How Putin Builds His Army
Russian President Vladimir Putin holds very radical views concerning Ukrainian sovereignty. He believes Ukraine is not a state and has received generous land claims from the Soviet Union in the past. Since becoming President of Russia in May of 2012, Putin has sought to conquer lost Soviet Union land and rebuild its empire. Putin declared war on Ukraine formally in 2014 with irredentist policies and he wished to reclaim “Russian land” of “Russian speakers.” Russia claims that it annexed Crimea so that it could reclaim the land of Russian speakers and stop Kyiv, the “Nazi government,” from oppressing Russian speakers in Crimea. Russia needs Crimea to gain more dominance in the Black Sea, and it is unlikely that Putin wanted to claim Crimea solely for ethnic purposes.
For Putin to launch a war against Ukraine, he needs an army. Putin sends his soldiers to the front lines with shovels and disregards the loss of life of his men. The Ukrainian-Russian war just shows how behind Russia’s war economy is. Russia, the most massive and 2nd most heavily armed country on the planet, cannot invade Ukraine after almost two years of fighting. Putin himself is trying to grease the wheels of his war economy, and reforms made in the Russian economy have been very clever. In 2024, The Kremlin boosted GDP for military spending up to 7.5 percent, which is very high. The U.S. spends a little more than half of that on…
