Russia and Ukraine flashpoint

[Bofferbrauer2]

Latest Kings & Generals video about the war in Ukraine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri2jEzL6k6s

Russia's terrain gains are getting smaller and smaller, and Ukraine also could make some gains in the northwest.

More to the point, Russia's Economy seems to be eroding fast, with lots of closures, unpaid salaries and over 100k in layoffs for the first quarter alone due to this. Additionally the inflation is rising, making whatever those who still have a lob and get paid earnings be worth even less than before.

Worse, the federal deficit of Russia hit 61 Billion dollars - when the expectation was 50 Billions for the entire year. All while Putin's approval ratings are dropping, recruitment slowing down despite Russia investing more per soldier to recruit them, and this on the backdrop of increasing losses per day.

If this continues, then Putin will be sitting between a rock and hard place: He will have no choice to keep the numbers up in Russia than carrying another round of deeply unpopular mobilization - a mobilization which would make the economic woes gat rapidly worse due to increased pays for soldiers while even less income from the economy.

Speaking of the economy, production of oil dropped by about 500k barrels YoY due to the Ukrainian attacks on production facilities, so despite the high oil price Russia can't really profit much from this.

Finally, European support is ramping up sharply, and I don't just mean the 90 Billion € "loan" (Ukraine only has to pay it back with Russian war reparations, if there won't be any, or not enough to cover the loan, then Ukraine doesn't have to pay it back), but also lots of military hardware, especially Air defense and drones:

36 Iris-T systems and 400M€ worth of Tridon Mk2 are nothing to scoff at, the latter being highly useful against drones while the former helps defending against cruise missiles and the like. The latter is also true with the GEM-T missiles, which are patriot missiles to be used against ballistic missiles (the T stands for tactical, so things like SCUDs and their successors). The long-range weapon production support will further hurt the Russian economy with long-range targeting.

But the standout is probably the UK's pledge for 120k long-range drones this year alone. If they'll manage to follow through with that, then Russia will get inundated by Ukrainian drones, which already have the advantage again both due to Russia losing Starlink access and due to their drones having over twice the range or the Russian ones, meaning they can attack much deeper into Russian lines and take them out before they ever reach the front.

All in all, the initiative seems to be slowly shifting towards Ukraine, and Russia's economy is increasingly living on borrowed time. If this shift continues then Russia will have very dark days ahead.