[farlander]

I was just going to say... with what money ? Sure they’ve made a killing with oil and gas lately, but ships are extremely expensive.

[jerry557]

They better hope oil prices stay high.

[Rockingham]

This announcement is fanciful, nothing but an expression of state propaganda and camouflage for graft. The Russians are notorious for declaring new weapons projects and then not fielding them. The money spent simply disappears into various waiting pockets.

Worse than that, the Russian defense industry workforce is aging and ever less capable of producing modern weapons and systems. Russia's demographic decline will soon make it much harder to man their military, and their impending oil industry decline will make their finances shaky after another ten years.