Yakutia, officially the Sakha Republic, is a vast Russian state covering much of eastern Siberia. A few days ago, Yakutia’s finance minister, Ivan Alekseyev, confirmed that the regional government had suspended payments to Russian military personnel because of a shortfall in the region budget and uncertainty about future obligations.
“Unfortunately, this is indeed the situation we have,” Alekseyev said in Russian on a local television broadcast. “However, the government has done its work, the necessary funds have been secured, and an order will be issued in the coming days, and all payments will be made.” While Russia does not disclose how many members of its military come from each state, in 2023, a Russian defense official “requested that Yakutia … send 500 men to the Ukrainian front on a weekly basis to improve its ranking,” according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Yakutia had filled its recruitment quota only by one-third, the official said.
Not being able to pay soldiers on time seems like a significant problem for a country at war, even if it’s temporary and in one region.
All over Russia, there are signs of an economy creaking and cracking under the pressure of the war. Russia’s fossil fuel export revenues are now the lowest since the start of the war. Fuel exports may not be booming, but Russian oil refineries, gas processing plants, fuel depots and pipelines are booming, mostly from the explosives in Ukrainian drone attacks.
The Russian government sharply revised downward its economic forecasts for the coming year and admitted that its budget deficits will remain much higher for the foreseeable future. This is a bigger deal for a country with severely limited options for borrowing internationally. Russia is increasing its value-added tax from 20 percent to 22 percent. What’s more, according to the Moscow Times, “Russia’s Central Bank has for the first time begun selling physical gold from its reserves as part of Finance Ministry operations to fund the state budget.”
Can Russia still afford to fight a bloody war in Ukraine? Yes, for now — but with each passing month, the financial squeeze gets worse.
And yet, you would never know it from comments from the Trump administration.
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll reportedly told European ambassadors and Western officials at a meeting in Kyiv on Friday, “The U.S. Armed Forces love Ukraine and stand behind Ukraine, but it is the honest U.S. military assessment that Ukraine is in a very bad position and now is the best time for peace.”
Perhaps Driscoll has seen some intelligence that the rest of us haven’t. But from what the public can see, the war has remained a bloody mostly stalemate, where Russia is inching forward here and there but paying an enormous cost in lost manpower and equipment.
In the roughly three months since the Aug. 15 Alaska summit between President Donald Trump and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Nov. 21, Russian forces seized approximately 350 square miles of additional territory in Ukraine, an area roughly the sizeof Fort Worth.
In that time, Russia’s armed forces have sustained more than 95,000 casualties, which includes those killed, wounded or missing — (1,068,040 as of Aug. 15, 1,163,170 as of Nov. 21, according to Ukrainian estimates). Over the past three months, each square mile of conquest has cost the Russians roughly 271 casualties. The front is about 400 miles from Kyiv. As the Economist put it on Nov. 17, “Russia’s latest big Ukraine offensive gains next to nothing, again.”
Still, high Russian casualties do not nullify the high cost of Ukrainian casualties. A June report by the U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated, “Ukrainian fatality rates are also high at between 60,000 and 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed, with a total of 400,000 casualties.” Ukraine is a much smaller country and paying a much higher proportional cost in a war of attrition.
If, as Driscoll contends, “Ukraine is in a very bad position,” that may explain why they’re contemplating signing off on the latest, apparently heavily revised, proposal from the U.S. plan to end the war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his countrymen have every reason to be wary about any ceasefire deal with a dictator and a regime that has broken every treaty with Ukraine it ever signed.
But the Trump administration deal comes after Ukraine’s anti-corruption watchdog published extensive evidence of officials’ involvement in a major kickback scheme. According to Post reporting, the U.S. had threatened to cut all support to Ukraine if the deal wasn’t accepted by Thanksgiving, a deadline that has since been put aside as negotiations continue. Zelensky and the Ukrainians may well feel they don’t have any choice but to try for the best deal they can get, and at minimum convince Trump that they’re not the obstacle to peace.
After each of my three visits to Ukraine, my American friends have asked me, “Is Ukraine going to win the war?” I’ve answered that honestly — “I don’t know, but I know these guys will never quit.”
It’s understandable that Trump, who once pledged to end the war in one day, is getting impatient. But the Thanksgiving ultimatum, even if now relaxed, suggested Trump and his team were declaring that the days of a U.S.-supported Ukrainian resistance were coming to an end.
Shouldn’t the Ukrainians decide when the Ukrainians should stop fighting?
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