in last few years.
Not very hard, now that reports are no longer publicly available. Prior to 2022 you would still find that information on avherald and other places. That said, even with the little amount of information going out, in the last 5 years alone Russia had at least 8 hull losses with more than 80 fatalities.
> I haven't heard of any accidents in civilian air traffic in Russia in last few years.
Do we count the (possible) "on-purposes" in the accident† count?
* https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66599733
† "Accident" is discouraged as a term, generally speaking: https://crashnotaccident.com
It's also hints at the much larger maintenance problem that Russia has.
Sounds like wishful thinking to me.
Yeah, it’s more about the maintenance requirements of these models than anything else.
They didn’t mention of Boeing fleet but the situation is supposedly the same. Together, while only small percentage, they are more efficient, can transport more, go farther, need less maintenance, so more desirable.
Belsat's article[1] is a bit more detailed and I found this fragment interesting:
>According to Andrei Kramarenko, a leading expert at the Institute of Transport Economics of the Higher School of Economics, passenger traffic in Russia has almost stopped growing due to insufficient supply. In September, Russia's Ministry of Transport revised its annual forecast to last year's level of 103 million passengers carried by aircraft.
>Seat occupancy on Russian passenger planes this summer reached 93-95 percent. The expert believes that the situation will fail to improve next year, which may prompt airlines to simultaneously reduce average annual flight times and maximize redistribution of their share of seat supply toward the summer when effective demand and ticket margins are several times higher.
So basically it seems that their airlines are stretched thin.
[1] - https://en.belsat.eu/83600150/russia-half-of-airbus-a320-and...
Is a ~95% seat occupancy considered bad...?
The comment you replied to says that they can’t meet demand due to insufficient supply (due to grounded aircraft). Very high occupancy is consistent with that. If Delta suddenly had half as many aircraft they would always be full too.
Counterintuitively, yes, because air travel is a Cournot good and you grow/make money by expanding supply (more planes), which they can’t
Which they can, because Russia produces aircraft domestically.
In theory yes, in practice deliveries of domestic aircraft have stalled. The Sukhoi Superjet 100 for instance hasn't had a delivery in 2 years and I think the Tu-204 also did not get any deliveries though they expected some this year. It is however also very hard to find out what exactly is going on, because the information regarding civil aviation is quite restricted nowadays.
They have a big problem with producing modern engines and won’t catch up with the demand without Western suppliers for at least a decade, which means that in a couple of years this is going to be a huge problem.
Barely. The Sukhoi Superjet trickles out of the factories, and the other two projects have been delayed again and again.
Gotcha, thanks!
It's bad if half of your fleet is also grounded.
Gotcha, thanks!
Don't worry, the Russian rail network is in a worse state - https://www.newsweek.com/russian-railway-collapse-sanctions-...
Russia doesn't import RW rolling stock. This is plain lies.
Original article in Russian: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/7312839
Weren’t lots of those planes leased from an Irish company, and now effectively stolen property?
At this point, what would Russia have to do to get back onside with the rest of the world? Obviously, ending the conflict with Ukraine is the first step, but what else would they need to do? How long would it take for them to get out of the doghouse, so to speak?
I think a major change in leadership would be the first step.
They can follow the leads of Japan and Germany.
Unconditional surrender, with a complete cultural restructure and admitting to the atrocities, and prosecuting everyone responsible is a good start.
But of course, that won't happen anytime soon.
But that would imply Russia becoming a neo-colony of the US, like the two mentioned countries. Which I don't think would ever happen, I think Russia would chose MAD over that if forced to make that choice. Russia under Yeytsin was already drifting towards becoming something like that, and has been firmly going in the other direction ever since
Russia can't choose anything by itself. It's the people in Kremlin who will decide, like it was when Stalin died.
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Why don't we just do a peace deal? Over a million have died over nothing so far.
All Russia have to do is back away you know.
What? They don't want to?
Then maybe we can just forget about the genocide, give Russia time to rebuild their forces and recover their economy, so they can repeat the process in a couple of years?
(While allowing them to continue their genocide on occupied territory. But at least we don't have to read about it!)
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