Tuukka R

Where does Musk’s money actually come from? How big part of it comes from Tesla? How much from SpaceX and how much from Starlink? What else do Musk’s companies do?

I’m just wondering: How long will he still be the richest person on Earth? And once he’s not, what will Trump think of him?

I use Signal because my workplace decided to default to it.

For the Russia it’s about 1:2½, and getting worse, for Ukraine it is currently around 1:4 or 1:5.

In casualties as in military losses Ukraine is doing quite badly: Ukraine has lost some 300 000 as dead and wounded, while the Russia has lost around 800 000 as dead and wounded. The population difference is 1:3½, and the difference in total military losses is 1:2½. That means, Ukraine is losing a slightly larger share of its population as military casualties than the Russia is.

However… Neither side is going to run out of population anytime soon. Ukrainian soldiers go to the front, eventually maybe get wounded and return home one leg poorer. Their children will not have to live with their father, only without an organic right leg of the father. And for the Russian side, the deaths are a much bigger proportion of the population. There the ratio is around 1:4½, and that one favours Ukraine.

If a person is measuring ground gained in this war, he does not understand the war very much at all. Neither side is trying to gain ground. Both sides are trying to incur as much losses to the enemy as possible. The Russia because they need to keep the gore to the maximum in order to convince the west to stop supporting Ukraine, and Ukraine, because if the Russia’s losses drop under 1000 per month, they will be able to start training their soldiers, which will make a huge difference in their dangerousness. The Russia knows very well that it will never take over Ukraine with the current speed of advancing. Remember, in year 2024 the Russia was gaining ground faster than expected. And in year 2024 they managed to gain 0.7 % of Ukraine’s total territory. Less, if you take the Kursk province’s happenings into account. 0.7 % is strategically meaninglessly little.

Artillery shell production is currently about twice as high in the Russia as it’s in the west. But when you take into account that to hit a specific target, the very inaccurate Russian artillery needs to shoot about ten times as many rounds as western artillery, the numbers start looking different: For military use, you either should divide the Russia’s artillery shell numbers by ten, or alternatively multiply ours by ten. Depth of reserves… Well, here we come back to casualties and motivations.

• As said, the population ratio is 1:3½.
• The total military casualty ratio is 1:2½, favouring the Russia.
• The military death ratio is 1:4½, favouring Ukraine.

Russian soldiers are in it for the money. The Russia will have useful amounts of money to give to the soldiers for another six to fifteen months, about. After that the motive is gone. Typically, it is easier for the defending party to find soldiers for a war than it is for the aggressor. This is the case in this war as well. This means, when interpreting the casualty ratios, you need to add a multiplier for taking into account that the defender can tap into a larger share of the population than the aggressor can.

Remember, Ukrainians are sending to the front less than a fifth of what they could, if we compare with Finland. Finland has a population of 5,6 million and we have about one million soldiers ready to serve within some months of the begin of a hypothetical war. Each one of them has received a top-class military training and each one has a specific place in a specific unit in the army should a war break. Ukraine has about the same size army as that, even though they have over 40 million people. The unwillingness to join the front is a surprising feature, at least from a Finnish perspective, but also a result of a lack of motivation. If the scales were to tip in the favour of the Russia, Ukrainians would get scared and more would be ready to help their country. When looking at the very large difficulties Ukraine has with conscription, you need to take this into account. The problem is of a type that solves itself. It’s extremely unfair towards the soldiers at the front that they never get relieved. And idiotic that people don’t want to join the army because soldiers never get relieved from the front … because there are not enough people ready to go to the front. And, from my experience living in Ukraine, I would say that this won’t change. They will remain understaffed as long as the war will go on, but always precisely at the limit where they can still keep scraping on.

Ukraine’s army won’t be disappearing anytime soon, the west is effortlessly able to pay all of Ukraine’s budget indefinitely if it so wishes and the Russia is not able to gain any ground. The Russia’s goals are to cause Ukraine to collapse economically or its army to collapse from lack of manpower, and neither of those can happen. At the same time, the Russian economy, and therefore military, have at max one year time left. After that they will have nothing to use for stopping Ukraine from reclaiming its territories.

EDIT: I want to add: While the Ukrainians’ readiness to defend their country is lower than Finns’, that’s mostly because Finland has an exceptionally high readiness for that. If you compare with Germany or France, the Ukrainians look extremely willing to go to the front. What I wanted to say is that although their willingness is very high, there is still a lot of place for improvement!

Since when is mandatory conscription “kidnapping”?

If it’s a year later, then it is. The Russia won’t be able to recruit soldiers after its economy collapses. They are in for salary and death compensation that is defined in Rubles. Once the Ruble compensation loses its value, relatives get less motivated for letting their sons go to the front. And when the 2000$ salary becones a 100 $ salary, nobody goes to war for that money.

Without soldiers the front cannot be kept.

the Russia has been steadily and slowly gaining territory over the last year with a speed of 0.7 % of Ukraine’s territory per year. Which is not strategically relevant. Strategically seen, the Russia has not advanced.

I don’t really see China starting to actively cover the Russian budget. That would jeopardize China’s trade with Europe.

The Russia’s strategy has been to outlast Ukraine’s supporters will to support Ukraine. That will never happen, unless the voices making the fake claims about time being on the Russia’s side are given too much space. Helping Ukraine is so much cheaper than the costs that incur if the Russia takes over Ukraine that there is no logical reason for the EU to end Ukraine’s support ever. Even if some countries were to withdraw their support, enough will retain it to keep Ukraine’s head over water.

The Russian economy will collapse, sooner or later.

Absolutely!

But of course the US leadership understood that this is a consequence of asking EU to refrain from doing that kind of stuff. Would still have been better for USA if Europe would have done much more, so the demands make sense. And I agree that more should have been done!

Yup. And that means the Russia will be losing huge amounts of troops and equipment without gaining anything from it. The Ukrainian economy is very small, I think about the size of Slovakia’s economy. The EU can hold Ukraine’s economy up as long as it wants to. Nobody is doing the same for the Russia.

If the Russia had to switch to defending territory without gaining anything more, how would it push for a victory before its economy collapsing?

How is it a surprise that the Russia has been making gains in the Kursk province? That’s been one of the three most important points in making the incursion.

Most importantly, it was needed as an insurance in case that Trump becomes president. It would have been easy for Putin to get Trump into pushing Ukraine into a “ceasefire” where the frontline would turn into a de-facto international border until the Russia is able to restart its invasion. But, if any part of the front runs inside the Russia, it becomes impossible for Putin to accept that. The Kursk incursion turned the very simple and clear-cut deal into one that is difficult to get done. Putin still needs the front to become a border, but he needs to include the exception that Ukraine will hand some of the territory to the Russia, but the Russia won’t hand anything to Ukraine. It would have been easy to get Trump to help Putin win if all the front was inside Ukraine. Now it’s not.

Then, the second most important reason: even though the Russia is advancing so slowly that the advances have no strategical significance, it is still advancing all the same. And when advancing, the Russia razes all encountered towns to rubble. All the advances the Russia has made in its Kursk province have been away from advancing in Ukraine. It has saved thousands of Ukrainians from suffering that the Russia has been razing its own villages, not Ukraine’s villages. And, we’ve observed that the Russia is much less violent regarding its own villages than with Ukrainian villages. This means, it attacks less with artillery and more with troops. And since Ukraine is primarily not trying to gain/retain land, but destroy as many Russian soldiers and destroy as much of Russia’s equipment as possible, this is a wonderful thing. Advancing in Kursk province, the Russia has suffered very much bigger losses than it would have suffered in Ukraine.

And then, the Russia has had to spread its troops more thin. Because the Russia has a bigger problem with availability of troops and equipment than Ukraine does, each extra metre of front causes more difficulty for the Russian armed forces than it causes for those of Ukraine. Even through Ukrainian army has trouble with those as well, the Russia having more problems with the same means that Ukraine gets a relative advantage from making the front longer. The incursion into Russian territory has done that.

As long as Ukraine holds any part of Russian territory anywhere, its campaign for attacking the Russia has been a huge success. Without the Kursk incursion, there would already have been a ceasefire. And that would have meant Ukraine becoming a part of the Russia, sooner or later. Now that won’t happen.

Ukraine won’t collapse.

The Russia will collapse.

How does that mean the Russia has a chance to win?

Kharkiv? That was in 2022, wasn’t it? And the incursion into the Kursk province has been a better success than expected. What had you thought it would result with? It became the most important part of the front.for Ukraine. I’d say it is a great success, but how is it a counterattack? And how does that show that something big was promised but failed? What had been promised, to your knowledge?

Finland has 5,6 million inhabitants and a wartime military strength of almost one million men, when the military trained reserve is counted in the number. Of course that would mean a huge deficit in workforce, and that would be devastating for the economy. But there are that many men ready to serve if needed. Each one has a specific position earmarked for them in case that a war erupts.

Ukraine has some 40 million inhabitants, so it will be able to gather an army of at least five million men if its population finds motivation for that. It is quite surprising that they are able to be this uninterested in defending their country after all this time in war, but in the other hand: Until 2014 Ukraine’s military was extremely similar to what Belarus’s still is now in 2025. You could die in the army through being beaten up for fun by your own superiors. And because many military commanders have received their training before 2014, a noteworthy share of them still have very little respect for the individual soldier. The fear that you could end up serving under such a commander is an important factor, of course.

But also: Whatever the reasons for the comparatively low motivation for self-defence, if the Russia was to begin seriously advancing, that motivation would rise. It’s a problem that kind of solves itself. If it starts having serious consequences, the Russia will increase its pace. If the pace is increased too much, Ukrainians will start bothering to defend their country in larger masses than they now do. And then the size of the army will be recovered more and more, until the Russian advance will be halted. It’s a self-correcting problem.

Ukraine’s losses are proportionally smaller than those of the Russia, and the defending party in a war is able to muster soldiers more easily (or rather: less difficultly) than the aggressor. Even if the size of Ukraine’s army would shrink because of recruitment problems, it feels quite unrealistic to assume that it would shrink as fast as that of the Russia.

It’s super unfair towards the soldiers at the front that they need to serve year after year without being relieved. But the Ukrainian military is not in a danger of collapsing because of this.

Marco Rubio is in Trump’s administration. Nothing that comes from there should be assumed true.

They are not running out of Ukrainians. They will have enough of them for another 1300 years with this pace of losses. Also the Russia isn’t running out of Russians for several centuries at this pace.

What is happening, however, is that the Russia is losing soldiers faster than it can recruit new ones.

Which counter offensives?

From Ukraine reclaiming their territory starting probably around summer 2026 or late winter 2026. The Russia won’t be able to stop that if they don’t have troops.

Regarding how the Ukrainian army is doing… That’s a broad question. But, put shortly: they have managed to mostly hold back a Russian invasion for 11 years now. Especially the last 3 years it has been faring far over expectations. If you haven’t heard of it, here’s a wikipedia article about it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_War . It’s high time you get acquainted with this theme now in 2025!

They were indeed about to launch a counter offensive and indeed did. In 2023. They did not get almost any of the equipment the west had promised to supply for bringing the offence plans to reality, so the counter offensive got botched. In 2024 there was no talk of a counter offensive. Remember that the last two quarters of 2024 Ukraine got zero military help from USA.

You’re mixing up the years.

Also, the several different claims about different cancers were guessed by different people.

Ukraine publishes daily statistics about Russia’s manpower losses. One would think those numbers are simply propaganda and any army would “of course” exaggerate such numbers.

But, firstly: The numbers reported by Ukraine rise and fall hand-in-hand with the numbers given by Oryx. There is something of an almost fixed multiplier between Oryx numbers and official data provided by Ukraine. And the Oryx numbers are always published later than Ukraine publishes its own, so Ukraine cannot be just copying Oryx’s numbers and multiplying them. And it’s logical that Oryx shows only a fraction of the real number, because for most Russian combat losses there is no photo proof, and Oryx only counts what has photo proof.

So, at least the Ukrainian numbers rise and drop without fake data added. Then the question is whether the scale of the numbers is correct, or if Ukraine intentionally inflates them with some static multiplier. Since there is data about the Russia’s recruitment capacity and the whole size of the Russia’s army, it’s visible that by recruiting about 1000 per day they can keep their army’s size constant. That shows that the losses must be around the same ballpark. And it coincides with the numbers published by Ukraine.

But yes, now that Russians mostly do not have tanks to use in their attacks, they are really using pure meat wave attacks, and that costs a LOT of men. There’s a reason Putin is trying to convince Trump to force Ukraine into an armistice. Losing that many soldiers – indeed almost half a million per year! – is extremely unsustainable, no matter what image Putin is trying to give.

And remember: these numbers are about irrecoverable losses, of which only a fraction are deaths. The number of deaths is far lower.

I do see a lot of of US people saying stuff like “all politicians are always corrupt”. That’s the thought Putin has been trying to actively cultivate in Russians’ minds, because when people don’t trust politicians in general, they won’t come to think that they could vote in someone who is much less corrupt than Putin.

When people lose their trust in national politics ability to act in the best interest of their nation, they will get proud of being apolitical. After all, for them it’s come to mean “not taking part in a corruption scheme”.

Also… My impression is that a growing amount of people in USA are NOT living more comfortable lives than rural Russians. Living in an RV and having to work two jobs isn’t really very different life from living in a dilapidated and crooked wooden house that’s letting the wind in from several places. I don’t know how common that kind of living is in the States, but it seems to be an existant phenomenon. Those people do not live in a different comfort than people in the poorest regions of the Russia. Also, I’ve seen photos of large amounts of people living in kind of streetside villages consisting of camping tents. That is a kind of life that is less comfortable than anything I’ve seen during my travels in the Russia.

A much smaller share of US people live under such.circumstances than is the case in the Russia, but for those who do, I am absolutely able to fathom why any change is better for them than status quo! There’s only one way to go from the rock bottom.

USA has also quite sternly asked Europe to not become a superpower. And this is something that was openly spoken aloud in 1980’s and 1990’s. Their offer has been “we’ll handle this superpower stuff on your behalf, you guys keep to yourself.” That has kept USA the clear leading superpower, which has been extremely useful for the American economy, and we have been able to concentrate on other stuff, which has been good for our economy.

It’s been an agreement between USA and Europe that Europe will not start competing of power with USA. We have more population and a bigger economy than USA, so I’d guess that now that the agreement has ended, we’ll have to become what we would already have been for decades if we hadn’t been asked not to.