Weekly megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - December 7

The Sanctions Against Russia Are Starting to Work - The Atlantic - (archive)

Oil continues to bring in billions of dollars, but China and India buy Russian exports at significant discounts from what European buyers paid before the invasion. Russia has also lost income from the sale of natural gas. Virtually all of the state-owned energy company Gazprom’s pipes run west, and building new ones takes years and an enormous amount of money.

Before the war, Russia imported most of its key commodities, and the parallel markets cannot make up for the loss of supplies since early 2022. Many necessities are more expensive, a lot are adulterated, and the quantities available typically are far smaller than before the war—sufficient to keep day-to-day operations going but not enough to ward off a steady degradation of economy and society. Made-in-Russia “replacements” have been falling short, and shortages and breakdowns are multiplying across the economy, involving products as varied as tires, printing paper, airplane parts, and cellular towers. Among the more painful privations is the disappearance of up to 65 percent of crucially important medicines in some large cities. The Ministry of Health has advised of a coming deficit of almost 200 essential drugs.

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A still more troubling deficit is that of soldiers: The seemingly inexhaustible pool of potential conscripts is beginning to look rather shallow. Even as Putin sends an estimated 20,000 more men every month to fight in Ukraine, he is desperate to avoid a general mobilization—which is sure to be unpopular—before the presidential election next March. So he appears to be reaching for the bottom of the barrel. Conscripting prisoners into the Ukraine war started out as a bizarre campaign introduced by the Wagner Group, the ostensibly private military company led by the now-deceased former Putin crony turned mutineer Yevgeny Prigozhin, but has now become a standard practice. Incarcerated women, too, have been forced into military service. The prison population is down by an estimated 54,000 inmates. Rapists and murderers, some serving life sentences, are pardoned by Putin after six months in Ukraine.

Apparently still short of soldiers, the authorities have begun to press-gang many of the nation’s estimated 2.8 million migrant workers from predominantly Muslim countries in Central Asia. In the city of Moscow and the surrounding province of the same name—jurisdictions where at least 1 million Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Kirgiz now live—the police have raided mosques after services, forcing young men into buses that take them to military-induction centers.

Biden Administration Announces New Security Assistance for Ukraine (defense.gov)

U.S. announces new sanctions on Russia’s weapons suppliers (PBS)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration hit hundreds of people and firms, from Russia to China to Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, with economic and diplomatic sanctions Tuesday as the U.S. targets third-country contributors that are equipping Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.