China has become a superpower surpassing the US and sells Russia an abundance of inexpensive high-quality goods and exchanges high-quality military technology. This allows Russia to fight with higher tech weapons in greater quantaties on their doorstep. The EU thought it was going to be another Iraq/Afghanistan where the US would do the heavy lifting, waltz in and then the EU would chime in by patrolling areas.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Hm. I guess that makws sense. So the Russians are in a better position technologically while probably weaker in manpower than in the beginning of the war. But the tech could probably offset that. Economically they're probably overall benefitting from shifting directly to Chinese products that have much lower profit margins than what they used to pay for European and US goods that flooded in after 1991. So their PPP ratio is probably rising. Would be interesting to see if that's borne out in data. If they're able to make more missiles, drones and such for less, in a sustainable fashion, then I guess there is a reason for building up deterrent manufacturing in the EU to counter it.