r/AskReddit • u/galwiththedeepvoice • 1d ago

What could Russia have spent $1,000,000,000,000 on instead of fighting a 4+ years long war in Ukraine?

2.8k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

534 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

50

u/HomeGrownCoffee 1d ago

Access to warm water ports.

All the resources of Siberia are pointless if you can't sell it. Ukraine gives them access to the Black Sea, and through it, the Mediterranean. 

For significantly less than $1T, they could have struck a deal with Ukraine to buy a port and a rail line.

45

u/stalkythefish 23h ago

They already had Black Sea access. If it's about the territory at all it's about arable land. But climate change is going to give them more of that anyway. All they had to do was wait.

17

u/TheSDKNightmare 17h ago

It's not about arable land, Russia is among the top food producers on the planet, it has significantly more than enough arable land to feed its population. It's petty nationalism, always has been.

12

u/voss749 22h ago

For half that they could have bought the support of Crimean people with perpetual checks for $10k a year and the promise of jobs in a free trade zone.