Four years after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian economy is showing clear signs of structural exhaustion. The contours of a genuine economic endgame are coming into view for Russia. This is the finding of a new Kiel Report published by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics.
It’s not quite “more every week”; the numbers seem to be roughly stable since April. Of course it’s still a lot.
One question that occurs to me is whether they can actually sustain this. Missiles aren’t that cheap or fast to produce so it’s possible that they’re throwing out more than they can sustain in an attempt to wear down Ukraine at the last moment.
I’m not an expert on the weapon systems involved so maybe I’m way off base.
The past week we’ve seen 2 massive attacks on Kyiv, the first was the biggest yet for the whole war, and the 2nd was almost as big.
But my guess is they were panic attacks by Putin, because he has nothing else he can do. And he wanted to retaliate for the attacks on refineries in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. That were both a very strong demonstration of power from Ukraine.