Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken to gloating about Russia’s resistance to international sanctions and its supposed economic resilience, despite the best efforts of the United States and its G7 partners to choke off Moscow’s oil revenues and starve it of military technology.
Scoffing at Europe’s economies, Putin said at a recent event: “We have growth, and they have decline… They all have problems through the roof, not even comparable to our problems.”
It’s true that, as the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaches, the Russian state is earning billions from oil and diamond exports, its military factories are working flat out, and many Russian banks can still access the international financial system.
Russia has adapted to the wide range of sanctions imposed by Western nations. Far from buckling under their weight, the Russian economy is in fact 1% larger than it was on the eve of the invasion.
But the longer-term outlook is far less rosy. War is distorting the economy and sucking resources into military production at an unsustainable pace.
It’s not just about if Russia can manage without Europe/USA, it’s about Europe managing without Russia.
So ok, China and India actively supports and essentially bankrolls Russias colonization strategy and this might show as growth. So in short, it’s possible for Putin to rearrange his business, sell oil below market price, and show growth, but in the long run its not a viable solution to run a country on.
Add to this the cost of war and loss of manpower. 3-400 000 might seem like a small amount of people when Russia has a population of 147 000 000. But it’s not. It’s Russia slowly slowly depleating their civilian workforce in a situation where Russia has a declining birth rate with 2023 being the lowest since 2014.
So if shit was going so great, Russian salaries would have skyrocketed and Russia would have their top model tanks on the battlefield but none of that is happening. Instead we see a lot of weird shit from the former Soviet Union on the battlefield. Add to this that back in October there were a lot of press about Russians having less money for necessities than anytime in the last 5 years.
So while Putin has seen no change in quality of life, rest assured that the average Russian has less money to spend on necessities.
Remember: Putin and his friends has been peddling the “everything is A-okay”-bullshit for over a year now but it’s just propaganda. Even though there might be periods where Russian economy looks like it’s going great it’s just not true for the long perspective.
When you get chemo it kills both ordinary cells and cancer cells. However, the body is normally capable of producing more cells than a tumor which means that with enough time more tumor than body will disappear.
While we hurt, Russia hurts more and that’s a good thing.
I hope so, it just feels so bleak now after everything was looking semi-promising for the past two years (Ukraine successes outnumbered Russia successes). Maybe alot of that was just Ukranian propaganda, but it feels like over the past two months or so the general momentum of the war has turned somewhat against Ukraine. You’ve got US support held up by
Russia’s 5th columnthe GOP and you’ve got Russia launching a massive sustained assault across all fronts. Hopefully it ends up working against Russia and they burn themselves out and get opened up to a counter-attack, but after two years of constant battle reports from Ukraine, it feels like there’s a noticeable decline in good news from the front.Things slowed down to a crawl. It’s all in trenches now and both sides had time to dig in. I don’t think anything but a miraculous fuck up can bring mayor change to the frontline. That’s more about logistics and economies surviving the growing toll of warfare. And both countries has felt an impact of that back home. By now it’s more of a question if european\american life-support to Ukraine can overdo what Russia can buy from Iran-China-NK for it’s resources under the market price.
Good news for you, probably, is that masking the changes in ruble zone becomes increasingly costy. With a third of a budget dedicated to military spendings while prices grow in spikes, Russia won’t crumble the next day, but have all it’s other systems losing maintenance, what the pandemic of blowing up heating pipes shows this winter like nothing else. It’s all a loan, and the longer they take it, the more they owe. The frontline is on the streets, and the current goal of the ‘SVO’ is to keep them calm while more services become defunct.
Today, I’ve heard a granny in a bus (that I helped to find a route to the building needed) started a tirade about how the fuck anyone wants to vote Vova in again. Probably talked on herself for a couple of decades of prison sentences, but she’s not the one to care at this age anyway. With her being a part of his most loyal fans, although it’s just an anecdote, I felt a kind of joy, I imagined myself like the ice is finally melting. After two years wishing for peace on the New Year’s Eve, I hope the tectonic change is just around the corner, even if it means I myself would suffer. I can manage missing meat, if it means the meatgrinder would reach at least ceasefire.
That’s to be expected, defensive war is always easier than an offensive one. And Ukraine switched from defensive to offensive.
You’re not tuned in to sources who actually understand the war. Russia is infinitely bigger than Ukraine and Crimea is only a drain on them even without Ukraine blowing their supply lines to smithereens. Look for native Ukrainian journalists for information, other western sources will tend to return their focus to their own domestic space.