Russia will soon exhaust its combat capabilities, Western assessments predict
Source: Washington Post
The Russian military will soon exhaust its combat capabilities and be forced to bring its offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region to a grinding halt, according to Western intelligence predictions and military experts.
“There will come a time when the tiny advances Russia is making become unsustainable in light of the costs and they will need a significant pause to regenerate capability,” said a senior Western official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.
....
Russia, meanwhile, is continuing to suffer heavy losses of equipment and men, calling into question how much longer it can remain on the attack, the official said.
Officials refuse to offer a time frame, but British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, citing intelligence assessments, indicated this week that Russia would be able to continue to fight on only for the “next few months.” After that, “Russia could come to a point when there is no longer any forward momentum because it has exhausted its resources,” he told the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung in an interview.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/25/ukraine-russia-balance-of-forces/
May there truly be light at the end of this very dark tunnel.
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They have pretty much cut out Russian oil. And remember other than us and Russia, the OTHER big producer out there is still Saudi.
The "problem" is that China is Russia's biggest buyer and continues to do so unabated. From my handy dandy chart (and note that the European countries on there have pretty much ceased importing it) -
(although what LNG they were getting through the Nord 1 Pipeline was recently being significantly cut off by Russia, which might be the bigger problem)
So note that even as of 2020, China had almost 3x the amount of oil imports from Russia compared to the highest-importing European country. And that is with China still primarily using coal.
But now India has jumped in and has suddenly switched their oil buying from multiple sources, to having a large percentage coming from Russia due to Russia's heavily discounted price/bbl (I think the last I saw was that they were selling it at around the equivalent of $49/bbl).
This is what India used to do -
and then they switched -
So it's not Europe keeping Russia afloat, it's China and India as the biggest buyers, along with a few Russian-aligned countries chiming in.
and it's a reliable source of income although obviously not enough to sustain their current level of national functions, let alone trying to engage in a significant war.
However they do still have China, who has who knows how many engineers that can reproduce anything (and China is probably the biggest copyright, patent, and intellectual property violator in the world because of that).
They recently turned on a gas pipeline to China (in 2019) - https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/es/market-insights/latest-news/natural-gas/120219-russia-starts-gas-deliveries-to-china-via-power-of-siberia
So China will make sure that stuff is flowing smoothly. That effort was initiated 8 years ago -
By William Wan and Abigail Hauslohner
May 21, 2014
BEIJING — China signed a huge, long-awaited deal on Wednesday to buy Russian natural gas, giving Beijing a new source of clean energy and Moscow a diplomatic boost as it faces international sanctions for its aggressive actions in Ukraine.
With the stroke of a pen, Russia significantly shifted its economic relations with its neighbors, creating a major new export market to the east and reducing its reliance on European customers at a time when its relations with the West are at their lowest point since the Cold War. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the deal a “watershed event” and said implementation would start “tomorrow.”
The 30-year deal was announced after meetings in Shanghai between Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. It is worth an estimated $400 billion, Alexei Miller, chief executive of the Russian energy giant Gazprom, told Russian reporters. The deal marked a new partnership between two countries that have at times mistrusted each other but have also sought to counter U.S. influence in global affairs.
China’s booming economy has created a growing need for energy, especially cleaner sources of power, given its reliance on coal, which has produced major pollution problems. The agreement allows Russia to diversify its gas exports at a time when the crisis in Ukraine has accelerated calls in Europe to rely less on energy supplies from Russia. Europe gets about 30 percent of its gas from Russia.
(snip)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/china-russia-sign-400-billion-gas-deal/2014/05/21/364e9e74-e0de-11e3-8dcc-d6b7fede081a_story.html?hpid=z4
(i.e., the above was initiated after what happened when Russia invaded Crimea (resulting in sanctions), so Pootie had some backstop plans already in place when he invaded Ukraine again this year)
in Ukraine. 
