September 2026: The world today, as seen by one Polish guy
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September 2026: The world today, as seen by one Polish guy
Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.
jakozaur · · focus · HN ↗
The war in Ukraine is a tragedy, but it has proved that Russia is weak. The price shock will speed up the transition to renewables, and Iran is losing its grip on Hormuz. So many of the other issues are solvable.
It's easy to be a pessimist, but there's a bright future ahead of us.
ponkipo · · focus · HN ↗
does anybody else wonders how this isn't a good old wishful thinking, when with 350+ billions of dollars in foreign aid to Ukraine, all sorts of intelligence and tech help, total and forced mobilization in Ukraine (while only one partial in Russia in 2022), all sanctions on Russia you can think of - even with all of that "weak Russia" after 4+ years of war still controls almost 20% of the Ukraine counting Crimea and it's not really changing?
or maybe there is a difference between "not as strong as was thought" and "weak" after all?
stickfigure · · focus · HN ↗
Also, Russia cannot keep this going indefinitely. The West can. There is some question about whether Ukraine can or can't, but from an endurance perspective, there is absolutely no question who has the upper hand. Nobody west of Ukraine is on a war footing, we're all working our day jobs, taking vacations, and growing our economies.
$350 billion of foreign aid sounds like a lot until you realize the GDP of NATO is more than $55 trillion. We could keep this going forever.
Russia is spending 7-10% of its GDP, and fully half of its federal spending, on the war. And that probably understates because Russia forces war spending onto localities and companies. This will come to an end eventually; time is not on Russia's side.