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Not a single commenter read the white paper (I recommend they do - the CSIS is THE source on Militsry doctrine and policy for the US).

Leaving aside foreign assistance from the US and EU, Russia was always a large economy that always had the ability to be somewhat self sufficient - they've been a trillion dollar economy since 2007.

The War in Ukraine started in 2014, not 2022. Russia has been under a fairly heavy sanctions regime since 2015, and as such was able to retool the economy to be increasingly self sufficient before 2022.

Life ofc sucks day-to-day (eg. Hard to buy video games or a new iPhone, it's expensive to vacation in places like Turkey or Egypt or impossible to vacation in much of Europe now) but consumer substitutes already exist that are "good enough".

Furthermore, the Russian brain drain was largely in the private sector - not the public sector. Most Russian civil servants (eg. Central Bank economists, petroleum engineers for SoEs) knew they wouldn't be able to land a well paying job in the West due to hiring restrictions on Russian nationals as well as potential ramifications on their family in Russia, so they decided to stay put [0].

Finally, much of the world has caught up technologically to where the US was in the 1990s or 2000s, so the kinds of intermediate parts needed for missles or EWS are fairly democratized - just like the US, Russia is able to import commoditized or generic components from SEA, Turkey, China, India, UAE, etc.

The secondary sanctions enforcement is what will tamp down on Russian output.

[0] - https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/91235




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