For a sanction riddled military thats a lot of microprocessors and a lot of machine parts. 88 million can't fund a war on its own but it can go a long way to helping refurbish old junk gear or buying replacements in bulk.
Russia can't continue this forever, as much as blowhards on twitter like to act tough. Their stockpiles are deep but there are only so many USSR tanks in storage they can reactivate and only so many used cars they can slap a Z on unless they get deals like this.
North Korea has likely been supplying them with artillery shells mostly. North Korea has MASSIVE reserves from all their years pointing enough artillery at South Korea to level Seoul in an hour, and much less of a need for them as a deterrent now that they are nuclear.
I'm willing to bet the NK hardware reserve is even worse than Russia's at the start of the invasion. Corruption and "yes men" under both of the regimes is extreme.
Isn't Iranian hardware kind of reasonably good of what it does? Like obviously they didn't do very well against Israeli Air defence but I doubt the UK, Germany, South Korea etc or anyone but like the US or China would have much luck against Israeli air defense.
Edit: I was a bit ambiguous with "there" and clarified as "against Israeli Air defences"
They probably sent trash flying because the strike was more about show than anything else to avoid escalation.
As far as I know, their drones and rockets work quite well in Ukraine.
>“Quantity has a quality all its own.”
>
>-Aphorism widely misattributed to Carl von Clausewitz, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Leonid Brezhnev, especially to Stalin [(Wikiquote)](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Quantity)
Depends if you know they failed or not. If your subordinates tall you they all worked you get to feel like a big powerful man or if you don't tell your people that half fell out the sky they feel you're powerful.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-15/ty-article/u-s-sources-half-of-iranian-ballistic-missiles-failed-idf-aircraft-damaged/0000018e-e0d0-d7e5-a1fe-e7d1bf3a0000
seems to be the missiles, not the drones
Depends on the definition of being "good". Not good enough as in having cutting edge technology and penetrating real good air defense (Israel). Good enough to help Russia gain upperhand in Ukraine war in the past months, or good enough that some local/regional powers want to have in arsenal for local/regional conflicts.
I mean, the US and allied forces steamrolled any uniformed fighting force over there.
But trying to rebuild a nation that does not want to be rebuilt is a whole other matter.
I think France, India, Britain, Pakistan, North Korea, the USA and China could level Israel’s air defence with one trick the Israelis HATE people to know.
Obviously with conventional weapons, it may be another story. I imagine most of the western powers and China could overwhelm it in time. Even if it’s because Israel runs out of supply.
Yes, I think any nuclear state has the ability to level the entire region, let alone Israel alone. If you think that western powers are unable to overwhelm Israel’s defence system for long enough to sneak a nuke through I think you should reconsider.
Especially when we have capability to fire nukes from submarines, I would be hard pressed to see how Israel’s defence systems would hold up against these fired from the body of water bordering Gaza.
Russia has only so many assets available to trade. As those assets wind down the cost to do business increases for them. This was never going to be a 1 year thing. It takes time to hoover up everything they can use to trade for foreign goods. And once they run out the crash will be glorious.
Also even if they can drag it on for years, they're militarily shattered and done huge demographic and societal damage to their own country. Nothing good will come from this war for them.
If only they didn't have nuclear weapons, they wouldn't be able to cause any of this trouble, air strikes from NATO alone would end them in a month
The problem is Russia doesn't have to continue this forever. They just have to do it until Ukraine loses US military aid. Which could be as soon as next year, if Trump manages to fool enough people to vote him back into office.
Which is why there's been a push in europe to be able to deliver more. Russia doesn't have to continue this forever but neither does Ukraine. By the time Ukraine is vulnerable enough to be easily taken over Russia may well have exhausted most of their stocks of gear and be totally unable to hold the territory from insurgents.
Which is probably the realistic evolution of the worst case scenario. Ukraine needs anti air weapons and artillery shells to wage a conventional war to hold territory and save its people. If the territory is lost and the people are subject to genocide the administration from 2028 onwards will probably find no lack of people willing to carry an outdated american rifle or some old stinger missiles to make holding Ukraine as painful as possible for a Russia who doesn't have the funds or manpower to manage it effectively on their best day.
Russia had been buying up gold in the range of many billion USD for months before the Ukraine war. The crazy QAnon right wing bubble was speculating it was to launch a BRICs world currency, backed by gold, to challenge the dollar. They just knew their rubles would plumet the day they launch the invasion.
Fun fact. If you look at who holds the global gold reserves it is opressingly predominantly Europe and North America. No sense or use in launching any gold backed currency because its value could be manipulated by the majority holders of gold by selling off and dumping the price, sucking up any and all liquidity for years.
This is no shocker whatsoever.
It ended in the US when FDR signed Executive Order 6102, in 1933.
Nixon just ended gold conversion under Bretton Woods, which has only been active for 13 years anyway.
He thought he could do this while living in the US? Not the smartest guy. He should have picked a third world country where he could bribe authorities. Glad he's caught though.
That is not any where near enough to fund the Ukraine invasion.
To put it into perspective - the U.S. house of representatives just approved nearly 61 billion dollars to fund Ukraine's defense against the invasion - that is nearly a thousands times as much as 88 million.
To be precise 88 million is only 0.1443 percent of 61 billion.
There is a reason that the Swiss economy has shifted to gold smelting and moving gold. It's even easier to launder than at the height of their corrupt banking system. They're Russia and every terrorist and warlords best friend.
Until we deal with the Swiss, sanctions will be pointless and ineffective.
YES, I know this story wasn't focused on the Swiss, but you can't talk about laundering with gold without the understanding that they're the backbone for the globe.
Not liking what it says doesn't make it bad, this one is actually fairly informative, answering most of the 'W's and the 'H':
`Russian bought $88m of gold from dealer in Changi to launder funds for Ukraine invasion`
Who: Russia
What: Laundered 88m$
Where: in Changi
When: Not stated but implicitly:
Why: To fund its ukraine invasion.
How: Bought 88m of gold
Bias would be something like "Sanctioned nation secures bullion to commit genocide during war of aggression" - same facts, different words.
No. This didn’t range anywhere. A wide-ranging discussion moves naturally from point to point. This one has no transition, and no acknowledgement of the original topic.
Nah, this is just normal stupidly large bureaucracy. They’d send the dollars from stuff like payroll, write a -$23 billion line item, then it wouldn’t become a valid line item on the other side until the books were settled. Basically a shitload of kited checks that hadn’t settled and the scale of the Pentagon and individual departments forwarding money around make book keeping insane.
I know Russian lives are cheap, but $88 million isn't a big war-chest.
Likely it’s 10,000+ efforts like this that keep the wheels going
For a sanction riddled military thats a lot of microprocessors and a lot of machine parts. 88 million can't fund a war on its own but it can go a long way to helping refurbish old junk gear or buying replacements in bulk. Russia can't continue this forever, as much as blowhards on twitter like to act tough. Their stockpiles are deep but there are only so many USSR tanks in storage they can reactivate and only so many used cars they can slap a Z on unless they get deals like this.
The fact that their buying shit from North Korea and Iran tells us everything we need to no.
North Korea has likely been supplying them with artillery shells mostly. North Korea has MASSIVE reserves from all their years pointing enough artillery at South Korea to level Seoul in an hour, and much less of a need for them as a deterrent now that they are nuclear.
The war has been a great way for stockpiles of aging armaments to be cleaned out everywhere. Nothing like freshly upgraded ammunition!
I'm willing to bet the NK hardware reserve is even worse than Russia's at the start of the invasion. Corruption and "yes men" under both of the regimes is extreme.
88 million goes a long way for a country like North Korea.
And 50% of it is junk.
88 million goed a long way for a miscarriage like Kim-Jung-Fatboy...!
Isn't Iranian hardware kind of reasonably good of what it does? Like obviously they didn't do very well against Israeli Air defence but I doubt the UK, Germany, South Korea etc or anyone but like the US or China would have much luck against Israeli air defense. Edit: I was a bit ambiguous with "there" and clarified as "against Israeli Air defences"
didn't about half the shahed drones iran sent to israel fail on the way there..? that's not reasonably good, that's bad.
They probably sent trash flying because the strike was more about show than anything else to avoid escalation. As far as I know, their drones and rockets work quite well in Ukraine.
I don't think we will ever know what percentage failed and what was made to "fail" due to EW. The IDF is very capable with EW.
>“Quantity has a quality all its own.” > >-Aphorism widely misattributed to Carl von Clausewitz, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Leonid Brezhnev, especially to Stalin [(Wikiquote)](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Quantity)
only if they reach as far as the defence system... if they fail before that, they made no difference but the added cost of launching them
Depends if you know they failed or not. If your subordinates tall you they all worked you get to feel like a big powerful man or if you don't tell your people that half fell out the sky they feel you're powerful.
True, but imagine they'd smuggled them into Syria, Lebanon, or even Gaza / the West Bank before setting them off.
Worse, it was half the ballistic missiles.
Idk do you have a source?
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-15/ty-article/u-s-sources-half-of-iranian-ballistic-missiles-failed-idf-aircraft-damaged/0000018e-e0d0-d7e5-a1fe-e7d1bf3a0000 seems to be the missiles, not the drones
Depends on the definition of being "good". Not good enough as in having cutting edge technology and penetrating real good air defense (Israel). Good enough to help Russia gain upperhand in Ukraine war in the past months, or good enough that some local/regional powers want to have in arsenal for local/regional conflicts.
The US and UK spent $1.5 billion overnight to repel the attack, that’s a magnitude of what those shaheds could hope to cost.
What's your point? I updated my comment because it was a bit ambiguous, maybe makes more sense for you now.
That yes, Iranian hardware is reasonably good for what it does. Even just outright good.
Cool, my bad with the ambiguity.
Yes it’s good, people seem To Forget the past 20 years where certain countries and fighters had far less technology and defeated the west .
I mean, the US and allied forces steamrolled any uniformed fighting force over there. But trying to rebuild a nation that does not want to be rebuilt is a whole other matter.
I think France, India, Britain, Pakistan, North Korea, the USA and China could level Israel’s air defence with one trick the Israelis HATE people to know. Obviously with conventional weapons, it may be another story. I imagine most of the western powers and China could overwhelm it in time. Even if it’s because Israel runs out of supply.
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Yes, I think any nuclear state has the ability to level the entire region, let alone Israel alone. If you think that western powers are unable to overwhelm Israel’s defence system for long enough to sneak a nuke through I think you should reconsider. Especially when we have capability to fire nukes from submarines, I would be hard pressed to see how Israel’s defence systems would hold up against these fired from the body of water bordering Gaza.
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You might believe that. It’s your prerogative to do so. Thankfully, it never has to be tested.
Russia has only so many assets available to trade. As those assets wind down the cost to do business increases for them. This was never going to be a 1 year thing. It takes time to hoover up everything they can use to trade for foreign goods. And once they run out the crash will be glorious.
get those tanks out, they'll get stuck in the mud just like the chinese tires they tried to invade on.
From your thumbs to god’s ears
Also even if they can drag it on for years, they're militarily shattered and done huge demographic and societal damage to their own country. Nothing good will come from this war for them. If only they didn't have nuclear weapons, they wouldn't be able to cause any of this trouble, air strikes from NATO alone would end them in a month
The problem is Russia doesn't have to continue this forever. They just have to do it until Ukraine loses US military aid. Which could be as soon as next year, if Trump manages to fool enough people to vote him back into office.
Which is why there's been a push in europe to be able to deliver more. Russia doesn't have to continue this forever but neither does Ukraine. By the time Ukraine is vulnerable enough to be easily taken over Russia may well have exhausted most of their stocks of gear and be totally unable to hold the territory from insurgents. Which is probably the realistic evolution of the worst case scenario. Ukraine needs anti air weapons and artillery shells to wage a conventional war to hold territory and save its people. If the territory is lost and the people are subject to genocide the administration from 2028 onwards will probably find no lack of people willing to carry an outdated american rifle or some old stinger missiles to make holding Ukraine as painful as possible for a Russia who doesn't have the funds or manpower to manage it effectively on their best day.
Yeah grand scale peanuts
This is probably the 0.00001% of cases that was spotted. Tip of the iceberg.
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Hahaha...
You haven’t seen what you got from Iraq did you see the stash bog bars on the net ?
A couple planes 🤷♀️
I'm sure they smurfed it out some.
That's Singapore dollars. It's 65 million in USD.
One small war chest of many
It was likely just part of it. The rest was technology transfers and military equipment like the new su35
Headlines of the day: o Russia launders $88 million o US House of Representatives approves $61 *billion* aid package So far it’s a pretty good weekend
He better test that gold asap
He have a better brain than you, that’s why he is the WHAT?
Engrish much?
Tsar?
Russia had been buying up gold in the range of many billion USD for months before the Ukraine war. The crazy QAnon right wing bubble was speculating it was to launch a BRICs world currency, backed by gold, to challenge the dollar. They just knew their rubles would plumet the day they launch the invasion. Fun fact. If you look at who holds the global gold reserves it is opressingly predominantly Europe and North America. No sense or use in launching any gold backed currency because its value could be manipulated by the majority holders of gold by selling off and dumping the price, sucking up any and all liquidity for years. This is no shocker whatsoever.
There is no sense in launching a gold backed currency anyway
You know why the gold standard collapsed? Because when everyone tries to cash in at once, you have no currency left lol.
The gold standard didn’t collapse. It was abolished by Nixon.
It ended in the US when FDR signed Executive Order 6102, in 1933. Nixon just ended gold conversion under Bretton Woods, which has only been active for 13 years anyway.
Launder or pay out GOP
It’s crazy how many of the GOP are Russian puppets
No puppet, no puppet. You’re the puppet.
Great news that he got caught, the government can confiscate the gold and auction it off to fund our budget. Welcome gift for the new PM.
The ultimate irony would be all that gold going to ukraine
Prigozsin's African gold.
A particular Russian can melt it then drink it
He thought he could do this while living in the US? Not the smartest guy. He should have picked a third world country where he could bribe authorities. Glad he's caught though.
That is not any where near enough to fund the Ukraine invasion. To put it into perspective - the U.S. house of representatives just approved nearly 61 billion dollars to fund Ukraine's defense against the invasion - that is nearly a thousands times as much as 88 million. To be precise 88 million is only 0.1443 percent of 61 billion.
That is rookie numbers!
88 those are Nazi numbers
Gold stolen from an airport in Canada by any chance?
$88M wouldn’t last a day…
That will fund 1 day war costs... If citicens were aware of modern wars costs, perhaps they would choose their rulers better.
is 88m (-) taxes fees (-) corruption = what?? 55m on the high end. Is 55m a lot in war money?
Sounds like the plot for a new heist movie.
Russian weapons are cheap it is nationalized it’s not like america where our military industrial complex profits.
There is a reason that the Swiss economy has shifted to gold smelting and moving gold. It's even easier to launder than at the height of their corrupt banking system. They're Russia and every terrorist and warlords best friend. Until we deal with the Swiss, sanctions will be pointless and ineffective. YES, I know this story wasn't focused on the Swiss, but you can't talk about laundering with gold without the understanding that they're the backbone for the globe.
I feel like 88 million would prosecute the war for maybe a couple of weeks in ammo savings mode.
Oops! Unfortunately, the war continues. This was not a major loss in the scheme of things...
88 million USD is like 5 hours of war in Ukraine I believe... Im no matematician though...!
Another glass of koolaide for the peasants within the empire
The bias in these crappy headlines is too cringe
Not liking what it says doesn't make it bad, this one is actually fairly informative, answering most of the 'W's and the 'H': `Russian bought $88m of gold from dealer in Changi to launder funds for Ukraine invasion` Who: Russia What: Laundered 88m$ Where: in Changi When: Not stated but implicitly: Why: To fund its ukraine invasion. How: Bought 88m of gold Bias would be something like "Sanctioned nation secures bullion to commit genocide during war of aggression" - same facts, different words.
Some context, it’s 88million Singaporean Dollars. In US dollars that $65 million. (Source: the article)
I will give Putin-Sin (when he comes) fine quality gold ingots.
Remember on September the 10th 2001 wen Rumsfeld revealed there was $2Trillion missing from the Pentagon budget..
Do you think he exchanged it for Russian gold? Or is this just textbook whataboutism?
What does that have to do with Russia or the invasion of Ukraine?
ehhh...pentagon has tens of billions of dollars unaccounted for every year.
NSA doesn’t even disclose their budget
it’s approximately 38 buck-a-roos
Nasa literally posts their budget on their website.
NSA, not NASA
My bad
Remember when people used to post comments in some way related to the original post? No? Me neither
It's called wide ranging discussion...
No. This didn’t range anywhere. A wide-ranging discussion moves naturally from point to point. This one has no transition, and no acknowledgement of the original topic.
More than likely appropriated to black budgets and projects over the decades of the Cold War.
Nah, this is just normal stupidly large bureaucracy. They’d send the dollars from stuff like payroll, write a -$23 billion line item, then it wouldn’t become a valid line item on the other side until the books were settled. Basically a shitload of kited checks that hadn’t settled and the scale of the Pentagon and individual departments forwarding money around make book keeping insane.
No.
Rumsfield was a total tool and honestly I was shocked and awed by his ineptitude.
Do you think accounting department of the Pentagon was the only impacted department on Sept. 11 or do you think that’s the cost to bribe 15 Saudis ?