Russia can easily produce all of the steel and all of the explosives needed for its shells all by itself, all thanks to its huge territory and the accompanying huge natural resources. It's one of the very few countries that can accomplish that, I think only the US can compete against them in that domain, i.e. becoming 100% autarchic in case of total war.
More importantly Russia is unable to produce the electronics needed for modern weapons. They can build WWI level stuff well, and even WWII level stuff in many cases, but 2020s level technology is much better in many ways and there Russia struggles.
This has been mostly a WW1 war, the West thinking that the next big war would bec a technologically-advanced one where they’d be able to have the edge thanks to its better tech is a big factor behind the current clusterfuck represented by the West’s involvement in Ukraine. The Ukrainians would have been way better off had the West been capable to send millions of artillery shells their way instead of more advanced HIMARSes and what have you.
Himars has done a lot (until they ran out) to keep this from a WWI type war. Drones are everywhere on the battlefield. this war doesn't look like WWI, it looks like a soviet war.
Push come to stove, China doesn’t have the agricultural fields needed to feed its people for 3-4 years or more in case of a future sea blockade. Europe doesn’t have the natural resources, neither the grain (if we were to exclude the fields of Southern Ukraine).
Money in the bank doesn’t produce grain out of nothing, you need land for it. The same goes for natural resources. Or maybe we’re thinking about autarchy differently.
