Der Zusammenbruch des russischen Rubels beschleunigt sich

There’s a reason the Russians have been even more cavalier about casualties this year than they have been in either 2022 or 2023(and that’s a pretty low bar), Putin knows he is running out of time economically. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan didn’t help bring the collapse of the Soviet Union due to casualties, it brought about the collapse because it was a huge economic weight hanging around the neck of an already moribund economy. 

This war has cost them a lot more but they haven’t suffered economic collapse…. yet due in no small part to the world being a very different place in the 2020s than it was in the 1980s. In the 1980s the Soviets were essentially alone. There were basically 0 advanced economies willing to trade with them and what’s more they had very little to trade. Fast forward 40 years and now the Russians have trade partners in at least reasonably advanced economies and have gotten really good at digging valuable resources out of the ground. They can withstand a lot more economic damage than the Soviets could but it’s not infinite. Putin almost certainly has the ghosts of Afghanistan on his mind and is thus rushing to try to finish this before the collapse becomes inevitable. Ukraine needs every resource we can give to survive the next 18 or so months until Russia can no longer economically sustain this war, or even the Putin regime itself.