This newspaper shares ownership with the Daily Mail, and is parroting Russian-aligned talking points, cites “some experts” and so on.

I could go point by point over how it enlarges problems, glosses over stuff when it’s inconvenient, but I’m just tired of it.

Russia could pull an Iran and kill anfew dozen to a few hundred Europeans, and we’d kill Putin and his extended family and party members on like day 2.

We spent 0.5% of our GDP to pay one of their former allies to fight them to exhaustion. Yes, they have replaced their one million troops and several thousand armoured vehicles by drafing the second million that they wouldn’t before and bringing back relics to life. We can spend another half a percent, can they afford another million people?

Big “I don’t care about gas prices, I’m still fueling my car for 20” energy. It works until someone asks how much fuel you’re getting for it and how often do you have to go.

Russia’s army – often described as battered and exhausted – can’t be underestimated.

This is what the experts say, and it’s because Russia has turned into a war economy, and is producing military equipment like crazy.

an estimated 1.2 million casualties since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine

That’s the opposite of Russian propaganda, because they are using the Ukrainian numbers!

Daily mail is often criticized here, but at least it’s not Murdoch and at least it’s not American, and it seems to me this article is pretty decent.

But that’s the big lie, they are not producing what they claim, they are refurbishing it! They are replacing T-90s with BMP-1s and claim “we have more AFVs than at the start of the war!”

There are different kinds of Russian propaganda, to quote the Cold War Americans, you should never over- or underestimate them. This is going for the former, others go for the latter.

Supporting Ukraine is still the cheapest way to exhaust the invasion. Russia is running a campaign to scare people to hoard munitions for themselves.

Last I heard Russia is making about 100 tanks per month. Compared to what they had that is not much, but probably more than what Europe is capable of.
But it’s more the new stuff that makes them dangerous, like the drones and missiles.
I 100% agree that supporting Ukraine is our best strategy, and hopefully when Russia lose that war, their appetite for more will vanish.
We are also already learning from Ukraine how to defend against Russia, so Ukraine is our most important ally now, which is amazing since we can’t trust USA anymore.

That’s the point, it claims to make 100 per month, but that’s their claim including refurbs. In reality, their modern tank production in a war economy is around the same as the EU’s in peacetime, except even their “new” production is a lot of hull modernisations rather than new builds. And that does not even count with the fact that there is a big difference between the combat effectiveness of a T-90 or T-80 BVM and a new Leopard.

They are dangerous, but not to that degree. That 100 is more like 20-30 in reality, while we put out around 20-ish, but it’s direct orders rather than perpetual serial production because we’re at peace.