Analysis of German magazine „Spiegel“: „Russia is actually broke.“

7 comments

1. paywall

2. Good for Europe’s security in the long term, but for Ukraine right now it is of little consequence unless we see it directly affecting Russia’s war effort.

3. How broke?

   Does it mean they have to stop the war next year or in 2048?

4. While the financial situation is bad in Russia, it would need to become so catastrophically bad in Moscow and St. Petersburg that a complete economic collapse is seen as imminent by almost everyone. That’s when things will get interesting and where a revolution might occur.

   The uncomfortable truth is that Russia has a few aces up its sleeve and that they will survive financially and economically if sanctions are not tightened and enforced strictlier than they are right now.

   Oh yeah and Ukrainian drones would need to destroy Russia‘s critical economic infrastructure to speed things up

5. Putin travelling urgently to china next week according to new reports. Go figure.

6. Here in South America, when we break, shit goes straight to the fan. This doesn’t seem the case for Russia.

7. Every time you think a country has reached the bottom, remember North Korea. I’ve argued many times that Russia is on the edge of ruin but oil exports and internal controls keep it afloat. The collapse of a country is rarely a cliff where it goes from functional to broken overnight. The only time that happens is when there is radical policy change coupled with years of intentional controls. The Soviet Union collapsed because they decided to make radical governmental changes after years of working to keep the country afloat. Had they continued down the road of communism, the country would have slowly slid into the same fate as NK. Russia probably is broke, but so long as Putin stays in control and manipulates things so they seem normal, and China and India keep buying their oil and trading with them, things will continue on.

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