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Russia's economy has entered the death zone

economist.com

111–120 of 245 posts

Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sanctions can and will work against Russia. We hear this mantra since almost 5 years. I am not saying there should not be sanctions, but at some point the strategic lies need to end.

Russia has one of the biggest war chests in the world, huge reserves of carbon fuel that it can afford to sell under market rates, and is supported by China. It can sustain even hardest sanctions for a long while, lifting them certainly wouldn’t help.

> huge reserves of carbon fuel that it can afford to sell under market rates,

Under market rates sure, but it must still be profitable. China and India know that, so they're going to drive down the price to the extent they can so that it's just barely profitable. But you can't just profit from the oil and gas, you need to profit enough to buy fighter jets and tanks, and all sorts of other things.

Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#112

> If your competitors are also weakening—and if you believe you can tolerate the pain longer than they can—the calculus flips. Economic pressure that should drive compromise instead reinforces the logic of persistence. I think everyone underestimates just how much misery Russia, and Russian citizens, can endure.

On top of that current Russia isn’t actually “suffering”, certainly nowhere near 90s levels. Cheap crap from Russia replaced Western produce and those with money can buy grey goods. Putin is doing a “good” job insulating general population from the war.

Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#113
post #67

How does Russia have $73 billion dollars worth of debt. Who is buying Russian treasuries? Also how did the GDP grow by 1% in 2025, is that a function of the internal Defence spending activity?

I think national growth minus growth in the military sector was negative last year. It looks like Russian bonds are largely bought by Middle Eastern based hedge funds and family funds or trusts.

I guess $73 billion is actually a pretty small number at the end of the day when you compare it to even a developing nation like India with $1.5 trillion of bonds issued.

Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#114
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They will sell their gas at discount to China until the very end. Yes and no. There's a minimum price they need to sell it, and somewhere in between they may not actually make enough between the minimum and sale price to actually fund their military. Nevermind the awesome job you guys are doing blowing up refineries and other industrial facilities. It'll be good when Europe stops importing Russian gas and steps up…

> Sanctions can and will work against Russia. We hear this mantra since almost 5 years. I am not saying there should not be sanctions, but at some point the strategic lies need to end.

I don't think there are strategic lies here. Russia's war machine and their economy have taken a massive hit from sanctions. The news/media cycle and "experts" obviously want to make money and recycle the same stories and "any day now" kind of rhetoric, but that doesn't make sanctions any less of a great option.

It takes time.

Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#115
post #94

Same story for 4 years long. "Russian economy is at the brink of a collapse." Yet it Somehow just keeps ok going year after year. The truth is that the sanctions are only hurting the Eurozone more than Russia. Small minority (EU or the political west) cannot force meaningful sanctions on much larger group (BRICS). Unfortunately this is not the narrative anyone can say out loud lest they be labeled as "Putin's trolls"…

How do you think sanctions work? Economy is not powered by electricity, it took 4 years to crack down on their shadow fleet, God knows how many more escape hatches they have. China and India, and now US support them.

Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia has one of the biggest war chests in the world, huge reserves of carbon fuel that it can afford to sell under market rates, and is supported by China. It can sustain even hardest sanctions for a long while, lifting them certainly wouldn’t help.

> huge reserves of carbon fuel that it can afford to sell under market rates, Under market rates sure, but it must still be profitable. China and India know that, so they're going to drive down the price to the extent they can so that it's just barely profitable. But you can't just profit from the oil and gas, you need to profit enough to buy fighter jets and tanks, and all sorts of other things.

When it’s your pretty much singular source of foreign income you have to make sacrifices.

Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#117
post #57
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They will sell their gas at discount to China until the very end. Yes and no. There's a minimum price they need to sell it, and somewhere in between they may not actually make enough between the minimum and sale price to actually fund their military. Nevermind the awesome job you guys are doing blowing up refineries and other industrial facilities. It'll be good when Europe stops importing Russian gas and steps up…

I favor harsher sanctions against Russia but let's not be too optimistic. It doesn't take much funding to recruit a poor, desperate guy from the outer provinces, hand him a surplus rifle, and send him into a human wave attack. In a perverse sort of way, killing off those guys might actually be reducing Russian government expenses.

If so then why are they paying millions of rubles to their people to voluntarily enlist to the assault meatwave?

Russians are killing their future for sure.

Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#118
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is not as unrealistic as that, the author does point out that Putin is not just looking at the state of Russia, he’s also looking at the relative state of Ukraine and its support from the West. The death zone isn’t the point at which they die, it’s the point at which they are consuming their own long term strength and capacity to recover in order to sustain their effort . To our utter shame, we have never…

I don't think doubling the support would have been nearly enough to ensure Ukrainian victory. The fundamental issue is that Russia has not fully committed to winning the war either. While losing the war would be an existential threat to the Putin regime, not winning it is not. As long as the war drags on, there are more effective uses for Russian resources to ensure the stability of the regime. But if the war becomes…

[flagged]

Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#119
post #101
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bad thing is, they always did this and it worked. The good thing is, those russians stopped growing back with birthrates being one of the lowest in the world. We might just see a world without any russians in a few decades. What a dream

What the fuck did I just read

"I have a dream" but version for Eastern Europe.

Re: Russia's economy has entered the death zone

#120

[flagged]

GUIs are weaponry that we point at one another? You seem to be captive to some overriding viewpoint, to the point that you can't actually evaluate reality.

PARC. Where Papert & Kay ran experiments on children for the military. All to answer the question: how fast can we get an above-average peasant trained on our symbol-processing apparati (radars, dashboards, etc). The answer: kinda fast. If you would think about it for a moment, you won't even need this history lesson to see that GUI is mostly a weapon. Facebook: weapon. Twitter: weapon. Excel: mostly a weapon. Photoshop: mostly a weapon. Web browser: weapon...
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