By Caitlin Johnstone, Substack, 6/18/24

So I guess we should probably talk about the way NATO powers are rapidly escalating toward hot war with Russia at the same time the US is expanding its draft policies to make it easier to force more Americans go and fight in a giant war.

In an article titled “NATO: 500,000 Troops on High Readiness for War With Russia,” Antiwar’s Kyle Anzalone highlights NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s comments on Friday stating the alliance actually has a far greater number of troops it could deploy than the 300,000 it had previously set as its goal.

“Allies are offering forces to NATO’s command at a scale not seen in decades,” Stoltenberg said on Friday. “ Today we have 500,000 troops at high readiness across all domains, significantly more than the goal that was set at the 2022 Madrid Summit.”

Anzalone writes the following:

“The alliance hit its goal as its members significantly ratcheted up support for Kiev in recent weeks. The US and several other nations also recently gave a green light for Ukraine to use their weapons to strike targets inside Russia.

“The Netherlands and Denmark plan to supply Kiev with F-16s in the coming months, and say the advanced aircraft could be used to bomb Russia. Stoltenberg added that he welcomes the policy shift, and said it should not be considered an escalation by Russia.”

This comes shortly after we learned that NATO is developing multiple “land corridors” to rush troops to the frontline of a future hot war with Russia in eastern Europe.

It also comes as we learn from Stoltenberg that NATO is considering increasing the number of nuclear weapons it has on standby, meaning ready to use in a nuclear war. White House spokesman John Kirby bizarrely told the press that this aggressive move should not be seen as a provocation towards Russia, because NATO is a “defensive alliance”.

“How can this not be perceived as provocation or an escalation of tension in Europe?” Kirby was asked regarding Stoltenberg’s recent comments.

“Who would perceive it as a provocation or an escalation?” Kirby responded.

“Russia,” the reporter answered.

“Oh, Russia, Russia, the same country that invaded Ukraine which posed absolutely no threat to them,” Kirby replied indignantly, saying, “NATO is a defensive alliance and NATO countries are some of the most sophisticated in the world when it comes to military capabilities. And it would be irresponsible and imprudent if we weren’t constantly talking to our NATO allies about how to make sure we can meet our commitments to one another across a range of military capabilities, and that’s as far as I’ll go.”

One of the dumbest things the empire asks us to believe these days is that surrounding its official enemies with existentially threatening war machinery should always be seen as a defensive measure. The last time a credible military threat was placed near the US border, Washington responded so aggressively the world almost ended. Yet nations like Russia and China are expected to let the US and its allies amass military threats right near their borders without even regarding this as a provocation.

This and other frightening nuclear escalations with Russia are happening at the same time US lawmakers are working to expand draft registration to women and to automate registration for men, both of which would help broaden the pool of warm bodies the US would have available to throw into a hot war with a major military power.

Edward Hasbrouck writes the following for Antiwar:

“The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) approved a version of the NDAA that would expand Selective Service registration to include young women as well as young men. This version of the NDAA will now go to the floor as the starting point for consideration and approval by the full Senate.

“Also on June 14th the full House of Representatives approved a different version of the NDAA that would make Selective Service registration automatic while keeping it for men only.”

As Reason’s CJ Ciaramella explains in an article about this move to automate draft registration, the official reason for this push is to make the system run more efficiently, but “The other, unspoken effect would be removing young men’s choice to engage in civil disobedience.” If the US war machine starts a new horrific conflict that the Zoomers don’t believe in, ideally you want to make it as hard as possible for them to resist being fed to the cannons.

The draft is one of those things that gets more disgusting the more you think about it, especially in a nation whose government is as belligerent and psychopathic as the USA’s. These freaks can engage in any amount of brinkmanship they like with nations they have no business fighting — all without any of their actions ever being put to a vote from the general public — and then if it goes hot they get to turn to a bunch of kids in their teens and early twenties and say “This isn’t our problem, it’s your problem. Go fight and kill and die for your country.” They can start a war with their own recklessness and then chill out and sip martinis while your kids go get killed in it.

This is evil, this is ugly, and it needs to stop.

***

Why is NATO expanding its nuclear force?

By Stephen Bryen, Asia Times, 6/18/24

Jens Stoltenberg, the 13th secretary general of NATO, says that the alliance is in talks to deploy more nuclear weapons and modernize their delivery systems. Stoltenberg told the Telegraph in the UK: “I won’t go into operational details about how many nuclear warheads should be operational and which should be stored, but we need to consult on these issues. That’s exactly what we’re doing.” Stoltenberg emphasized that NATO is a “nuclear alliance.”

He explained: “NATO’s aim is, of course, a world without nuclear weapons. But as long as nuclear weapons exist we will remain a nuclear alliance, because a world where Russia, China and North Korea have nuclear weapons and NATO does not is a more dangerous world.”

The Russians say that Stoltenberg’s nuclear weapons declaration was “bully tactics.“

Stoltenberg could not act on NATO’s nuclear deterrent without deep coordination with the United States. Thus the NATO expansion of nuclear weapons has to be a Biden administration policy and program.

Nuclear sharing in NATO

NATO’s nuclear deterrence is based on nuclear sharing arrangements. As described officially,

NATO’s nuclear deterrence posture also relies on the United States’ nuclear weapons forward-deployed in Europe, as well as on the capabilities and infrastructure provided by Allies concerned. A number of NATO countries contribute a dual-capable aircraft (DCA) capability to the Alliance. These aircraft are central to NATO’s nuclear deterrence mission and are available for nuclear roles at various levels of readiness. In their nuclear role, the aircraft are equipped to carry nuclear weapons in a conflict, and personnel are trained accordingly.

The United States maintains absolute control and custody of their nuclear weapons forward-deployed in Europe, while Allies provide military support for the DCA mission with conventional forces and capabilities.

While NATO’s nuclear weapons are American, the UK and France have nuclear weapons too.

US nuclear weapons stored in Europe are nuclear gravity bombs that can be launched either by NATO aircraft or by the US operating independently of NATO.

Technically, nuclear gravity bombs fall into the category of tactical nuclear weapons. The US, UK and France also deploy strategic nuclear weapons in and around Europe. The UK has around 225 nuclear warheads (more than half in storage) for its Trident nuclear submarine program. The British nuclear capability requires US coordination.

France is the only NATO country with a fully independent nuclear arsenal. It consists of ballistic missile submarines and a small number of cruise missiles with nuclear warheads. The French have floated the idea of replacing the US nuclear deterrent with a French one and there have been discussions with Germany about the idea.

To some degree, Stoltenberg’s announcement on upgrading NATO’s nuclear alliance could be interpreted as offsetting French pressure to diverge from the US-led deterrent in Europe.

There has long been suspicion in Europe that the US would not launch nuclear weapons to defend European territory because of the risk of a nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States. To an unknown extent, the presence of tactical nuclear weapons (under US control) is intended to enable the US to use the tactical part of its nuclear arsenal – reducing the risk of a strategic nuclear exchange with Russia.

Yet it is certainly the case that Stoltenberg’s emphasis on NATO as a nuclear alliance was primarily intended to offset fears that Russia could turn to nuclear weapons to settle the Ukraine conflict. Compared with the US, Russia has a vast arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons. And many of its tactical missiles can be equipped with nuclear warheads. In fact, the Ukrainians have been warning Europe that this is exactly what Russia could do.

The Russians have been conducting nuclear exercises and claim to have put nuclear weapons in Belarus, although none have been spotted there as of now. Likewise the US has been flying its strategic bombers close to Russia’s borders, as a US warning.

Ukraine has also attacked two sensitive radar sites that are important parts of Russia’s early warning system. It is not clear why these targets were selected whether by Ukraine or by NATO, which supplies the weapons and intelligence for these attacks.

NATO relies on nuclear gravity bombs for deterrence. These weapons would be delivered against Russian targets by NATO aircraft. About 150 bombs are stored at six bases: Kleine Brogel in Belgium, Büchel Air Base in Germany, Aviano and Ghedi Air Base in Italy, Volkel Air Base in the Netherlands and Incirlik in Turkey. These are part of NATO’s nuclear sharing agreement.

In addition, the US announced in January that it was upgrading parts of the RAF Airbase at Lakenheath, Suffolk, in the UK. There a special squadron, the 48th Security Force, of F-35s will be capable of carrying B-61 gravity bombs. The US is building special hydraulic loading ramps, upgrading storage facilities and installing a nuclear “shield” to protect personnel at the base.

These F-35s will be operated solely by US pilots and are outside of NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangement – meaning that their mission could be linked to NATO’s security and deterrence but could be used outside of any general NATO agreement.

US B-61 gravity bombs are close to completing a modernization program (Mod 12). The B-61 is a “dial-a-yield” weapon, meaning that the bomb yield can be adjusted to fit specific targets. The US also will retain some Mod 11 B-61 bombs.

The Mod 11 B-61 is regarded as a bunker buster bomb and is not “dial a yield.” It has a special 400 kiloton warhead. About 30 of these bombs were manufactured. It is not clear if they are deployed in Europe.

The Mod 12 B-61 can select yields (in kilotons) from .3, 1.5, 10 or 50 kt. For comparison purposes, the Hiroshima bomb was between 11 and 16 kt.

The modernization of the B-61 requires the modernization of the delivery systems, including changes in the aircraft’s electronics. There is very little information on how quickly the upgrades and changes can be made. New F-35s can carry B-61 bombs if they are equipped to do so. It isn’t known how many of the F-35’s delivered to Europe are nuclear capable.

Many unanswered questions

It is important to point out that neither the US nor NATO has any treaty obligation, or any other responsibility, to protect Ukraine from a nuclear attack. Thus NATO deterrence, at least insofar as it is understood, does not apply to Ukraine in any formal manner. But that does not mean that Stoltenberg, and by proxy the United States, is not shifting the alliance to extending a nuclear umbrella over Ukraine.

One reason to assess there may be a change in strategy underway is the NATO-US decision to unleash long-range weapons in Ukraine on Russian territory.

In the proxy wars prior to Ukraine, the US and Russia have been careful to avoid directly attacking each other. That is why Truman was against US forces crossing the Yalu River in Korea; why neither China nor Russia was attacked in the Vietnam war; why in the Cuban missile crisis President John F. Kennedy refused any nuclear attack on Cuba and the Soviet Union.

But there were moments when tensions grew to approach the nuclear threshold. That was especially the case in 1973 when Russia began threatening intervention with nuclear weapons in the Yom Kippur war, and when the US declared a DEFCON-3 alert.

In the context of superpower rivalries, and proxy and other conflicts (the Cuban Missile Crisis was not a proxy conflict but a direct confrontation between the US and USSR), NATO-approved attacks on Russian territory appear to cross a dangerous red line.

When combined with the no-negotiations, no-talks, no-peace posture of the US and most of Europe regarding Ukraine, the danger of an expanding conflict – even one involving nuclear weapons – is increasing. Upgrading nuclear arsenals in that context adds fuel to the fire.

RT, 5/18/24

Russia won’t view Western European countries as partners again for “at least one generation,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has predicted.The diplomat remarked that Moscow and the West are already locked in a confrontation that has no end in sight.

Top Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have repeatedly described Moscow’s ongoing military conflict with Kiev as a proxy war waged by NATO against Russia. Evidence of this, the Kremlin says, is the material aid, the training, and the intelligence that the US and many European countries have been providing to defend Ukraine.

Speaking on Saturday, Lavrov cited an article by Russian political scientist Dmitry Trenin, who has written that “Europe as a partner is not relevant for us for at least one generation.” The minister said that he “can’t help but agree” and that Moscow is “feeling this in practice almost daily.” The senior Russian diplomat also claimed, without elaborating, that “many facts speak in favor of such a prognosis.”

“The acute phase of the military-political confrontation with the West continues [and] is in full swing,” Lavrov said, pointing to the nature of the narratives currently prevalent in the US and Europe.

In an interview with TASS on Friday, Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Ryabkov compared Western elites to delinquent youths and provocateurs intent on escalating tensions to the brink of a “catastrophic collapse,” and with no regard for the consequences.

Speaking of the work of Russian diplomats in the West, the official revealed that it is “in a crisis-management mode, aimed at preventing an escalation into a really massive conflict.”

NATO is “a group in which we feel not an ounce of trust, which triggers political and even emotional rejection” in Moscow, Ryabkov told the media outlet.

He said that, no matter who comes out on top in the US presidential election in November, “no chance for the improvement of the situation can be seen, considering the fundamental anti-Russian consensus of the American elites.”

During his inauguration speech on Tuesday, nonetheless, Russian President Vladimir Putin asserted that Moscow does not “refuse dialogue with Western states.”

“The choice is theirs,” the president proposed, posing the question: “Do they intend to continue trying to restrain the development of Russia, continue the policy of aggression and relentless pressure that they have pursued for years, or look for a path to cooperation and peace?”

By Tarik Cyril Amar, RT, 5/24/24

On 20 May, something important changed for Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky. On that day, the five-year presidential term for which he had been elected in 2019 came to an end. He remains in office, however, without having to face fresh elections. Zelensky’s critics, including within Ukraine, argue that he is now illegitimate in a strict, constitutional sense – in effect, a usurper. His followers and defenders, including in the West, insist that Zelensky legally remains president under martial law.

What is clear is that, according to the Ukrainian constitution, presidential elections can be held during wartime (unlike parliamentary ones, which are ruled out), even if a lack of clarity would require amendments, as Ukrainian experts have explained in national media. Even the New York Times acknowledged as much as recently as last October. At that point, however, Zelensky himself had not yet ruled out elections and American super hawk Senator Lindsey Graham was demanding them in his usual imperious tone.

Wartime elections in Ukraine would have posed practical challenges, although these could have been overcome. For instance, back in October, Zelensky himself stated that online voting was a possibility. Western media, including the BBC, which now claim Zelensky had no legal or practical option of standing for reelection, are misinforming their audiences by simply reproducing his regime’s current talking points. Not, obviously, for the first time.

No doubt, the legal legitimacy of a president is a critical issue, especially one as high-handed and authoritarian as Zelensky has been for years and since well before the escalation of the war in February 2022. Yet what is more important are the political meaning and effects of Zelensky’s transition to past-due-date status.

In this respect, the first point to note is that is Zelensky is evading the basic accountability of an election that would inevitably increase public scrutiny of his record. Even more disturbing, however, is to see one of his closest associates turning unquestioning compliance with this move into a de facto loyalty test, complete with ominous threats. The speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, a key magnate in Zelensky’s “Servant of the People” party, has reportedly even called all those who doubt the president’s continuing legitimacy “enemies of the people” and “political lice.”

Of course, this rhetoric – ironically reminiscent of Stalinism – comes with the usual tired smears: Anyone who dares doubt the Zelensky regime is routinely accused of doing so at the behest of Russian agitators. Perish the thought – in Zelensky’s post-“Revolution of Dignity” and “free world” showcase Ukraine – that citizens could genuinely disagree with their superiors!

Verbal brutality of the Stefanchuk kind is especially intriguing because a reasonably reliable and recent (February) poll shows that almost 70% of Ukrainians agree that Zelensky should remain president until “the end of the state of war.” For better or worse, Zelensky’s decision to avoid elections – whatever his reasons – is not unpopular.

But a closer look at the same poll reveals why the Zelenskyites are so touchy and aggressive: Widespread consent with postponing presidential elections does not translate into the same amount of popularity for Zelensky personally, or, for that matter, for his regime. For instance, in December 2023, 34% of respondents believed that he should not stand for another election (whenever the latter were to take place). By February of this year, only three months later, that share had risen to 43%. Clearly, Ukrainians who believe that this is not the right time for presidential elections and, at the same time, that Zelensky should never be a candidate again, don’t consider elections unnecessary because they are happy with his rule.

This reflects a long-term decline: Zelensky’s popularity ratings over the course of the war show a clear pattern. Initially, the escalation of February 2022 boosted them from 37% to a whopping 90% – an obvious case of a wartime rally-around-the-leader effect. Yet, by February of this year – after the bloody and costly failure of Ukraine’s 2023 summer counteroffensive and the de facto sacking of the popular commander-in-chief and Zelensky rival Valery Zaluzhny – the president’s ratings were down to 60%.

At the same time, trust in the Zelensky regime and its policies as a whole underwent the same degradation. Also in February, Ukrainian pollsters found that, for the first time during the war, a majority of Ukrainians believed the country was moving in the wrong direction.

Now add to this picture that, in February, Ukraine’s military situation was, though by no means good, better than now and that a highly unpopular – “divisive,” as even the AP admits – mobilization law had not even been passed yet. This law is now coming into force against the backdrop of an increasingly desperate fight on crumbling frontlines. It is safe to assume that Zelensky’s standing and that of his regime have only declined further.

The question is why. Zelensky has found more than one way to undermine himself: He has adopted punishing domestic policies of a generally rapacious neoliberal kind; he has stifled politics and the media; and he has set himself up as a merciless national recruiting sergeant forcing ever more unwilling Ukrainians into a meatgrinder proxy war for the West.

But the deepest cause of his decline remains that Zelensky – the man who would be Churchill (to paraphrase Kipling) – is not meeting a key requirement of the role: He is not winning his war. Instead, he is imposing ever-growing sacrifices – plenty of “blood, sweat, and tears,” to quote the British orator – but no victory. Rather, Ukraine’s situation is only growing worse.

Indeed, the post-February-2022 war could have been avoided entirely, if Zelensky had had the consistency and courage to keep his one clear 2019 election promise, namely to pursue a negotiated compromise in earnest. The framework for such a policy existed; its name was Minsk II. But instead of using it, Zelensky, his team, and his Western backers decided to stall and deceive systematically in order to arm for a larger war. Which is what they got.

Even after all of that, there was a last chance, no longer to prevent the war but to end it very quickly, again by finally coming to a mutually acceptable compromise. We now know that such a settlement was almost achieved in the spring of 2022 – and then abandoned, in essence, because Zelensky chose, once again, to listen to the West.

Since then, he has only become more intransigent. The Zelensky we are seeing now is a man who would like nothing better than to try to escape defeat by escalating the war to an open clash between NATO and Russia. The essence of his strategy – if that is the right word for this sort of betting on Armageddon – is to make this war go global.

But the irony of all of the above is that, up until now, his endless doubling-down has secured his position and power. It may be counter-intuitive but where his crony Stefanchuk sounds like Stalin, Zelensky’s whole recipe of survival has now boiled down to “the worse, the better,” a phrase usually, if perhaps apocryphally, attributed to Lenin.

Against this backdrop, the most important point about Zelensky skirting an election is not whether he is now legitimate or not, but that this is just one more stage in that strange double trend: While his position is steadily getting weaker and his actual policies are a bloody dead end for his country and its people, he is incapable of even considering a genuine change of course.

Zelensky, the former low-taste comedian, has become a desperate high-stakes gambler who has locked himself and his whole country into a devastating sequence of losing while constantly raising the stakes. His single most urgent remaining ambition is to draw more of the world into this vortex. Zelensky should never have been president; and it is high time that he ceases to be one. Ironically, since he would probably not have been ousted in elections, there is little need to regret their loss.

Rumble link here.

By Noah Robertson, Defense News, 5/21/24

The real story here is why the western expert class (exemplified by the numbskull Radakin quoted in the article) is so surprised at Russia’s resilience and resourcefulness.  There should be accountability for that kind of profound incompetence and solipsism in relation to the world’s other nuclear superpower. – Natylie

The Pentagon in March put a price tag on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking in the officer’s club at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin read a list of costs the Kremlin had tallied over two years: More than 315,000 troops killed or wounded. Over $211 billion spent. Some 20 medium or large ships damaged or sunk in the Black Sea.

“Russia has paid a staggering cost for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s imperial dreams,” Austin said, speaking before a meeting of countries that gather each month in support of Ukraine.

By April, though, Austin’s tone had changed.

At a news conference, Austin and Gen. CQ Brown, America’s top military officer, again detailed Russia’s losses. But they added another trend: Russia’s recovery.

“Russia has ramped up its production,” Austin said. “All of their defense industry really answers directly to the state, so it’s easier for them to do that a bit quicker.”

Brown put it more simply: “Russia has aggressively reconstituted its military force.”

Coming a month apart, the two sets of comments show a distinct change in how the U.S. views Russia’s military. While American officials have long detailed the costs of Moscow’s invasion for its armed forces and its economy, in the last two months they’ve started to acknowledge Russia is recovering faster than the U.S. expected.

The pace matters for Ukraine and those supporting it — in particular the U.S. government, which approved $48 billion more in Ukraine-related security aid this April. American officials say they expect that bill to sustain Kyiv for another year. But if Moscow’s recovery is a moving target, that could change.

Indeed, if the Kremlin keeps rebuilding its forces faster than expected, it could present a longer-term and perhaps costlier problem for the NATO alliance. The U.S. government’s National Defense Strategy calls Russia an “acute threat,” second to the “pacing challenge” of China.

But Moscow’s own capacity may change that.

“They are doing better than we would have thought,” a senior U.S. defense official told Defense News on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive intelligence.

Three ways to rebuild

When Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, things quickly fell apart. Enduring images of the first two months illustrated Russian frailty by showing rotting tires on armored vehicles and a convoy just outside of Kyiv that became a traffic jam.

This prompted self-reflection in the West: If Russia’s military wasn’t as powerful as defense planners had thought before the war, how quickly could it recover?

Even scientific methods to measure an opposing military are inexact, partly because those easiest to measure, such as personnel and equipment, might not be the most important given factors like corruption and morale. But estimates for how long Russia would take to reconstitute mostly fell into the five- to 10-year range, depending on how Western sanctions worked and the Kremlin’s own goals.

“There’s no question — and I think [there’s] unanimity in the intelligence community — it will take years for the Russians to build back up their ground forces,” Avril Haines, the U.S. director of national intelligence, said in March 2023.

Her comments came amid the annual churn of officials visiting Capitol Hill from winter to early spring. Around the same time this year, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, America’s top military officer in Europe, had a second opinion.

“The overall message I would give you is they’ve grown back to what they were before,” Cavoli said. “They’ve got some gaps that have been produced by this war, but their overall capacity is very significant still. And they intend to make it go higher.”

To some extent, the officials were discussing different elements of Russia’s force. When Haines testified last year, she was joined by the chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time, Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, who said Russia was five to 10 years away from reconstituting. By that, Berrier meant it would take Russia up to a decade to rebuild the high-end equipment lost earlier in the war.

Cavoli, on the other hand, was discussing the overall size of Russia’s military.

Still, European and American defense officials, along with experts on the Russian military, told Defense News the Kremlin’s force is reconstituting faster than expected. They gave three main reasons why.

The first is the resilience of Moscow’s defense industry.

During the war, Russia has almost tripled its defense budget, according to Richard Connolly, an expert on the country’s economy at the London-based Royal United Services Institute think tank. Russia is set to spend somewhere between $130 billion and $140 billion on defense in 2024, which is about 6% of gross domestic product and a third of the government’s overall budget, Connolly approximated.

But because costs and wages are lower in Russia than in high-income countries, like many in NATO, the Kremlin’s defense fund buys much more than it would in the United States. When that conversion is taken into account, Russia’s 2024 defense budget falls between $360 billion to $390 billion, Connolly estimated.

The spending trend itself has raised salaries. Working in the defense industry was once a middling career in Russia; it’s now lucrative and attracting more workers. Based on official Russian figures, which Connolly noted may be inflated, the number of people working in the defense industry rose 20% during the war, from 2.5 million to about 3 million now.

The funds have also gone toward procuring military hardware. Connolly estimates this share of the defense budget probably doubled during the war, helping Russia replace lost equipment.

Connolly said he doubts the state of Russia’s economy will factor into how the war ends. Moscow has a cadre of policy wonks guiding its country through sanctions, he noted, and they have lots of practice doing so. In fact, Putin recently replaced a general at the helm of the Defence Ministry with an economist.

The second reason is Russia’s ability to dodge financial penalties.

In 2022, the Biden administration and European partners passed a raft of sanctions meant to sink the Russian economy. These ranged from banning the sale of high-tech materials, such as microchips, to a price cap on Russian oil sales.

These haven’t worked, multiple analysts told Defense News. That’s in large part because Moscow has been able to reroute its supply lines through friendly countries.

Chief among those partners is China. From 2022 to 2023, trade between Russia and China grew more than 26%, hitting an all-time high of $240 billion, according to a report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

Beijing largely avoided sending weapons directly. Instead, Chinese companies became a vital supplier of the items Russia needed to build weapons itself — such as microchips and small electronics.

This leads to the third point: Russia’s reconstitution has relied on surprising levels of support from other U.S. adversaries, who, unlike China, have directly provided military aid to Russia.

Since October, North Korea has sent Russia about 10,000 shipping containers, which could include up to 3 million artillery rounds, according to U.S. government figures. Russia has fired dozens of North Korean ballistic missiles since last fall, an American diplomat told the U.N. in March.

Iran has also provided materiel. Specifically, it’s sent a somewhat plodding attack drone known in Tehran as the Shahed-136 and in Moscow as the Geran-2. Russia has deployed swarms of these to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses, firing more than 3,700 Shahed drones, of which there are several variants, during the war as of December, according to the Ukrainian government.

When Cavoli visited Capitol Hill in April, he came with his own list of numbers: Russia’s GDP grew 3% in 2023, despite predictions it would shrink. It can add 1,200 tanks and build at least 3 million artillery rounds or rockets each year. And through a deal with Iran, Russia plans to locally build 6,000 drones by next summer.

A February report by the RUSI think tank, cited by the unnamed senior U.S. defense official, who declined to offer a full set of American figures, said Russia can produce 3,000 armored vehicles per year and had surged its inventory of precision missiles.

Its force inside Ukraine has also grown.

Last year, Russia increased the age limit for the draft from 27 to 30, which the U.S. estimates will add a pool of 2 million eligible conscripts.

And the Kremlin set a goal to recruit more than 400,000 troops — part of a larger target to grow the military to 1.5 million service members by 2026. To do so, Russia offered lavish signing bonuses and salaries, which in some areas are more than five times the average paycheck, according to an Estonian intelligence report.

It’s unclear whether Moscow already met this goal. But Cavoli said in April that Russia was recruiting about 30,000 new soldiers per month and had surged its front-line end strength to 470,000, larger than the Russian army before the war.

Is the military growth sustainable?

In early May, Adm. Tony Radakin, the professional head of the U.K. armed forces, sat down with reporters in the British Embassy in Washington. Speaking over cookies and tea, he discussed Russia’s recent advances.

The Russian military was making marginal progress, but still relying on Soviet-era inventories to restock and struggling to train its newest recruits, Radakin said. The force was on pace to suffer 500,000 casualties by the end of June, he estimated.

“That is an astonishing loss of life and Russian nationhood that has been wasted for such modest gains,” he said.

But a day after he spoke, Russia began a new offensive near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.

Such attacks raise another question: How long can Russia sustain its operations?

Aside from drones, much of its wartime output has relied on vast warehouses of Soviet-era weapons. To reconstitute materiel lost in battle, Russia is emptying these, repairing the equipment and then sending it all to the front lines — one reason the estimates of Russia’s industrial capacity vary so widely.

“A lot of people are reading some headline figures and then assuming that it’s all new production,” Connolly said.

As an example, he pointed to main battle tanks. Before the war, he said, Russia was delivering about 150 to 250 a year. But of those, he assessed, about 20 to 30 would have been new, while the rest were heavily refurbished.

So while Cavoli’s written testimony in April said Russia could make up to 1,200 tanks per year, Connolly estimated that, at a maximum, 400 of those are new or heavily refurbished. Everything else, he said, is pulled from storage, lightly repaired and then deployed.

The RUSI report from February estimated about 80% of Russia’s wartime production was actually refurbished, aging materiel.

“Of course inventory becomes very important: What was that number to begin with, and what was the state of it?” Connolly said. “Truth is, nobody knows.”

European and American defense officials made the same point. Russia has vast stocks, but they’re not unlimited, which could be why it relies on partners like Iran, Belarus and North Korea.

“When you are doing the reform and you are trying to enlarge your military, you are probably losing the quality,” a defense official from a NATO member state told Defense News, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic.

That said, the war in Ukraine has been more about attrition than precision, the official said. In other words, it may not matter much whether Russian soldiers are using a 50-year-old T-72 tank or a new one.

The same questions of sustainability also apply to Ukraine, which has a smaller defense industry, an unreliable source of support in America, and less eligible soldiers. Earlier this year, Kyiv lowered the draft age from 27 to 25 to regenerate its armed forces.

Sitting in the British Embassy, Radakin said it would probably take about a decade for Russia to seriously threaten NATO again. Despite Russia’s refreshed troop levels, its invasion of Ukraine will eventually collapse, though he would not guess at that timeline.

“I don’t think it is sustainable,” he said. “But I don’t know at which point it becomes unsustainable.”