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It seems, despite the image that some media may give us, that Russia is not doing badly financially.

Russia More Than Triples Current-Account Surplus to $167 Billion (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-09/russia-more-than-triples-current-account-surplus-to-167-billion?utm_source=google&utm_medium=bd&cmpId=google)


When you consider how pathetic it is that sanctions have been imposed on Russia by the European Union, have resulted in things like this:

LMAO: India resells Russian oil to the European Union. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5401371.msg60287927#msg60287927)

It is not surprising to read that Russia is profiting from this situation.

The thing about sanctions is that they have turned into a double edge sword that has been cutting the wielder more. For example when US sanctioned Venezuela they also harmed their own oil industry since it was the Americans who were running the Venezuela refineries who had to accept the billions of dollars in losses when they exited. Guess who is involved in those refineries today? ;)

The funniest thing that I learned recently was that during US maximum pressure against Iran (still ongoing) they claimed they would decrease Iran's oil exports to zero, US navy has been running and depending on the fuel that Iran have been selling them. The same navy they try to threaten Iran with ;D

It's funny that a multiple increase in Russia's trade surplus against the backdrop of a special operation is actively pedaled in the Western media as a symptom that things are going badly in Russia. They say the economy is exploding from the fall in imports and there is nowhere to put the money, even cry. ;D

I guess Russia should be thanking the Western nations for the sanctions. Oil/Gas prices went up as a result of the sanctions. Natural gas prices at Dutch TTF were around $850 per thousand cubic meters when the conflict started. Now the prices stand at $2,200 per thousand cubic meters. And this means that Russian can reduce deliveries by 60% and still receive the same amount of money from the EU customers. And let's remember that the winter season is still 2-3 months away. Once the winter starts, natural gas prices are going to hit the stratosphere.

Yeah, total profits, then can you explain this?
https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/russian-economy-declines-4-yy-q2-after-35-yy-increase-q1-econ-ministry-2022-07-27/


Yeah, when Europe grows by 0.9% the European Union is going to collapse, when Russia's GDP is down 4%, the fall accelerated to 4.9% and their oil is selling at 74$  (https://www.investing.com/commodities/crude-oil-urals-spot-futures), Russia is doing soooooo great!
Now I understand why our discussion on the other thread went like this, confirmed, you see only what you want to see, suddenly when it comes to this government you fully trust all the data! Yeah, ironic!

Dude, Russia has over 10,000 sanctions and Russia's GDP is down less than 5%. If this is your success, then what is failure?

ps winter is coming.

Russia is strictly complying with sanctions from the US and EU by not being able to receive back the gas turbines of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline from Germany, because of the embargo but Germany seems unhappy with this decision of Russia. I think they should be glad that the Russians are complying with the sanctions. :D :D

It seems that the plan to fill the EU gas reserves is not on track and winter is only 2-3 months away. I am still waiting to see how they will deal with it, other than lobbying citizens to limit gas use and start taxing more gas.

The Russian economy isn't just oil and gas. It has other industries, some of them were hit by the western sanctions, while others are pretty much OK. The fact that Russia has a positive export/import ratio doesn't mean that the majority of the Russian population will get out of poverty. The Russian political and economical elite plus the Russian war machine are the biggest beneficiaries from the export of expensive natural gas(and not-so-expensive oil). The "average Joe" in Russia will keep living in misery and stagnation.
The EU sanctions towards Russia were a stupid decision. You don't impose sanctions and you don't start an "economic war" against your main supplier of gas, oil and raw materials. Everyone with a functioning brain would come to such conclusion.

But I thought sanctions are not doing a thing, now a 5% drop and further going down acceptable?
It crashed 7.8% during Covid with everything closed and now doing just fine with, just looking above, hundreds of billions in extra income but is going down by 4.9%?

I don't get it, simple I can't, how does this work? You get an extra 30% income from your work but when you come back home you suddenly owe money?  ;D
This must be one economical miracle, or again the devil is in details, the export balance is so high up and the GDP is going down maybe because everything that was made in Russia was dependent on imports, so without imports which have crashed to zero, there is no production, only ladas without airbags and stabilizing aircraft for spare parts.
When you don't even have potatoes so serve at your local McPutin (https://vkusnoitochka.ru/articles/news/potato-temporarily-not-available/) something really fishy must be happening in Mordor.


Yeah, but the only resemblance here is that the guy who kept saying this died in season 1, what was the name of that episode, Baelor or Himars?

I have never doubted the fact that Russia is currently performing beyond expectations because it was given to her by the CREATOR through his servant who is currently on this forum. I'm impressed with Ethiopia too as she currently faces similar situation.

Anywhere the one who blesses Russia or Ethiopia says is blessed is blessed.

There's money in a war and most probably, some countries are taking advantage of the situation where the EU countries have no other choice but to deal with a higher prices especially when India resell the Russian Oil at a most expensive price. Russia will not go into this war if they didn't make any study with this one, for sure they have a lot of plans and will continue the war until they feel the big impact of their action. Maybe this is good for Russia in terms of profit, but in general they kill a lot of innocent people and we will always remember that above anything.

I am not saying that the sanctions are not felt at all, because this is not true. About a thousand Western companies left the Russian market, and this cost them hundreds of billions of dollars in direct losses (but this also negatively affects Russia's GDP figures). Is this a problem for Russia? Is. But this is not a dramatic problem and it is also an opportunity. When the market is freed, there is a free place on it for internal development or for substitution by imports from friendly countries. And most of the companies that left simply lost the market and money, like Coca-Cola. Or do you really think that without sparkling water, the quality of life of Russians will worsen? Western sanctions in 2022 did not cause serious damage to Russia, because the West had already imposed all the really critical sanctions against Russia in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea, and Russia has completely learned to live under sanctions. But Europe did not learn any lessons after 2014 and did not take care of its energy security, for which it is now paying.

I'm curious what will the "friendly countries" do about really important things there are very few companies produce them and they've put Russia onto sanctions list.
It's easy to mock the exit of "sparkling water", but I've read not long ago about increasing problems caused by the lack of components for airplanes. The news tell that the industry has started cannibalizing some of the already broken planes to obtain components for the rest. Of course, this cannot work for long term.

Don't believe everything that western media tells you. India's internal demand of oil is so high that they import 90% of their oil demand from various countries. India sure did import oil from Russia, but never sold them to anyone. A country only sells something which is not absorbed by their internal demand. India is clearly not in a position to sell oil.

Read the official statement - https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-is-not-a-conduit-for-russian-oil-sales-jaishankar/article65491475.ece

Hope it helps!

This is all temporary, while the old supply routes are being torn and energy suppliers for Europe are changing. The effect of sanctions in this area will be, but a little later. European countries have already refused to supply Russian coal, by the end of the year they will refuse oil, and then the turn will come to gas. In other sectors, the effect of sanctions is more obvious. Russia will have time to thank Europe for the sanctions. So far, indeed, some countries may abuse the partial chaos and hype in the energy market, but over time, everything will work out. That's when difficult times will come for Russia. The main thing is that Russia is losing the well-established European market forever.

There is money in war? How?
Russia was actually used to stop a full takeover of your World. It's just a pity people don't know the kind of sacrifice they make for the the rest of mankind...which is part of the reasons she is greatly rewarded with both wealth and power to rule the world for about 2 and half years. By the way, Russia loves Ukrainians more than those who pretend to help her fight Russia. Russia currently have the highest number of Ukrainian refugees and she has given the people alot of things for their survival.

You'll be surprised how many people support Russia even in Kiev. This may be proven in the future.

Not actually. Of course EU can buy somewhere else. Latvia for instance swear not to buy Russian gas with ruble. After just a moment, they realize they'd be  fucked if they won't and so they have to buy ruble to buy gas.  

The narrative is just not working which is same for the narrative today that China's economy will crash in 30 days a.k.a Sept 11 as they were doing their military exercises.


Of course there is money in war.
Weapons and Money sent to Ukraine to help them can not be traced.

They import it from other countries that are manufacturing those "really important things" and haven't placed Russia under sanctions.
Or buy it through a third party ;)
Or do what Iran did and become self reliant... As the country with the most number of sanctions against us we have a saying that sanctions are an excellent opportunity. Basically anything that is sanctioned is manufactured domestically and with high quality. And that's a lot of things from medicine field to agriculture.

Iran is manufacturing plane components and is replacing whatever market Russia lost:
https://simpleflying.com/iran-supplying-aircraft-parts-russia/
China is apparently another alternative:
https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/31344-chinese-companies-ready-to-deliver-aircraft-parts-to-russia

They are somewhat traced when they find their way into the black market!

And who promised that it would be easy? There are problems with airplanes, cars, microelectronics, software - they are serious and need to be addressed. Of course, Russia will cope with these challenges one way or another. But that won't stop the Russians from watching the impressive spectacle of EU energy suicide. Any sane person understands that it is impossible to replace the falling volumes of energy supplies either this winter, or even next. And with the planes, we'll come up with something, don't even hesitate. If a country is capable of developing sixth-generation fighters, it will somehow figure it out with passenger airliners.

Interesting, I didn't know. Thank you.


Did it occur to you that in the same way as "it won't be easy, but Russia will cope", also EU will cope? Of course, it will not be easy, as it's a harsh awakening.
But, as a friend of mine use to say, every kick in the ass produce another step forward. EU may do now (sadly under pressure) some moves they should have done from the first place.
Right now, let's face it, it's a situation both sides are losing similarly and both sides can, similarly, evolve.

There won't be any spectacle like your president and 150 million Russians hope for, although many enjoy the very thought that people will freeze all over the EU next winter. In one of the topics, I posted an infographic that shows that the underground gas storage in the EU member states is being filled at a quite satisfactory pace and that there will be enough gas, especially if the announcements that the winter will not be too cold are true.

https://i.imgur.com/1cfaZaT.png
https://agsi.gie.eu/


I would not brag about your military planes, which until today have not managed to dominate the sky above Ukraine, and therefore I think that it is just ordinary propaganda that Russia is powerful. The story that the sanctions failed serves the short-term propaganda of the Russian government, and everyone should know that sanctions cannot create the desired effects so quickly. It will take at least a few years for that to happen, and even if they don't succeed completely, at least we will be on the right side of history.

You didn't know because that never happened outside the Iran propaganda network.

The reality is that for a brief period of time the sanctions were loosened a bit and Iran went on a shopping spree, ordering airplanes worth 24 billion from both Airbus and Boeing, when sanctioned come back again they dropped some orders that were never going to be fulfilled in time and bought tens of old planes some even decommissioned to have them for spare part.
You can see the arrival of the new jets here:
https://thepointsguy.com/2017/03/inside-iran-air-a320-a321-aircraft/
And the full story is here:
https://simpleflying.com/iran-air-airbus-order/

So no, it's not something like Iran is managing to create spare parts for its planes, that's just wishful thinking.
The reality is that sanctions do work, and they work tremendously well, one picture worth 3000 words

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/20/bloba71499e6fa81035c.png

I do hope Russia will take this advice and in 5 years we're not going to compare the Russian economy with Texas or California but with Yellowstone Park.


Oh, but they do have 6th generation planes! Definitely!
I mean, maybe it's true that their own military doesn't know that since even the su57 is the fifth generation, but they totally do. It's the new super stealth aircraft that you can see at all, it's so stealth even the bombs dropped from it don't do any visual damage at all.  ;D

Ahaha, you all quarreled there already, although the embargo only on coal began to operate only today. By December, when the oil embargo comes into effect, different EU countries will begin to pull the blanket over themselves. The European Union is sewn together with too fragile threads from too different countries and Europeans are too accustomed to a high standard of living for the European Union to be able to maintain its unity in the face of severe energy shortages. Already several European leaders and governments have resigned since the start of the special operation in Ukraine, and they will all have to resign - because that is how democracy works. And they will be replaced by more sensible politicians who will be forced to abstract from politics and begin urgently solving the economic problems that have accumulated since the pandemic - because that is how democracy works. And in order to quickly solve economic problems, it is not a shortage of energy that is needed, but its excess, which Europe, with all its desire, has nowhere to get from except Russia. Think about it at your leisure.

ps It's strange that I'm telling you how democracy works, because you seem to have completely forgotten about it. ;D

Fifth-generation fighter jets are already occasionally flying over Ukraine, and Russian design bureaus are developing next-generation fighters, because Russia is always one step ahead and has not stopped new developments even in the most difficult years. The West naively thought that it had defeated the USSR in the Cold War, but in fact, with the collapse of the USSR, it liberated Russia from a dozen fraternal republics that had been sucking all the juice out of Russia for decades. Now try to defeat Russia if you can.

They sit there in Europe with empty arsenals and two front divisions of combat faggots and think they are the kings of this party lol.

In my own idea, Russia was very much really for everything which is happening right now for them because they know just after attacking Ukraine many countries and especially nano countries will try to put them under pressure. The best thing they can do is economic sanctions. which is not really helpful because Russia got plans for it and still there are many other countries like China and India the op mentioned they would keep trading with Russia so the sanctions will be not really helpful and Russia will not have many financial problems.

You've watched too much propaganda and have read too few real news.
While shortages are indeed possible, it's the industry that will be affected most, not the population, exactly because the politicians love their seats.


Russia is overrated and time will show this. Yes, the "green plan" lunacy will have to be postponed for a while, and the supply routes will get redefined.
Russia will be forced to sell less gas and oil on much lower prices. This means less income for a country that relies almost as much as the Arabs on the money coming from this sales. This means shortages your propaganda seems to forget about. Even more, you don't have to be rocket scientist to understand that the lack of money is not visible that much on short term, it's getting visible over years, when the infrastructure will fall apart.
It's a bit ironic that you are preaching us the greatness of Russia, greatness this war has shown it was only a facade.

European leaders going down? Of course some do, it happens all the time. I don't feel that it's much of difference from the pre-war COVID related days. It's part of how democracies work.
And while you seem to be noticing only anti-Russians going down, I notice "friends of Russia" now helping Ukraine's defense (you know, democracy, freedom of choice...). However, I remember that Russia's traditional enemy was USA, not EU, still, the propaganda tells only about the harm EU took, and nothing about USA. And you know why? Because Putin's stupid war intended against NATO, just made NATO and USA stronger.


You seem to have no idea what democracy is.


I've missed this in the last post and I'll tell here. Somehow your whatever generation planes seem to remember far too good that they're heavier than the air. As I said, Russia's greatness was proven to exist only "on paper".

Sorry, your message is too long and I will allow myself to answer it selectively.

And how do you plan to implement it? And most importantly, when? So far, all the efforts of the West to ensure that Russia begins to earn less and cannot afford to continue the special operation ends with the fact that we are discussing a record positive trade balance of Russia, that is, the West was able to significantly reduce imports to Russia by sanctions, but could not even close proportionally reduce export from Russia. And even if physical export from Russia still fell, this brings more money to the Russian budget, because oil prices are quite high, and gas prices are even inadequately high. The weak link in the cornerstone of your reasoning is that you wishful thinking.

But I hope you remember the chronic deficit of your budget well. For many years of zero and even negative rates, the European Union has become accustomed to living beyond its means, plugging huge holes in the budget with loan allocations. Welcome to the era of rising key rates. Welcome to the era of double digit inflation. And say goodbye to the era of cheap money, the European Union is already on the verge of bankruptcy - and you fantasize about the coming financial difficulties of Russia? Take care of your pressing financial difficulties. Who in their right mind would buy European bonds with negative yields, especially after Europe froze Russian money in front of the whole world? This is not Russia, an unreliable supplier of energy resources, but the European Union, an unreliable buyer. Look at the dynamics of the euro exchange rate, if now for one euro they give one dollar, then in six months for one euro they will only give 50 cents, and in a year for one euro they will give you a fist in the eye. Think about it at your leisure.

Well, of course, the European Union will do a great job with the shortage of gas if it stops the heavy and chemical industries. The main thing is that ten million Ukrainian refugees and ten million new unemployed people do not freeze from the cold in winter. Great plan, as reliable as a Swiss watch.  ;D

There's a significant difference between the united states invading countries in the middle east at a cost of more than $12 trillion.

And russia invading ukraine while generating positive revenue.

Generally analysts look at the technology, accuracy, speed and range of military weapons of war.

In the modern era, perhaps we can see that cost of operation is a more relevant statistic.

Russia can wage war in a cost effective manner. While the united states and europe may lack the capacity to do the same.

It could set the stage for economic collapse in western nations, while russia is less hampered by deficits or debt.

Irony being what it is, russia appears to have learned valuable lessons from the default and collapse of the USSR.

While the USA and other nations of the world appear determined to recreate the USSR's budgetary mistakes.

The situation in Russia is well described by this funny phrase: "...things in the country were going badly. That is, not so bad, one could even say good, but every year it gets worse and worse" :)

A certain surge of income, due to the economic terror of the EU, looks like a premortal, unexpected activity of a dying person. It happens - a person fades away, he gets worse and worse, and then such a surge of activity, he looks like he is recovering ... but after 3-5 days he dies. The same is happening with Russia. The next 3-4 months will be critical for Russia - an irreversible loss of the European market for gas supplies. Even Germany turned away from the bloody ghouls from the Kremlin! Ahead is the EU's rejection of Russian oil, to be more precise - tanker oil, which makes up the bulk of deliveries to the EU (a pipeline, if I'm not mistaken, something like - up to 15% of the total). The costs of "maintaining" the ruble (should the people be shown a beautiful fairy tale before they die? :)) are enormous. Even more huge costs of war and terror in Ukraine. Especially after the friends of Ukraine supplied Ukraine with high-tech weapons - the losses and losses of Russia are growing unrealistically quickly and on a large scale. And Western technologies are no longer there ... And they won’t be!
In a word - watch the patient, and do not miss the moment to say goodbye to him while he is still moving :)

Precisely Iran than is under sanctions? May you comment on how is Iran getting hold of the high tech electronics when under sanctions and with an economy down the drain?

The EU has plenty of flexibility to choose a strategy despite a short term initial issues. Gas terminals are rented and build, nuclear reactors get a lease of life, back to coal if required,... nothing like suicide.

A series of sanctions imposed by Europe and the United States on Russia have led to a significant decrease in Russian imports, coupled with a surge in Russian energy and commodity export revenue, which has expanded the trade surplus. Russia's natural gas exports to Europe have effectively stopped, oil exports have not grown significantly, and exports of other commodities are declining, such as metallurgy, lumber, gold, etc., and world commodity market prices have dropped. The sword eventually pointed to Europe and the United States themselves.

The Russo-Ukrainian war is in to it's 6th month now. Let's look back at some of the calculations and judgements made by both the sides when the war started. From Russian side, they made the miscalculation that Ukrainian defenses would crumble and they would be able to over-run Kiev within a month. That never happened. And also, they never thought that half of their forex reserves would be frozen. On the NATO side, they overestimated the efficiency of their sanctions. They expected the Russian Ruble to disintegrate and on the other hand it strengthened further, sanctions only had a minimal impact on Russia and on the other hand, they resulted in huge price increases for fuel and electricity in those countries that were imposing sanctions. 

Lol. ;D

Dude, you don't understand what's going on in Russia at all. The government and the Central Bank are now making great efforts to, on the contrary, avoid an excessive strengthening of the ruble (because it is unprofitable with such a huge trade surplus). In short, a huge flow of euros is now going to Russia for the supplied energy resources, and these euros have nowhere to spend. The euro for Russia is now an extremely toxic monetary asset, with high risks of blocking due to many sanctions. Under the terms of Putin's "gas for rubles" scheme, euros coming to Gazprombank should be immediately exchanged for rubles through the stock exchange, but who and why will buy them there and where will he spend them? This is one of the main reasons why Nord Stream pumps only 20% of its capacity, because Russia does not need as many euros as Europe needs Russian gas!

With the US dollar, the situation is simpler, because the US dependence on Russia is not as strong as that of Europe, and because the dollar is still the world's reserve currency and is welcomed in many places in the world. And the euro is used only in Europe and is only suitable for paying for European goods, which are almost all now under sanctions for Russia. This is not a very good situation for Russia and a complete fuck-up for the European Union.

This is nothing; yeah, because they already got those people who had money back into the nation and into the economy and they have this, but they won't have it forever. As long as everyone else agrees that they are not going to end up with something special and remove sanctions or something, then Russia will sell less and less and less to the world.

The renewable energy sector will keep on growing bigger, and eventually people will not want what Russia has. This is a short term gain for them, good for them too because money today means a lot more than money tomorrow, so if they invest it accordingly and get ahead, they could keep on being a superpower, but if they get victory drunk, then they will end up losing a lot more in the future.

I'm not a military analyst but I don't think Russia wanted to use its planes because losing a pilot is too expensive a loss to risk it. Any other asset (except maybe big warships) could be replaced (ground troops, tanks, radars/SAMs and their operators) but a pilot can not be easily replaced.
This is why I've always said the future wars is fought with drones not people.

I said components that includes a lot more than just electronics and majority of it is manufactured domestically. You should be more specific about what part for me to say if it is manufactured domestically or not if the information is public.

P.S. economy is not down the drain the exchange rate is and that's because of the printing spree that the previous presidents were on :P

Renewable energy sources for production needs are complete crap. Europe is France and Germany, whose economy allows the European Union to exist. They need cheap resources for this, and now there is nowhere to get it from. The economic downturn in Europe will be much stronger than in Russia.

It is true that modern military planes are terribly expensive, and pilot training is demanding, expensive and time-consuming, but the fact is that you cannot skimp on such things if you want to achieve superiority in the air. The fact is that Ukraine has very successfully defended its airspace since the beginning of the invasion, and today it is doing it even better and more efficiently. Drones are of course something that is being used more and more, but military planes are still something that every sovereign country that cares about its security wants to have.

Speaking of drones, these days I am reading news about Russia buying drones from Iran (Shahed-129 and Shahed-191) and that the Russian delegation has already visited the Kasan air base several times to see for themselves their capabilities.

It is surprising that the defense capability of Russia is not very uniform. They have some of the best ballistic missiles, submarines and air-defense systems in the world, but they are lacking in some of the basic sectors such as armed drones and APCs. My understanding is that they are a bit behind in new defense technology sectors, such as UAVs, but are good in improving already existing sectors. Their purchase of drones from Iran is very surprising. I never thought that Iran had such advanced defense industry. This is a warning sign to anti-Iranian alliance nations, such as Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Evidence suggests that you can. Take United States for example, according to what CENTCOM commander Gen. McKenzie told the House Committee on Armed Services a year ago, US hasn't had air superiority in countries they are occupying for the past years. That's all because of the drone threat they are facing, and we are talking about primitive drones like Qasef that poorest countries like Yemen use to hit US bases occupying their country not even the advanced ones owned by Iran such as those with artificial intelligence.

That's just media putting a magnifying glass on a normal thing that has been going on for a couple of years. Considering the fact that Iran has been mass producing modern weapons, export has always been one of the plans; ever since the UN arms embargo was removed in 2020 the Iranian advanced weapons have been sold in global markets. For example earlier this year in Doha International Maritime Defense Exhibition in Qatar, the Iranian made AD-200 long-range air defense missile system was present among other things (the selling point was the US stealth aircraft right across the hall that the system had shot down the previous year!).
Or the drone production line that was installed for Tajikistan to help them fight terrorism in the region using the multi-purpose Ababil drones.

As for this particular news it's hard to say if it is true unless some evidence comes out.
- On one hand the media has been filled with a lot of nonsense lately (like the recent thing about Russia needing the Iranian satelite to spy on Ukraine lol). Neither side has either approved or rejected these claims.
- On another hand there has been a military relationship between Iran and Russia (clear from things like the naval drills over the past years in Indian Ocean and soon in North Atlantic Ocean). Also considering that Iran's drone industry is leaps and bounds ahead while the airforce is behind in regular manned planes, this could be true and about a swap (Shahed family for Sukhoi technology).

In case you're not watching the news, even the Iran government has admitted it targeted something else and downed a civilian planed killing 200 innocent civilians, mostly Iranian with that crappy system of yours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_International_Airlines_Flight_752

So, yeah the entire world has seen how accurate Iranian weapons are, on par with the Russian buks system.
Stick your lying propaganda where it belongs, seems like the more zeros the Rial has against the $, the lower the purchasing power and affordability of food in Iran, and the more people being shot and executed by asking for bread the more we hear about those wundervaffen that will crush the capitalist pigs.


What a surprise, everything about their might military was a lie, but you still believe things about their might economy..
Cause, it makes sense!


Of course, you won't hear it from pooya87 but the Israeli F35 have just had a few of those for dinner, so, it won't be a game changer in a combat theater even without those but where still nearly every guy has a manpad on his shoulder.

While I agree that the sanctions haven't hit Russia as much as was anticipated and some pretty smart financial policies helped the fiat currency stabilize, I also have a couple of questions. First is that the Bloomberg article is based on the Bank of Russia publication. If Russians lied they wouldn't invade, lied that they didn't torture civilians in Bucha, and that they didn't bomb Mariupol, then HOW do we know that they're not lying right now with this report? What's stopping Russian bank from simply writing up pretty numbers to show they're doing great while the reality is far from great?
Then look at things like food prices which, according to Russian sources (http://tsenomer.ru/russia/), are roughly a quarter more than a year ago (but some estimates say even higher than that), and car prices are also up by 23% (https://fedpress.ru/news/25/society/3070953) since the start of the full-scale war. I'd take these pretty numbers on a Russian website with a huge grain of salt, but also agree that much more must be done to prevent Russia from comfortably financing its current war.

Renewable energy sources are not a crap solution, right now it could be looking like it's crap and not enough but with enough investment it would be done and it would be much better. Which one would you prefer to rely on, the oil you get from dead dinosaurs for a while longer, or a limitless energy sources that will die in 4 billion years called the Sun? I would prefer the Sun really.

And maybe it is not enough today, but I guarantee you that it will be enough in the long term because tech is ever improving and we will have a much better one eventually, the price would drop and improvements and new features would make it a viable source of energy to whole Europe.

That's what they're doing, you're right. I suspect the estimation is based on the current exchange rate of usd to ruble in Russia. We all know that this exchange was artificially inflated by Russia spending some of their gold to pump up ruble prices and demanding countries to pay for international trade in rubles. Some countries like Bulgaria, Finland and Poland refused to pay, but there are some who did, mainly Germany - a country that is making a fool of itself in the EU. First they blocked aid coming to Ukraine from the UK, refusing to let it pass through, then, when Ukraine requested military help, Germany said it cannot spare any vehicles because they're all being used, then we heard they're paying Russia despite sanctions... I say fuck Germany, the supposed leader of the EU, who goes against its own vote and openly supports the aggressor, that the whole Europe condemns. The world should learn from this conflict and see which countries are really on which side of this conflict.
France isn't much better as it delivered military equipment to Russia during the conflict, despite sanctions, and of course agreed to use the ruble.

Russia is still one of the military superpowers in the world, despite the fact that they spend a fraction of what the United States and China spend on defense. I agree that they have fallen behind in some of the sectors, but Russia continues to be among world's top exporters of weapons. Now coming to the economy, I am yet to see any meltdown or destruction of the national currency, as predicted by the Western media six months ago. That may happen in the near future, but so far their economy has been resilient against the sanctions and embargoes. 

The entire territory of Ukraine is completely shot through by Russian land, air and sea-based missiles, and the missile defense of Ukraine cannot do anything about it - this is a fact. ;D

The Russian Aerospace Forces are in good technical shape and excellent combat tone. Front-line aviation performs combat missions every day, mainly at ultra-low altitudes beyond the reach of radars and brings terror to the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The superstar of this operation is the Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopter.

At the moment, your guarantees are invalid. The green agenda has beautiful pictures on presentations, but right now it does not stand the test of practice. The wind blows unevenly, sometimes it is calm or the wind is too strong for a windmill, the same thing happens with solar panels. Controlled thermonuclear fusion would be a good solution, but its implementation is still in question and the timing is constantly shifting. In general, the world cannot do without the burning of hydrocarbons, even if everyone unanimously switches from gasoline cars to electric cars. To "green" Europe will have to abandon the industry.

Of course you use your technical superiority to shoot like real cowards from afar and kill children in schools and people in shopping centers, but in close battles Ukrainians teach you lessons about what it means to be a true patriot. When Ukrainians target legitimate military targets anywhere in the occupied territory, you call them terrorists...


We saw this a few days ago, when the Ukrainians prepared summer fireworks for you in Crimea, even 300 kilometers from the front line - the superior planes of the fifth and sixth generation did not even manage to take off - a great success of the Russian military aviation. Money and military supremacy are not always decisive in war, and your Serbian brothers can confirm that because they are still whining about the defeat they experienced more than 30 years ago.


You mean these superior helicopters that the Ukrainians destroy without any problems?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMX9cEf8qVg

Reminiscent of arguments about the weakness of the Russian Black Sea Fleet due to the loss of the flagship. The local tactical successes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine set off in contrast the strategic fiasco of Ukraine, which has almost completely lost its fleet and air force. ;D

You're yet to see?
You proclaimed in April that in one month Ukraine will lose half of its territory and now you fail to see this?

Their GDP dropped 4%, this with months of companies still working there for a while, with the ones retreating still paying their employees 3-6-12 wages for being let off, with most having paid rents and suppliers one year in advance, with people still having a few pennies left aside and DESPITE your claims of billions entering the economy it has still shrunk 4% with 4.9% in the last month!
And you don't see the meltdown happening?
Oil is on average 10% lower in the last 30 days than when the conflict started, Russia is selling less and for less than that, you keep mentioning gas prices at the TTF but you don't understand Gazprom is not selling gas there, those are future settlements but probably I will waste my time explaining the difference.

Your bias knows no margin, you're bragging about how Russia is exporting this and that to China and India but I haven't seen you mention this one a single time:
https://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/russia-defaults-on-lng-supplies-to-india/article65657494.ece
Europe will freeze to death but till then seems like we can buy what others can't afford:
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indias-petronet-delays-plan-1mtp-lng-deal-amid-high-prices-2022-08-05/

Those are things none should speak of, right, because it breaks your narrative!! Because you don't want to see the reality? Well, good luck then, there is no meltdown in the Russian economy, Russia hasn't defaulted twice in history, the USSR has not collapsed and there was no meltdown at Chornobyl either! Oh, and India has conquered Great Britain there times also! Sorry, I forgot this! Just as how Iran once ruled all of Mars!


You might want to google "saki airbase" and visit this (https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html?m=1). Your superstars have hit rock bottom faster than Lindsay Lohan!

Wind turbines and solar panels need maintenance, they are not build and forget. Sometimes they fail.

To make it "work", you'll have to plant tens of thousands of (possibly millions?) solar panels and wind turbines. Who the fuck is going to do the maintenance of these? Who is going to track down the faulty ones? Are you going to find and replace them with the good ones, fix them or just leave them dead where they died?

Over the years, you'll have to build new farms instead of fixing the faulty ones till you run out of land and you'll run out of land.

What is all the data worth when the average Russian believes that it is all just Western propaganda and that the Russians, like in 1945, are liberating Europe from nazism and fascism... I understand that in every war there are those who fight for money and spoils of war, but that so much death and destruction has not yet opened the eyes of the average Russian to understand that wars of conquest in the 21st century are not something they should agree to.

First, young naive people die, and then their fathers come next - and right now, people aged 55+ are being mobilized. The fact is that 80% of them will never return to their homes. They say they're called tigers, but to me they look like old and battered cats (cannon fodder).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggcNHGcypns

Although Ukraine didn't lost half of it's territory, it is a fact that it lost 20% of the territory that remained after the annexation of Crimea. Not too bad, IMO.


Indian GDP went down by -7.3% during 2020-21. The 4% reduction in Russian GDP is not surprising. And given the massive amount of sanctions and embargoes (Russia is now the most sanctioned country in the world), I expected much worse.


Oil prices are down by 20%, because the Americans are emptying the SPR before November midterms. It has nothing to do with Russia. Russia had to reduce exports to India and China in July because of increased demand for crude oil from Europe. 


LOL.. seriously? Gas prices are so high in the Europe that Gazprom Germania diverted some of the supplies earmarked for India (GAIL) to Europe. Even after paying the penalty to India under the "take or pay (TOP)" terms, selling LNG to Europe was more profitable for Russia. This is actually what happened.

https://www.freepressjournal.in/analysis/india-in-a-fix-as-russia-dithers-on-oil-lng

Financial affairs in Russia are not so good. Indeed, due to higher energy prices, the fall of the Russian economy in 2022 has undergone an adjustment from 10–30% to 6–9.5%. And the level of annual inflation decreased from the projected 20% to 12-15%.

However, the sanctions have already affected the domestic economy. The reduction in the production of Russian cars in June was 62% compared to this month last year. Industrial production in June fell by 1.8% compared to the same period in 2021. The main sanctions against the Russian energy sector have not yet entered into force. December 5 will earn sanctions on the export of Russian offshore oil to the European Union. February 5, 2023 - Russian oil products.

The volume of sales of Russian gas to Europe is now a third of last year's level. It looks like it will decline from now on, and will practically stop no later than 2024. Then Germany expects to be completely independent of Russian gas. After the entry into force of all European sanctions in the oil and gas sector, Russia's income from energy exports is expected to decrease by 40%.

Russia is reducing gas supplies to the countries of the European Union, therefore losing its main sales market. After the end of the war with Ukraine, economic ties with the Russian Federation will not resume for a long time, and therefore the impact of sanctions will continue to operate for some time even after they are lifted.

Russia survived the initial sanctions shock quite easily, much easier than Western analysts expected. And for several months now it has been living in conditions of deflation against the backdrop of a consistent reduction in the key rate by the Central Bank of Russia. This is the difference and the key advantage of Russia in its economic confrontation with the European Union, which is forced to live in conditions of inflation and rising prices, against the backdrop of a growing key rate.

You cite the decline in car production in Russia as an argument, but there is a nuance. Several European manufacturers immediately stopped their factories in Russia due to sanctions and a special operation, but who really suffers from this - Russia or European automakers?  ;D

That's what they are going to face real soon. The idea that they could get away with literally a war, seems like a pipe dream that Russia lovers could only imagine. Of course, they will fail to sell anything but what other nations absolutely need, which is gas and oil, outside of that they won't be able to sell anything. On top of that, we are talking about them not being able to afford anything from west soon and that will hurt their finances as well.

This all comes down to the fact that Russia will have a big trouble. It's of course looked better for a short term because they brought in so much money, but that was a short period due to sanctions, it's not sustainable.

Russia won't fall down that easy. It seems that they're too ready for this war and their economy is still surviving despite the sanctions. But the question is, how long could they handle the sanctions? I'm sure that it would still hit their economy in the future. The sanctions will test the foundation of their economy but for now, they could still bear it.

Everyone considers what Russia could give to the world, and nobody asks what could world give to Russia. What you are forgetting is that while they may have some things that the world wants, we shouldn't forget that there are a lot of things that the world can provide which Russia wants. Even something as simple as a facebook ad goes from a Russians pocket to Mark Zuckerberg’s pocket with that logic.

This is why it is quite important that if the world finds a way to not use oil or gas or wheat from Russia, and yet in the future Russians still use products from other nations, the money that they have right now would go down more and more and more, which will put them in trouble.

Facebook is banned in Russia, and the Meta company is recognized as extremist, so Mark Zuckerberg does not earn money in Russia.

This is the main reason for the failure of sanctions against Russia - it seems that in the West no one really knows what modern Russia is and are based on the old stereotypes of the era of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. They tried to sort of shake up the topic of "oil in exchange for food", but it suddenly turned out that Russia also has plenty of food. ;D

It's 20% with that territory of Donbas and Crimea, quite a funny since your marvelous prediction Russia has lost more land that it has conquered in Ukraine.


So you admit yourself that even if the country is completely shut down the GDP doesn't go to zero, and we have Russia's economy going down 5% last most, that would be like 2/3 of it being shut down, not bad. /s
Should I mention that despite all that catastrophic meltdown somehow EU's economy has grown 0.9%.


I love your laugh, obviously, it's the laugh of somebody who is on the brink of going insane, you mean that Russia is not selling LNG to India because Europe pays more even with a third party?
So the outcome for India is that they don't have gas, they don't have money to buy it, and Europe will collapse?
How many times have I told you that the one with the money dictates everything?
How many times does it take to finally get it?


You see kiddo, this is your problem, you try to find the things you want in a problem, like in this case you want this , weakness of your adversary to be the cause of the fall in price, you're not looking for the actual thing.
And it's not the "emptying" of the SPR as they only release 1 million barrels a day, and they still have 523 million only in the SPR not counting commercial reserves which the US can buy and dump, and those are, prepare for a heart attack another 400 million barrels.
So all of it will be emptied in about 3 years!

But the problem is that is not that which is driving the price of oil down but the lack of consumption, it's full US and EU driving season and the consumption is 1 million barrels below target for the US alone, at the end of the month this will come down again by at least 20%.
That's why oil is at 88$ as we speak, or 69.48 for Russian oil.  ;)


(Collapse of the USSR - Invasion of Afghanistan) / 3  since Russia is half of the USSR and its economy globally is 1/4 of what it was


Vodka as they don't need anything else.
And btw, yeah, Russia imported both vodka and caviar, vodka from Sweden and Poland, and Caviar from Italy and China!

I love how angry you get at the supposed "pathetic sanctions" because it just shows they are working exactly as intended. No civilized countries want to do business with Russia any more, which is where the most creative minds are producing useful goods and services. It was inevitable to see a spike in oil and gas prices, which is Russia's primary remaining export, because of the impact of the war which Russia started against Ukraine. However that is just a short to medium term issue, as the whole world is now creeping towards recession, although Russia's will be much more painful to endure, because of the inflation this disastrous and pointless war has created.

The naivety and hypocrisy in this statement is phenomenal. :)

For starters, what you call "civilized countries" have committed worse crimes than Russia over the past century and a lot more of it too. Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Russia, just pointing out your naive way of thinking. If any country cut its ties with Russia it wasn't because they were "civilized" it was only because either they had some benefit in it or they had no other choice.

Secondly, what you call "civilized countries" have been the only reason why Russian currency has been soaring against every other currency and has reached its all time high exchange rate in the past 5 years. In other words not only they are still doing business with Russia, they are doing it in Ruble to strengthen it!

So according to your definition, only 15% of the world population is civilized and the other 85% is uncivilized? Two of the most popular nations, China and India have refused to approve sanctions against Russia. The same can be said about every other non-Western nation, including Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, GCC group, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico and Nigeria. The problem with Western governments and most of their citizens is that they still believe that the world revolves around them. This is not the 19th century. Third world nations are fully capable of making their own decisions. We don't need any advice from you guys. Thanks.

Really. It turns out that few people know Russia. Modern Russia is a ban on social networks that are normally perceived and work all over the world, as well as the recognition as extremist of everything that contradicts the propaganda of the Kremlin. There is reason to talk about the successes of Russia. As well as the protection of Ukraine's own territory from occupation is declared terrorist acts. I think that international sanctions should be recognized as extremist in Russia and the problem of sanctions will be solved.

OK. Now Facebook and Twitter will decide who is a terrorist and who is not one? I stopped following Twitter and Facebook because they always censor people who tell the truth. If you compare the posts on war, in both Twitter and Telegram the difference is obvious. If you just depend on Twitter or Facebook for your information, then you will get an assumption that Ukraine has already captured Crimea and are marching towards Moscow and St.Petersburg. Despite my lack of knowledge of Russian, I am forced to follow Telegram to get to know the truth.

When we put it in perspective, Russia is in a very good financial position. It has more than enough cash to withstand any sanctions the European Union throws at them. This doesn't even take into account the large amount of money that Russia is taking in from oil exports, which the E.U. may have to look elsewhere for if they want to get their oil fixed.

The United States might have some influence over this outcome, however, as it could potentially use its dominance of the oil trade to prevent other nations from buying oil from Russia. All things considered, Russia is doing fine. Sanctions have failed economically and politically. There are great opportunities for both Europe and the US in working with Russia if I am not mistaken.

I love the "sect of believers in the miracle of great ruZZia" :)
Let's return to your post exactly one year later, and tell us how easy and relaxed life is in Russia? :)
Seriously ? There are a lot of witnesses and participants who will be really interested to see how all this will end? If Russia gets out and returns to economic indicators, well, let it be until 2021, I will apologize in front of everyone, I recognize the Russian economy as really powerful, and my forecasts and understanding of the process are primitive. You can even screenshot my promise. But if the economy goes into stagnation, production and economic indicators continue to fall - is that already your word, with the recognition of mistakes? Goes? :)

Ever since this comment, some more information has come out (both sides are still denying it though).
1. Iran's Army commander recently confirmed the Su-35 purchase which approves the second part of my comment above.
2. An unknown picture surfaced where they claim they've shot down a Shahed-136 drone!
https://i.imgur.com/XHcjJbl.jpg

There is no image of video of it flying or being shot down or even if the picture is recent or from Ukraine not somewhere else like Syria which they've been used against terrorists.
If this is indeed Shahed-136, due to their size, material and speed they are impossible to track and shoot down specially when they are diving. Not to mention that they are used in a swarm and in coordination with everything else, not as a single unit to be shot down alone.
Which means if the image is not all propaganda, then it is the remainder of the drone after successful impact and destruction of its target.

---

The way these loitering munitions (or the layman terms: suicide drones) work is that a swarm of them are deployed easily from for example back of a truck:
https://i.imgur.com/fNyuK8Z.jpg

They remain in the sky until they detect their target(s) and are equipped with AI and are usually accompanied with a "mothership" that acts like the commander and can perform air-to-air fights, shoot its own missiles or deploy its own drones out of the back (I don't think the "mothership" is sold though since it is too high tech and is basically considered classified).

If the picture is not pure propaganda then what happened could be something like this for example:
A RU fighter plane is getting close for operation, the NATO intelligence reports that so they activate Buk-M1 (medium-range surface-to-air missile systems), the stealth drones already dominating the sky detect Buk-M1 and send a single unit of the S-136 to dive for the kill. After the success was confirmed and the operation ends, the rest go back home.
https://i.imgur.com/7p3FTHq.jpg

You can see them in the video below during a military exercise from a while ago (the last 2 pictures are from the video).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcZEJ40Gt9M

If there is any interest I'll try to post more analysis if more information comes out.

I think in today's world its very difficult to know actual facts since media is mostly under government control and governments uses media as a tool to build there narrative in minds of people. If you see media of pro ukarine countries they say Russia is doing nasty things and ukarine is winning and vice versa.
I was reading edward snowdow book where he wrote that usa media prints news to invade Iraq before usa actually attacked Iraq. This was done to build a narrative in usa that Iraq war in necessary.

Russia was listed as one of the militarily superpowers of the world until it made the fatal mistake of attacking Ukraine. It is worth noting here that Russia won all the wars with the active participation of Ukraine. After seven months of war in Ukraine, the regular Russian army is practically defeated. In September, the Armed Forces of Ukraine liberated about nine thousand square kilometers of their territory from the invaders. This is what forced Putin to introduce mobilization and try to correct the situation at the front by throwing in "live meat".

Loss by Russia in Ukraine of 2262 tanks, 4807 armored vehicles, 255 aircraft, 220 helicopters, 1361 art. systems and other equipment is already forcing it not to export military equipment, but to look around the world where it can be bought in order to throw it into Ukraine. So, we see that recently Russia managed to purchase about a thousand drones in Iran. But with other equipment and ammunition in Russia, there is a clear shortage, since even the former allies refuse this to the aggressor country.

As for "sustainable Russian economics", this is also a myth, and this issue should be returned to at least a year later. That's when it will be clearly visible.

now I don’t remember the work where this phrase comes from, but all the “greatness” and “successes” of Russia today are ideally described by this phrase: “things on the collective farm were not bad. You could even say good. But every day it gets worse and worse” :) ))
You can, of course, continue to replicate the squeals of Russian propagandists and tell fairy tales, or pull figures out of the global context as "proof of victories", but it's enough to listen to the official reports of the Ministry of Economy to understand where is a deliberate lie and where is reality.

Let's listen to the Russian ministers:

""The prospects look terrible." The Ministry of Finance reported on the collapse of oil and gas revenues of the budget"

"... In August, revenues from oil and gas corporations to the federal treasury decreased for the fourth month in a row and were at a minimum since June 2021, the Ministry of Finance reported on Friday.
Over the month, the budget collected 671.9 billion rubles of oil and gas taxes - almost 100 billion rubles less than in July, and 23.9 billion rubles less than in August 2021.
Compared to the maximum shown in April, when the budget received 1.797 trillion rubles from oil and gas against the backdrop of soaring prices and taxes last year, fees have collapsed by 2.6 times.
At the same time, oil revenues remained stable, according to data from the Ministry of Finance: despite the fact that China and India reduced purchases of Russian barrels to a minimum since the first month of the war, NPDI fees for oil increased by 40.4 billion rubles, and export duties - by 10 billion (compared to June).
However, the gas part of the budget continued to rapidly deflate along with the production and exports of Gazprom, which in August collapsed by 34% and 59%, respectively.
During the month, the budget received only 33.7 billion rubles of gas production tax - the minimum amount since the "rainy days" of the 2020 pandemic. For comparison: in April and May it was 70 billion rubles a month.
Income from the export duty on gas from July 57.3 billion grew to 80.6 billion rubles. But compared to June (217.4 billion rubles), their collapse has become almost threefold ... "
https://www.moscowtimes.eu/2022/09/05/perspektivi-viglyadyat-uzhasno-minfin-otchitalsya-o-krushenii-neftegazovih-dohodov-byudzheta-a23931