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Russia - threadbanned users in OP
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That's interesting. Looking at the historical pricing you can see that the Currency controls made a big difference immediately after the invasion but the price has been steadily dropping since last June and is now actually higher than the roughly 83Rb/$ value that they were before those controls were implemented.
From my understanding the main leg of those controls is that Exporters must sell their dollars for Rubles rather than hold on to them. Since exporters these days are pretty much just oil & gas companies (they're probably not flogging many weapons) I guess that means that they're no longer making enough from those sales to prop up the currency.
That means that Russia will probably need to sell more of its foreign reserves and gold etc if they want to try and keep a lid on this. If they don't then their imports are going to keep getting more expensive, thereby driving up inflation. For things like food and drink they can switch to domestic producers but for anything manufactured and especially high end stuff like pharmaceuticals and sanction busting machine parts and electronics there may be no local alternatives.
It's like death by a thousand cuts. On the plus side though, they've managed to solve male unemployment by having them get conscripted or flee the country!
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I think, like most things, it's complicated. Russia is wealthier than Ukraine but that wealth is concentrated heavily in the urban elite. That makes direct comparison with wealth stats difficult because of how skewed Russian wealth is. In the rural and regional areas of Russia, that most of the armed forces are drawn from they often don't have paved roads or running water. Urban dwellers in Ukraine would certainly be a lot better off than those people.
There were reports that the Russian soldiers were shocked when they saw some of the housing in Ukraine because it was far better than how they lived and of course we all saw the scenes of them looting appliances and toilet bowls to bring back home.
Some stats about Russia:
In contrast Ukrainians appear to have better sanitation by and large. The World bank uses the following definition:
For Russia: (figures are %'s in 5 year increments from 2000 on the left to 2020 on the right)
Ukraine:
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The counter-offensive into the south won't work unless Ukraine gets more help. There are just too many mines, too many anti-tank weapons, too much artillery, too many bodies, an aviation threat, and lines of logistics that Ukraine aren't able to target.
The above map indicates the range they can currently target with HIMARS. There are clearly vast swathes of occupied territory that are out of range where we know the Russians operate airfields, logistics centres, ammo dumps, army HQ's, etc.
People will say but what about Storm Shadow? These certainly have range, but based on their sparing use so far, my guess is the British have supplied only a small number of these, my guess is in the very low double digit numbers. Nowhere near enough to target everything the Ukrainians would like to hit.
If Ukraine are provided ATACMS AND in a decent number AND some time reasonably soon, I think it give a more realistic chance at the counter-offensive succeeding. Being able to target Saky airfield would seriously disrupt Russian aviation which is currently wreaking havoc with impunity on advancing Ukrainian armour. Having greater ability to hit supply depots just out of range of HIMARS will hit the Russian logistics. Forcing the Russian navy out of Sevastopol would impede their navy. There's of course the Kerch bridge too.
So as in Kherson, where HIMARS had a critical impact in forcing the Russians to abandon the right side of the bank, ATACMS could potentially do the same for the current counter-offensive.
Will Ukraine get in in time, and in the numbers they require?
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