What's the bigger lie?

[HipKat]

5 hours ago, shiva2999 said:

You DO realize the Zelensky fan club here is down to you, ICR and Lit?

You DO realize I don't give a fuck about Zelensky. I only care about the truth. 

Meanwhile,

Ukraine’s rapid advances ‘creating fissures’ for Russian forces

Kyiv troops make major battlefield gains in northeastern Kharkiv region in recent days, driving deep into Russian lines.

Ukraine’s military has claimed lightning-quick gains in the east of the country after a surprise counteroffensive was launched this week to recapture territory from Russian forces.

The Ukrainian military said on Saturday it entered the town of Kupiansk in east Ukraine, a key supply hub held by invading Russian forces for several months. Kyiv also reported battlefield successes in the north and south of the country.

Ukrainian special forces published images on social media, which they said showed their officers purportedly in Kupiansk. The photos showed a handful of camouflage-clad soldiers carrying automatic weapons gathered around an armoured vehicle.

A regional official separately posted an image of Ukrainian troops in the eastern Ukrainian town of about 27,000 people and wrote “Kupiansk is Ukraine”.

Ukraine has made rapid gains in the northeastern Kharkiv region, driving deep into Russian lines. Kupiansk has been an important rail centre used by Russia since it took control after its February 24 invasion.

“In recent days, more than 1,000 square kilometres [386sq miles] of Ukrainian territory have been liberated from the occupiers,” said Oleksandr Shtupun, a spokesman from the Ukraine military.

“Units wedged themselves into the enemy’s defences to a depth of up to 50km [20 miles]. More than 30 settlements temporarily occupied by the Russian invaders in the Kharkiv region were liberated or taken under control.”

Ukrainian troops also advanced on Izyum, a town with a pre-war population of about 45,000, which has served as an important staging ground for Russian military operations.

“Ukrainian successes on the Kharkiv City-Izyum line are creating fissures within the Russian information space and eroding confidence in Russian command to a degree not seen since a failed Russian river crossing in mid-May,” said the US-based think-tank Institute for the Study of War.

Rapid movement

Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops along the southern front line are advancing as far as dozens of kilometres into territory captured by Russian forces at the beginning of the invasion in some areas, Nataliya Gumenyuk, a spokeswoman for the southern command of the Ukrainian army, told local media on Saturday.

Russia’s defence ministry posted a video of what it said were reinforcements being deployed to the Kharkiv region. It showed footage on Friday of Russian military vehicles driving along a highway in Kharkiv and released video of two helicopters flying overhead.

Ukraine’s advance in the Kharkiv region has been “very sharp and rapid” and Ukrainian forces have recaptured a number of settlements, the Russian-installed administrator of Russian-controlled parts of the region said.

“The enemy is being delayed as much as possible, but several settlements have already come under the control of Ukrainian armed formations,” said Vitaly Ganchev, head of the Russian-backed administration in the Kharkiv region.

Civilians were being evacuated from the towns of Izyum, Kupiansk and Veliky Burluk, Ganchev added.

‘Huge cost to Russia’

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said President Vladimir Putin’s decision to send reinforcements to Kharkiv underlined the significant losses Russia’s forces are taking.

“There are a huge number of Russian forces that are in Ukraine and unfortunately, tragically, horrifically President Putin has demonstrated that he will throw a lot of people into this at huge cost to Russia,” he said.

Residents in Grakovo village in Kharkiv faced a new reality after being freed by the Ukrainian army after almost seven months under Russian occupation.

On Friday, villager Serhiy Lutsai showed Ukraine police where the bodies of two civilians were after he was forced to bury them by separatist fighters in March.

“They threatened me with weapons and brought me here … There were two people already dead – two young guys,” said Lutsai.

Serhiy Bolvinov, head of police investigation in the Kharkiv region, commented on the bodies in the grave.

“People had gunshot wounds to the back of the head and their ears were cut off. He [Lutsai] and another resident buried these people.”

Britain’s defence ministry said fighting in the eastern Donbas region was also not going well for Moscow’s troops.

[shiva2999]

LOL!

The first two paragraphs of the nonsense above...

 

"Ukraine’s military has claimed lightning-quick gains in the east of the country after a surprise counteroffensive was launched this week to recapture territory from Russian forces.

The Ukrainian military said on Saturday it entered the town of Kupiansk in east Ukraine, a key supply hub held by invading Russian forces for several months. Kyiv also reported battlefield successes in the north and south of the country."

"Ukraine’s military has claimed"...

"The Ukrainian military said"...

"Kyiv also reported battlefield successes"...

Get the picture?

 

 

 

[HipKat]

11 minutes ago, shiva2999 said:

LOL!

The first two paragraphs of the nonsense above...

 

"Ukraine’s military has claimed lightning-quick gains in the east of the country after a surprise counteroffensive was launched this week to recapture territory from Russian forces.

The Ukrainian military said on Saturday it entered the town of Kupiansk in east Ukraine, a key supply hub held by invading Russian forces for several months. Kyiv also reported battlefield successes in the north and south of the country."

"Ukraine’s military has claimed"...

"The Ukrainian military said"...

"Kyiv also reported battlefield successes"...

Get the picture?

 

 

 

Ummm yeah, I get the picture. Ukraine reclaimed some of it's territory

What part of you doesn't realize there's nothing wrong with anything you posted?

And if Russia is strong and Ukraine is so feeble, why hasn't Russia won yet?

[ICRockets2]

25 minutes ago, HipKat said:

Ummm yeah, I get the picture. Ukraine reclaimed some of it's territory

What part of you doesn't realize there's nothing wrong with anything you posted?

And if Russia is strong and Ukraine is so feeble, why hasn't Russia won yet?

He's trying to argue "we can't trust what they say about themselves" but in a way that doesn't put him on the hook to also take the same approach to Russia's claims that they were "provoked" into invading or felt "threatened" by weapons on the border.

[shiva2999]

24 minutes ago, HipKat said:

Ummm yeah, I get the picture. Ukraine reclaimed some of it's territory

What part of you doesn't realize there's nothing wrong with anything you posted?

And if Russia is strong and Ukraine is so feeble, why hasn't Russia won yet?

No they CLAIM. A claim is only a claim.

And there's no special prize for speed of conquest.

The Russians conduct operations that get the fewest of them killed and injured.

[Herodotus]

That's funny because for all these "breakthroughs and fissures, they still haven't even reached Russia's first defense lines.  One look at a map shows this narrative is bullshit.  One more from a line that had 8 defenders on snake Island saying Russian ship go fuck yourself, had a ghost of chicken kiev, has experienced "genocide" fyi 9,000 civilian deaths is not genocide unless 36,000 Iraqi dead is.  Its a country that had commemorative postage stamps about the destruction of Kerch Bridge.  its a country that said Russia was out of missiles in March 2022.  its a nation that swears Russia has three times as many casualties as it does but yet in a rare moment of honesty the BBC was only able to confirm 25,000 dead.  Its a nation that has received so many NATO wonderweapons and yet the only game changer we see is that they all burn the same.  Its a nation that says Russia is out of tanks.  Its a nation that claimed Russia, of all countries, couldn't provide winter clothing for its troops.  Yeah, its one more dose of horseshit that only the indoctrinated and/or idiotic still believe.  Oh well, what can I say, you're the guy who confuses Mark Milley's claim that Ukraine would fall within 72 hours with something some Russian was supposed to have said.  Oh well, you choose to stay behind the CNN curtain.  That's not something that you should be proud of.

[Herodotus]

Also, if the glorious democratic offensive is working, why the fuck did Elensky sack his defense minister?  You don't fire people when they are good at their job.

[Herodotus]

By the way, I can verify that it was Milley who made the 72 hour claim, so hip and lit you may now stop lying:

 

https://www.foxnews.com/us/gen-milley-says-kyiv-could-fall-within-72-hours-if-russia-decides-to-invade-ukraine-sources

[HipKat]

2 hours ago, shiva2999 said:

No they CLAIM. A claim is only a claim.

And there's no special prize for speed of conquest.

The Russians conduct operations that get the fewest of them killed and injured.

Uh huh, so where is this great victory, for real, not some shit about not getting men killed. You knew that was a lie before started typing it.

Isn't it weird, the one news that supports your bullshit is Russian news?

[HipKat]

2 hours ago, Herodotus said:

That's funny because for all these "breakthroughs and fissures, they still haven't even reached Russia's first defense lines.  One look at a map shows this narrative is bullshit.  One more from a line that had 8 defenders on snake Island saying Russian ship go fuck yourself, had a ghost of chicken kiev, has experienced "genocide" fyi 9,000 civilian deaths is not genocide unless 36,000 Iraqi dead is.  Its a country that had commemorative postage stamps about the destruction of Kerch Bridge.  its a country that said Russia was out of missiles in March 2022.  its a nation that swears Russia has three times as many casualties as it does but yet in a rare moment of honesty the BBC was only able to confirm 25,000 dead.  Its a nation that has received so many NATO wonderweapons and yet the only game changer we see is that they all burn the same.  Its a nation that says Russia is out of tanks.  Its a nation that claimed Russia, of all countries, couldn't provide winter clothing for its troops.  Yeah, its one more dose of horseshit that only the indoctrinated and/or idiotic still believe.  Oh well, what can I say, you're the guy who confuses Mark Milley's claim that Ukraine would fall within 72 hours with something some Russian was supposed to have said.  Oh well, you choose to stay behind the CNN curtain.  That's not something that you should be proud of.

Poor weak Ukraine, can't stand up to powerful Russia - yet it'll be 2 years in before we know it

[Herodotus]

24 minutes ago, HipKat said:

Poor weak Ukraine, can't stand up to powerful Russia - yet it'll be 2 years in before we know it

No matter how long you repeat the lie, Putin has always said the aim is to protect Russian sovereignty (by which he meant Crimea).  He did that by taking Zaprozhiye and Kherson, which provide Crimea with drinking water and electricity.  He said it was to demilitarize Ukraine.  The Ukrainian army that was armed by Ukraine is gone.  The Ukrainian army that was NATO trained and used NATO weapons and tactics is gone.  Also, while being far more sparing of civilian lives than we have ever been, there is no more Ukrainian defense industry.  They also said they wanted to denazify Ukraine.  They do this by getting the Nazi bastards to come to them.  

 

Look where the fissures and break throughs have happened.  Its much like Battle of the Crater without the crater.  They control the heights and have developed a firebag.  If you go by the most reliable sources such as BBC, Russia has about 25,000 dead and probably 3 times as many wounded, MIA, and EPW.  Ukraine? Sometimes the truth leaks out.  They are building graveyards three times larger than that built in Bobby Lee's front yard.  They have removed WWII war dead to make room for new bodies.  There are reports and rumors and suggestions of up to 400 thousand Ukrainian dead and three times as many wounded.  

As for its been 18 months and no Kiev? Remember Putin has said repeatedly that his aim is not territorial expansion or regime change.  He has done what he said he would.  We want to bleed Russia to the last Ukrainian.  He wants to denazify their army.  So he has created a giant Kursk or Borodino.  Since you have never heard of these look up Verdun.  Russia easily withdraws from small settlements in the grey zone as their defensive lines have not been reached.  Not one echelon of their defense lines has been penetrated.  So they are fighting a battle of which they are good at.  Dug out fortified defense where they lure the Ukrainians in.  Zelensky cannot give up Bakhmut.  So they bludgeon them and take out wave after wave of NATO and US army trained screw ups and hold their line.  When they allow Ukrainians to fissure they are hit hard and get fractured into billions of unidentifiable pieces.  

Your hopes of a big arrow offensive are what NATO wants.  They, Ukraine, have been trained for guerilla warfare since 2014.  Occupations, as your hero and that of Mick and ICR, Don Reichsmarschal Rumsfeld found out are expensive.  Get the enemy to come to you? The war crimes are gone, and there comes a point where the body count is so high that no matter how repressive the Nazilensky regime is they can't cover it up.  There's a reason parliamentary elections have been indefinitely postponed and that is because Zelensky knows more and more people want peace.  As the bodybags start coming home, its going to be harder for him to keep the lies going.  

[shiva2999]

3 hours ago, HipKat said:

Uh huh, so where is this great victory, for real, not some shit about not getting men killed. You knew that was a lie before started typing it.

Isn't it weird, the one news that supports your bullshit is Russian news?

Had a few after work, huh? 

I hope you don't drink and drive.

[HipKat]

14 hours ago, shiva2999 said:

Had a few after work, huh? 

I hope you don't drink and drive.

I don't drink, period unless I'm at home and I didn't drink last night. but I DID a smoke a bowl, so....

[HipKat]

17 hours ago, Herodotus said:

No matter how long you repeat the lie, Putin has always said the aim is to protect Russian sovereignty (by which he meant Crimea).  He did that by taking Zaprozhiye and Kherson, which provide Crimea with drinking water and electricity.  He said it was to demilitarize Ukraine.  The Ukrainian army that was armed by Ukraine is gone.  The Ukrainian army that was NATO trained and used NATO weapons and tactics is gone.  Also, while being far more sparing of civilian lives than we have ever been, there is no more Ukrainian defense industry.  They also said they wanted to denazify Ukraine.  They do this by getting the Nazi bastards to come to them.  

 

Look where the fissures and break throughs have happened.  Its much like Battle of the Crater without the crater.  They control the heights and have developed a firebag.  If you go by the most reliable sources such as BBC, Russia has about 25,000 dead and probably 3 times as many wounded, MIA, and EPW.  Ukraine? Sometimes the truth leaks out.  They are building graveyards three times larger than that built in Bobby Lee's front yard.  They have removed WWII war dead to make room for new bodies.  There are reports and rumors and suggestions of up to 400 thousand Ukrainian dead and three times as many wounded.  

As for its been 18 months and no Kiev? Remember Putin has said repeatedly that his aim is not territorial expansion or regime change.  He has done what he said he would.  We want to bleed Russia to the last Ukrainian.  He wants to denazify their army.  So he has created a giant Kursk or Borodino.  Since you have never heard of these look up Verdun.  Russia easily withdraws from small settlements in the grey zone as their defensive lines have not been reached.  Not one echelon of their defense lines has been penetrated.  So they are fighting a battle of which they are good at.  Dug out fortified defense where they lure the Ukrainians in.  Zelensky cannot give up Bakhmut.  So they bludgeon them and take out wave after wave of NATO and US army trained screw ups and hold their line.  When they allow Ukrainians to fissure they are hit hard and get fractured into billions of unidentifiable pieces.  

Your hopes of a big arrow offensive are what NATO wants.  They, Ukraine, have been trained for guerilla warfare since 2014.  Occupations, as your hero and that of Mick and ICR, Don Reichsmarschal Rumsfeld found out are expensive.  Get the enemy to come to you? The war crimes are gone, and there comes a point where the body count is so high that no matter how repressive the Nazilensky regime is they can't cover it up.  There's a reason parliamentary elections have been indefinitely postponed and that is because Zelensky knows more and more people want peace.  As the bodybags start coming home, its going to be harder for him to keep the lies going.  

Yet there are Russian forces to the far west and north of Kiev....

You're SO misinformed, it's disgusting.

Make RUSSIA Great Again, huh?

[Herodotus]

35 minutes ago, HipKat said:

Yet there are Russian forces to the far west and north of Kiev....

You're SO misinformed, it's disgusting.

Make RUSSIA Great Again, huh?

Back in the 1990s Colonel David Glaantz, the premier American specialist on all things 20th century Russian Soviet military history, said that when people read memoirs by Soviet generals from WWII that they saw the introductions praising Lenin, Stalin, the Party etc, and often concluded by praising communism and determined they were propaganda.  He stated that those who stopped reading because of this conclusion missed out on invaluable and remarkably candid ans honest insight into the Soviet experience in the war.  The key he said was to take out the map and see if the Soviet claim made sense.  

 

In keeping with that openess and curiosity, lets look at a situation map I found this morning and see whose claims make sense.  The blue areas are those the Ukrainians have taken in three months. The red areas are those areas Russia controls including all their defensive belts.  So please on this doll show me where Putin touched . . . . Uh I mean show me where the Russian lines are fissuring, maneuver is gaining and breakthrough has been achieved:

 

 

[Herodotus]

I can sense the name calling coming so lets preempt that, agree to disagree and watch David Glaantz and Jonathan House discuss the Great Patriotic War:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[shiva2999]

51 minutes ago, HipKat said:

Yet there are Russian forces to the far west and north of Kiev....

 

Of course there are.

So what?

[HipKat]

15 minutes ago, shiva2999 said:

Of course there are.

So what?

That's not in regions you claim they're, ummmmmm, pRoTeCtInG

[shiva2999]

17 minutes ago, HipKat said:

That's not in regions you claim they're, ummmmmm, pRoTeCtInG

So what?

The border with Russia is much longer than the disputed stretch.

They can't leave it wide open.

 

[HipKat]

1 minute ago, shiva2999 said:

So what?

The border with Russia is much longer than the disputed stretch.

They can't leave it wide open.

 

Like any part of the Russian border is really open, but still, made a claim as Putin's objective and that didn't include regions well away form the Dohnbas

[shiva2999]

13 minutes ago, HipKat said:

Like any part of the Russian border is really open, but still, made a claim as Putin's objective and that didn't include regions well away form the Dohnbas

Putin's objective is to stop you guys using Ukrainian stooges as cannon fodder to fuck with the Donbass and thus with Russia.

The US wouldn't stand for either Canada or Mexico becoming a Russian stooge state.

Why should Russia stand for it with Ukraine as an American stooge state??

[Herodotus]

5 minutes ago, HipKat said:

Like any part of the Russian border is really open, but still, made a claim as Putin's objective and that didn't include regions well away form the Dohnbas

What's your point?  In Desert Storm our aim was to drive Saddam from Kuwait and yet Syrian and Turkish forces were held in reserve far from Kuwait. Why? Simple.  While Bush Sr was at least smart enough to not drive on Baghdad, he and Schwartzkopf and the like were smart enough to know that you kept sufficient forces in other areas that Saddam had to consider in his operational plans.  Bush sr saw no need to drive from Turkey and our Syrian allies were not even deployed but they were there as a force in being.  So why do you give Putin grief for doing what all military commanders do.

 

Here's one for you, who the fuck launches an offensive without first achieving at least local air superiority, degrading your opponent's logistics network and logistics.  Want to know how I know Russia is not planning an offensive in the near future? They haven't taken out bridges or rail junctions to gum up Ukrainian defenses.  When the bridges over Dniepr are gone then yeah Putin has started his offensive.  

[HipKat]

12 hours ago, shiva2999 said:

Putin's objective is to stop you guys using Ukrainian stooges as cannon fodder to fuck with the Donbass and thus with Russia.

The US wouldn't stand for either Canada or Mexico becoming a Russian stooge state.

Why should Russia stand for it with Ukraine as an American stooge state??

The US barely had shit to do with Ukraine, until Putin started massing troops on it's border.

According to people like you, Russia could crush Ukraine, so why the paranoia? Especially with Russia's nuclear arsenal, which is suppose to be a deterrent from being attacked.

[HipKat]

Ukraine says it has manufactured and fired a long-range missile

Ukrainian officials say their military is now using a long-range missile that was designed and manufactured domestically and can reach targets inside Russia — a potentially crucial capability because the United States and other Western supporters have imposed restrictions on using weapons they donate to strike Russian territory.

The development of the Ukrainian missile started well before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a top Ukrainian security official said Friday. Officials have not disclosed the name of the missile.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, posting on the social media platform Telegram, said Ukrainian forces had successfully hit a target 700 kilometers (435 miles) away, using a missile “of our own production.”

The secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, said Friday that the missile could travel farther but did not specify its full range.

Russia is “already feeling” the effect of the new missiles, Danilov said on Ukrainian television, adding: “Production is underway.”

The Ukrainian officials’ statements could not be independently verified, and did not provide further details such as when the missile was fired, what object was struck, or where.

If confirmed, however, a domestically produced long-range missile would be a threshold development for the Ukrainian military, which has been denied similar weapons by Western backers for fear of provoking Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Believe me, already very soon someone [in Russia] will be burned, and burned in the direct sense of the word,” Danilov said.

Danilov said that Zelensky wrote the first decree helping to create the missile program in March 2020.

“It is a very complex process, and is very complex technically,” Danilov said. “In order for it to be up to date, for it to have a distance of thousands of kilometers, keep in mind, this is the work of large teams.”

Danilov on Thursday also tweeted a short video of a missile being fired. “The missile program of the President of Ukraine in action,” he wrote. “The tests are successful, the implementation is effective.

“Sevastopol is waiting, Kamchatka is waiting, Kronshtadt is waiting,” Danilov wrote, perhaps with some exaggeration. Kamchatka, in Russia’s Far East, is about 4,500 miles from Ukraine. Reaching it would require an intercontinental ballistic missile, which only 10 countries in the world are believed to possess.

Ukrainian forces are increasingly striking at targets inside Russia and occupied Crimea — which Russia invaded and illegally annexed in 2014. Most of the Ukrainian strikes involve self-destructing water or aerial drones, and units of the country’s intelligence services. Ukraine often denies any connection to such the attacks, but officials privately confirm the strikes or issue statements celebrating them and indicating the involvement of Ukraine’s military or special services.

“The war is increasingly moving to Russia’s territory, and it cannot be stopped,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted Wednesday, after a drone attack on an airfield in Pskov, Russia, damaged or destroyed several military planes.

[HipKat]

Putin struggles with falling ruble, rising prices as sanctions bite

When Vladimir Putin addressed top economic officials last week after a bruising month in which the Russian ruble plummeted to a 16-month low against the U.S. dollar, the Russian president sought to set a confident tone. The country’s economy, he said, was growing again and wages were rising.

But despite the show of bravado, Putin could not avoid mentioning a growing weakness that is stalking the economy as Western sanctions bite ever deeper, and one that has been exacerbated by the ruble’s plunge.

“Objective data shows that inflationary risks are increasing, and the task of reining in price growth is now the number one priority,” Putin said, with a note of tension in his voice. “I ask my colleagues in the government and the Central Bank to keep the situation under constant control.”

Rapidly rising prices caused by a 20 percent drop in the value of the ruble between early June and mid-August and the government’s pouring of funds into Russia’s defense industry are bringing Russia’s war — and the impact of sanctions — home to many Russians for the first time, economists say.

“The Russian people have been isolating themselves from these political developments, but the inflation rate is something they can’t isolate themselves from because they have to pay,” said Janis Kluge, an economist at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “It is a way in which politics really interferes in their lives, and this is the part which is worrying for the Russian leadership. Because no propaganda will make this go away.”

Russia’s Central Bank forecasts inflation will reach up to 6.5 percent by the end of 2023. But economists say the rapid ruble devaluation could fuel a further surge in prices over the next 3 to 6 months and the inflation rate could reach double digits by the end of the year, even after the Central Bank made an emergency hike this month to its key interest rate, now at 12 percent, to try to counter that.

With imports still making up to 40 percent of the average Russian consumer basket, two recent surveys show Russians have already started to reduce spending. One published Aug. 16 by Russia’s largest market research agency, Romir, found that 19 percent of respondents had begun cutting back on purchases of basic goods such as toothpaste, washing powder and food in July, compared to 16 percent the month before.

The ruble’s loss of more than a third of its value since November last year to a large degree is a result of sanctions imposed on Russia’s energy exports at the end of 2022, when the European Union banned most Russian oil imports and the G-7 group of nations imposed a price cap on Russian crude sales elsewhere, decreeing its oil could be sold for no more than $60 per barrel.

Even though Russian oil traders have sunk into the shadows, deploying phantom fleets seeking to sidestep the curbs, the measures, combined with a sharp reduction in Russian gas exports to Europe, have deprived the Russian budget of a key source of revenue, with income from energy exports falling 47 percent the first half of 2023, compared to the same time the previous year.

At the same time, Russia’s turn to gray import channels to avoid export controls — through countries such as Turkey, China and Central Asian states — has brought imports back to prewar levels, further putting pressure on the ruble.

Russian officials are grappling with the transformative economic consequences of Putin’s war against Ukraine, analysts say. The government has doubled its defense spending target for 2023 to more than $100 billion, pumping more than $60 billion in budget funds into the defense industry in the first half of 2023, according to government figures disclosed this month by Reuters, to feed its war machine.

The spending spree has propped up the Russian economy against the most deleterious effects of Western sanctions, allowing the Kremlin to tout a return to overall economic growth, forecast by the Russian Central Bank at 1.5 to 2.5 percent, and by the International Monetary Fund at 0.7 percent, following a contraction of 2.1 percent last year.

But it is also creating a huge imbalance in the Russian economy, exacerbating inflation as defense enterprises work round-the-clock and worsening labor shortages caused in part by the mobilization of conscripts to the front in Ukraine and by the hundreds of thousands of Russians fleeing abroad since the start of the war.

A survey conducted by the Gaidar Institute in Moscow found that 42 percent of enterprises surveyed complained of a lack of workers in July. In a sign of increasing desperation, Putin last week decreed that restrictions on employing teenagers as young as 14 should be lifted, to cope with the labor shortages, according to a list of presidential orders published on the Kremlin’s website.

“Past assertions that sanctions would bring the Russian economy crashing down were wrong then and remain so,” said Mark Sobel, who served as deputy assistant secretary for international monetary and financial policy at the Treasury Department and is now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a D.C.-based think tank. “But the impact of Western actions against Russia has been crippling, and will be long-lasting.”

Despite the impact of oil export curbs, the Biden administration is resisting pleas from the Ukrainian government to slash the oil price cap from $60 to $30 per barrel, because it fears that could prompt Russia to cut oil production and cause gas price spikes, roiling the global economy just as the United States heads toward a presidential election in 2024, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Any such maneuver would also require the support of European lawmakers, and risks undermining support for the Ukrainian war effort, these people said.

“That is the central tension they are wrestling with,” one of the people said.

A Treasury Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

Oleg Ustenko, an economic adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said it is imperative for the West to take collective action. “We need significant downward pressure on the price cap, or the Russians will have enough cash on hand to continue this war,” Ustenko said.

Elina Ribakova, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute and director of International Programs at the Kyiv School of Economics, said that without further pressure on Russian oil revenue, the Russian authorities would probably weather any inflation spike, even if the rate heads toward low double digits.

“I don’t think inflation is going to be a big issue unless the government has to start printing money to support the budget,” Ribakova said. “If there is some success in tightening Russia’s evasion of the oil price cap, and Putin wants to hike social spending, then that will be challenging. If we see the budget deficit for next year is going to be around 6 to 7 percent of GDP, then that is going to be challenging.”

Others said the inflationary impact was already raising questions about the longer-term sustainability of Putin’s tactics. In a sign of the nervousness, Deputy Trade and Industry Minister Viktor Yevtukhov met with retail chiefs this month and demanded that they limit any price hikes, Russian newspaper Izvestia reported.

The increasing inflationary pressures risk turning Russia’s economic woes into political ones, Kluge said. “The question is, how much inflation is the Russian population going to tolerate?”