Probably not, because Russia will cut other spending or increase taxation or something prior to that. They’re going to want some amount of reserves.
That being said, what’s probably interesting to most is constraining Russia’s spending on the war, and that happens if Russia isn’t willing to let reserves fall below a given point.
There’s only so many shell games they can play before the house of cards starts to come down. They are HURTING economically and financially. It’s not sustainable for them. This whole war was a giant gamble, and the longer it goes, the worse the odds for Russia. Granted, they’re not great for Ukraine either as time progresses, but they don’t really have a choice in the matter. As long as Ukraine can hold out reasonably well for the foreseeable future, I’m actually pretty optimistic for them in the long run.
So I don’t know enough about how sustainable the thing is to evaluate this myself, but there’s some woman whose name I can’t remember, but who has shown up on a number of interview panels with Michael Kofman (who is usually doing the hard power side of things) and Dara Massicot. She specializes in the economic and political-economic side of things in Russia, and every time she’s come up, she’s said more-or-less that at the level of burn that Russia’s doing, it’s sustainable. Doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea for Russia to do so, but that Russia’s not going to explode economically as long as the desire to keep doing what they’re doing is there; that’s not a bottleneck as things stand.
Let me see if I can find her name.
kagis
Alexandra Prokopenko at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
Alexandra Prokopenko is a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. She is a visiting fellow at the Center for Order and Governance in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP).
In her research, she focuses on Russian government policymaking on economic and financial issues.
From 2017 until early 2022 Alexandra worked at the Central Bank of Russia and at the Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow. She is a former columnist for Vedomosti. She is a graduate of Moscow State University and holds an MA in Sociology from the University of Manchester.
Let me see if I can go find something somewhat-recent where she’s talking about it.
EDIT: Yeah, here’s a 2-month-old video with a DW interview, “How Long Can Putin Afford to Wage War in Ukraine?”. Haven’t seen this one. Lemme watch through it, put a summary up.
Can we get it down to $0?
Probably not, because Russia will cut other spending or increase taxation or something prior to that. They’re going to want some amount of reserves.
That being said, what’s probably interesting to most is constraining Russia’s spending on the war, and that happens if Russia isn’t willing to let reserves fall below a given point.
There’s only so many shell games they can play before the house of cards starts to come down. They are HURTING economically and financially. It’s not sustainable for them. This whole war was a giant gamble, and the longer it goes, the worse the odds for Russia. Granted, they’re not great for Ukraine either as time progresses, but they don’t really have a choice in the matter. As long as Ukraine can hold out reasonably well for the foreseeable future, I’m actually pretty optimistic for them in the long run.
So I don’t know enough about how sustainable the thing is to evaluate this myself, but there’s some woman whose name I can’t remember, but who has shown up on a number of interview panels with Michael Kofman (who is usually doing the hard power side of things) and Dara Massicot. She specializes in the economic and political-economic side of things in Russia, and every time she’s come up, she’s said more-or-less that at the level of burn that Russia’s doing, it’s sustainable. Doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea for Russia to do so, but that Russia’s not going to explode economically as long as the desire to keep doing what they’re doing is there; that’s not a bottleneck as things stand.
Let me see if I can find her name.
kagis
Alexandra Prokopenko at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
https://carnegieendowment.org/people/alexandra-prokopenko?lang=en¢er=russia-eurasia
Let me see if I can go find something somewhat-recent where she’s talking about it.
EDIT: Yeah, here’s a 2-month-old video with a DW interview, “How Long Can Putin Afford to Wage War in Ukraine?”. Haven’t seen this one. Lemme watch through it, put a summary up.