Ukraine War Calculations

Numbers

• Russian Economy - Russia is 11th at 1.6T. [1]. SA is #1 at about 10x that, $20T. Ukraine is $110B.
• Military spending - USA 800B, Russia 60B [2]. Ukraine - $6B. USA provided $14B aid to Ukraine on March 22. [3]
• Military population - Ukraine 200k, with 900k reserves [4]. Infographic - [5]. Ukraine has 1M, Russia 3M, but Russia has 1M active. [6]
• What does Ukrainian army cosist of at end fo March? 300k active duty, 150k have been called from reserves [7]
• March 21, 22 - Europe provides $1.1B in military aid. [8]
• UK sends another 6k antiarmor/plane missiles to Ukraine by March 23 [9]
• By March 12, 17k antiarmor missiles [10], 300 Javelins at least. 2000 more are coming? [11]
• 45k Javelins and 12k of their launchers have so far been produced, 18+ countries have them [12]. 70k Stingers were made - [13]. 10k NLAWs were made.
• Stingers and NLAWs are $38k. [14]. Javelin - $100k launcher, $78k missile. [15]
• Patriot missiles - system is $1B, missile is $1-6M a pop. [16]
• How equipment is moved from US based to Ukraine - [17]

Assistance

• $50B in assistance to Ukraine would provide a large number of missile defense systems, MiG-29s ($24M [18]), and much more.

Feeding Russia

• 40% of Russia's economy is energy crops [19]
• About $500M payments per day come from Europe - $19B in one month. This is because Europe takes about 50% of Russia's petro product
• Same source sez - These countries should have no interest in allowing the price of oil to rise too high, because that will sharply accelerate the long-term transition to renewable energy.
• Total export of Russian oil is about 5M barrels/day - [20]. Saudis can produce 2.2M more barrels per day within a month.
• US imported 700k barrels/day from Russia- or about $70M/day. [21]

Weapons Strategy

• How does a Stinger compare to a Patriot?
• How does Patriot compare to a Buk?
• How does Patriot compare to S400? S400 is apparently half the cost, and looks much better on paper. [22]
• Patriots - too expensive and complicated for now? [23]
• Flood of man-portable antiarmor [24]
• RPG-7 is the most common antitank rocket, multipurpose including low flying helicopters - [25]

Integrated Strategy

• Stop funding Russia's business (petrochemicals, currently $500M/day from EU alone)
• Flood of arms support
• Weeks, months, or years - it's our choice - [26]. No solution provided, outside of decision of troops to quit.
• This one proposes a bunch of things happening, but not how we can attain them - [27]

5 Steps

1. The quickest way to enable Ukraine to defend itself requires the World to partner with allied nations to enact an arms and medical supplies program to help strengthen the country’s defensive and humanitarian capabilities. Draw clear lines at the end [28]. Sustain support - says Inst. of Peace. [29].
2. Offer a neutral Ukraine. This still allows for security by means outside of NATO. [30]. Also, Putin no longer recognizes Luhansk and Donets as independent states. Also, instead of EU, it could be Europe Economic Area. Summary of this article - author does not seem to understand that Putin does not want Ukraine to become a democratic, liberal state. Thus, his proposal is unrealistic, especially if it provides no clarity on withdrawal of hostilities in the separatist areas, nor does it solve Crimea.

Also:

• Need to resolve Kosovo, Donbas, Crimea. Assure Helsinki Accords [31].

Zielenski is ok with non-nuclear status, but needs guarantee. [32]

Useful End Games

• Kissinger - [33]. From 2014 but relevant today. Same with Condolezza Rice.

Other

• Have China step in - [34]
• Us will not step in if biological weapons are used, because Obama already said so. [35]
• It's hard to imagine that some people see sellout as a solution - [36]. Read Never Split the Difference - for win-win situations.
• 10 ideas, no execution - [37]
• Almost 50% in the USA are concerned now about Russia nuking the USA - [38]

Needs

• From [39] - 9K33 Osa surface-to-air missile. [40]. 26 countries have them.
• MiG 29 - $5-8M each - [41]. But the West shit its pants as it could be escalatory.
• Buk missiles - [42].
• S300 missile defense against aircraft and ballistic missiles - [43] System is $115M, and each missile is $1M. [44]