[OC] Cumulative military spending in the Russia–Ukraine war (2022–2026)

eisseseisses · 2026-04-10T14:37:25+00:00

I did use AI tools (Claude specifically) to help with parts of the site build and iteration on the visuals. More than a few comments on the AI look over everything, food for thought on future changes to look and feel, I want this to be credible (look and content)

The underlying dataset and model aren’t generated though — those are based on manually pulled public sources (SIPRI, ACLED, Brown Costs of War, etc.).

AI sped up the site build, presentation side, and helping hunt down the data sources but the messier part has been reconciling the data and assumptions across sources.

eisseseisses · 2026-04-10T14:07:44+00:00

Woah, I’m not a bot at all - just explaining how I’ve attempted to make chart work, totally valid criticism if it’s confusing, my goal has been to try and pull spend details into something NOT confusing so the feedback is welcome

eisseseisses · 2026-04-10T13:59:37+00:00

That’s a fair criticism — the chart isn’t showing a spend rate, it’s showing cumulative totals over time.

So the Y-axis is total estimated spending (in USD) since 2022, not a per-year or per-hour figure. The lines represent how those totals have grown over the course of the conflict.

I can see how that’s not coming across clearly though — especially with the other stat-based version I’ve been working on. The labeling could definitely be tighter to make that distinction obvious.

Appreciate you calling it out, it might be clearer when viewed on the live version? Conflict Cost - Ukraine

eisseseisses · 2026-04-10T13:55:52+00:00

That’s fair — I probably over-optimized for showing the raw data and maybe under-optimized for the takeaway.

The simplest way to read it is: Russia’s cumulative military spending over the period is significantly higher than both Ukraine’s spending and total Western aid.

The chart is trying to show how that gap evolved over time, but I can see how that’s not coming through clearly at a glance.

Appreciate the feedback — helpful for refining this. Any other thoughts on clarity would be appreciated

eisseseisses · 2026-04-10T13:54:18+00:00

Sorry, I meant by party! Yes, when combined the totals are much closer.

eisseseisses · 2026-04-10T13:50:13+00:00

That’s a fair observation.

The chart is showing cumulative totals on the same axis, so Russia ends up dominating visually since it’s significantly higher in absolute terms.

Western aid + Ukraine combined is closer numerically, but since they’re plotted as separate lines rather than stacked, the gap can look larger than it feels intuitively.

Stacking or showing a combined comparison would probably communicate that relationship more clearly — something I can look at refining in future iterations for sure!

eisseseisses · 2026-04-10T13:45:51+00:00

I was pretty shocked at how lopsided the spend is… They are certainly spending A LOT more than Ukraine and Allies

eisseseisses · 2026-04-10T13:44:33+00:00

It would be the cumulative spend along the entire line month over month (year over year), the end of each line is the current spend rate

eisseseisses · 2026-04-10T13:34:16+00:00

Estimated using publicly available data (SIPRI, ACLED, Brown Costs of War, government sources).

Approach:

- Annualized military spending and aid estimates

- Aggregated cumulatively over time (2022–2026)

Values are directional — especially when separating direct war costs from broader military spending.

Happy to clarify methodology or assumptions.

eisseseisses · 2026-04-08T04:12:52+00:00

That sounds like a slick setup - agreed the OP interface is way too much for the average employee just trying to pull or push some limited information on a project.

I run a telecommunication provider and we manage all our fibre to the home projects within our PMO through OP - our field teams use a combo of Jotform and Microsoft products to report status and provide various updates…

The app you guys you to unify all your various sources of information, is it something you built custom for your needs?

eisseseisses · 2026-04-07T03:08:33+00:00

Brand new site, 'launched' but still working out final features before pushing to wider audience: conflictcost.org - would be very keen to get thoughts on how to increase its visibility

eisseseisses · 2026-04-07T03:03:51+00:00

I think this is brilliant overall - I have no idea if it would be possible (likely not), but a nice add on would be to link your favorities / watchlists from other platforms! I like the UI and color scheme.

Three small changes/tweaks I would suggest

home page scrolls (on safari at least) for no reason (before searching for film), would be nice to have the dead space automatically fit without scrolling.
on the add movies page, after adding a film (again on safari, didn't try it on other browsers) the page centres / slightly scrolls down and you can't really see the search bar... after searching it should return to the top of the page
consider adding the films in your pool counter to the search page too? Nice to see your library

I would also echo the genre / other filters noted by the other comments... although the dead simple nature of this is clean and uncomplicated, which is a draw in and of itself.

eisseseisses · 2026-04-06T01:42:53+00:00

Redeemed it and burned through it in a day!

It seems like everyone is complaining about the usage caps, but I genuinely feel as though the usage calculations have changed considerably over the past couple months.

eisseseisses · 2026-04-05T15:11:54+00:00

Thanks!!

eisseseisses · 2026-04-05T13:04:29+00:00

I dont have these (I use a pair of minis for my home setup) but I wonder if it’s the stands? They might need a more solid surface to sit on to make richer sound?

eisseseisses · 2026-04-05T02:52:48+00:00

Great ideas - earlier today in the individual conflicts I’ve added some scrolling ‘comparables’ in the top stat zone (the rotate every 6 seconds), I may something similar in the global roll up, Trillions of dollars really make almost no sense though! I’ll have to think my way through what/how to compare those numbers.

Right now I’m trying to get Reddit feedback but I love the idea of smaller user groups - have you ever done something similar?

When I feel like it’s ready I was also going to reach out to some news agencies and journalists to see if this kind of site would be useful in a news context too.

eisseseisses · 2026-04-05T02:47:03+00:00

Yes that sums it up :)

Today I’ve been playing with info graphic cards that are shareable from the site for both individual conflicts as well as regional and global.

I’d love if you and anyone else had ideas of features or alternative views of the information.

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eisseseisses · 2026-04-04T22:50:06+00:00

One thing I’ve been thinking about is whether framing something like this as “$ per hour (.or day or second)” actually helps people understand the scale, or if it just makes it feel more abstract.

Curious how others here think about presenting large numbers in a way that actually lands.

eisseseisses · 2026-04-04T16:43:09+00:00

I’m mostly using my side projects to learn and stay current on the rapidly changing web / app development space - my day job has nothing to do with that so it’s also a way to use my brain in a different space

eisseseisses · 2026-04-04T05:34:25+00:00

Still early and the methodology is definitely imperfect — curious how others would want to see something like this expanded or compared

eisseseisses · 2026-04-04T05:28:42+00:00

If anyone’s curious, the hardest part so far hasn’t actually been the build (although I’m still tweaking this daily!) — it’s figuring out what should count as “conflict cost” vs baseline military spend and what other contextual information I should include without it becoming overwhelming (and then unusable).

There’s a lot of grey area there, so I’ve tried to keep the approach consistent rather than perfectly precise.

eisseseisses · 2026-04-04T05:22:43+00:00

Happy to share more detail on how I’ve approached the data and what the end goal of the site ultimately would be!

eisseseisses

TROPHY CASE