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Will Prigozhin's death make any difference to the war in Ukraine? [1]
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Date: 2023-09
That brings us back, in turn to the state of the war itself, starting with an update on the “winners and losers” followed by the most likely developments as autumn and winter approach. Those winners and losers are still, respectively, the military-industrial corporations, especially but not only in the West, and ordinary people.
For the former war really is turning out to be Christmas come early and with no expectations of a hangover to follow. Across the world military spending is already operating from a substantial base – a global spend now exceeding US$2 trillion a year. In a single year, the year the war started, military budgets across Europe surged by around 13 percent and world-wide the increase was 3.7 percent.
Western arms corporations are reporting full order books and have seen sharp increases in their share prices. One of the biggest, the UK-based BAE Systems, saw its share price go up 70 percent from before the conflict, and for the Swedish Saab it was even more, a doubling over the same period. Germany’s largest armourer, Rheinmetall, has products much in demand, including armoured personnel carriers, many types of military trucks, light tanks anti-tank guided missiles, self-propelled howitzers and guns for both the German Leopard and US Abrams main battle tanks. It saw its share price treble in a year. War is indeed very good for business.
What of the losers? Eighteen months into the Russian attempt to integrate Ukraine into the new expanded Russia, what have been the costs so far? A US government assessment two weeks ago put the total number of people killed or injured at half a million. For the Russians it was 120,000 dead and 170-180,000 injured and for the Ukrainians it was close to 70,000 killed and 100-120,000 injured. The Ukrainian deaths already exceed all the US combat deaths for eleven years of the Vietnam War.
In the war itself, Ukraine has made some gains in the south-east but Russia is reported to be gathering a force of up to 100,000 for an operation in the north-east. It is always possible that one side might suddenly collapse, but NATO cannot allow that to be Ukraine and failure is considered unthinkable in Moscow, so any way of avoiding that will be legitimate.
For the present, a telling trend is the much-increased use of armed drones, with thousands now being produced and used. The impact of these might be in its early days but it is worth recalling a precedent from the 1980s. When Saddam Hussein’s Iraq attacked Iran at the start of the war it was expected that the weakened and chaotic post-revolutionary Iran would collapse. That did not happen, so in early 1984 Iraq started bombarding Iranian cities with missiles, strike aircraft and even long-range artillery. Caught out, Tehran eventually acquired some old Soviet Scud-B missiles from Russia and Libya and also began to develop its own missiles. This was the start of the infamous “war of the cities”.
Over the following three years Iran suffered the most, with thousands of people killed or injured, but 40 years later the substantial Iranian missile industry causes the Americans and Israelis, not forgetting Saudi Arabia, great concern.
Armed drones have been in use for two decades but that use has been greatly boosted by the Ukraine conflict, and where that leads is difficult to predict – yet one more reason why a negotiated end to the conflict is so important.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/prigozhin-death-putin-ukraine-war-russia/
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