More than two years into Putin’s three day Special Operation, Russia is starting to show extensive cracks in its facade of normalcy.
Russian lawmakers have proposed introducing food ration cards across the entire country in response to rising prices, claiming the idea has a “healthy foundation”, the Moscow Times wrote on Dec. 15.
Anatoly Aksakov, head of the State Duma’s Committee on Financial Markets, endorsed the idea of reintroducing food vouchers reminiscent of those used in the Soviet Union – the proposal, initially suggested by the Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast governor.
Aksakov believes the initiative should be expanded nationwide. The Russian official stated that food vouchers would help “support socially vulnerable groups,” though he did not specify a potential monthly allowance for these cards.
“As of Dec. 9, the Russian Ministry of Economic Development reported annual inflation reaching 9.2%, the highest level since February 2023. However, alternative metrics indicate significantly higher figures,” the publication noted.
Food ration cards in Kaliningrad Oblast are set to roll out in 2025, targeting pensioners with incomes below the subsistence minimum.
On Dec. 10, it was reported that the Kremlin had significantly increased military spending amid a catastrophic collapse of the ruble. The Russian government has allocated unprecedented funds for the war against Ukraine.
For 2025, Russia’s budget includes a 25% increase in military spending, bringing it to 13.49 trillion rubles ($175.37 billion). Military expenditures will account for 32.5% of the budget, an unprecedented level since the Soviet era. By comparison, during the first year of the war against Ukraine, the government spent 17% of its budget on the military. In 2023, this figure rose to 19%, and the 2024 year’s allocation stands at 29.5%.
- Interest rates are expected to hit 23% this month.
- Despite the high interest rates, inflation isn’t going down, running at an official rate of 9% (and unofficially much higher).
- Food staples are up even more, from 12% for bread to 74% for potatoes. Stores are locking up butter to prevent theft.
- Russian business bankruptcies are up 30%.
- Russia’s rail system can’t afford preventive maintenance due to higher interest rates.
- Russia’s current low unemployment is driven by government spending on its war economy, and its not sustainable.
- The military sector is sucking in more and more manpower, leaving fewer and fewer workers for other sectors of the economy hit by higher labor costs, higher interest rates, and higher inflation.
- Unequal distribution of the gusher of war economy money is screwing the poor even harder.
- Even Putin says Russia needs another million workers.
- “There is a shrinking number of people who can keep Putin’s war machine running.”
—is the collapse of Assad’s Syria, an important client state for Russia:
Russia is in a pickle getting its men and equipment home, because it can’t overfly nations hostile to it (most of them), it can’t sail ships home through the Bosporus (Montreux Convention), and it probably can’t get them all the way home up to its Baltic ports because it can’t refuel and resupply at hostile NATO ports (I wonder if a combination of Mediterranean African ports and at-sea resupply could get the job done). Plus Russia has been resupplying its mercenary army supporting Africa’s League of Assholes (Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso) from Syria, and Assad’s fall puts the entire operation in jeopardy.
The stresses on Russia are only going to get worse moving forward. For all the talk that Trump is going to bail Russia out, Volodymyr Zelenskyy evidently doesn’t think so. Plus one of Trump’s key negotiating tactics is to threaten whatever the other party holds most dear to force them to agree to a deal. And given Russia’s numerous manifest weaknesses, Trump is going to go into talks with an awful lot of leverage points…
Tags: Africa, Andrew Chang, Burkina Faso, Donald Trump, Economics, Foreign Policy, inflation, interest rates, Mali, Military, Niger, Peter Zeihan, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Sahel, Ukraine, video, Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Countdown until you-know-who tells us food rationing is proof Russia is Stronk, stronk like empty vodka bottle… and US is weak cause we eat too much.
Two weeks.
I’ve been reading about this for months. This can’t and won’t end well for Putin. We’ll just sit here and watch the chaos and listen to the left blame us.
The Russian government is actually paying down its government debt. Russia’s national government debt peaked at $ 303.375 billion in June. Their latest number, for October, is $ 274.834 billion.
The chaos over H.R. 10445? $ 40 trillion in 400 days.
The governments of Germany and France have fallen due to financial chaos. Canada’s government is collapsing, their Finance Minister just quit. England’s government is the next to go.
Everything is relative in war.
Yeah, yeah… Russia stronk!!!
Our brilliant 10X25mm interlocuter believes really, really hard in the Russian Steamroller™, so it must be on the verge of victory!!!!
Reality? Russia hasn’t managed to win after three years of trying, with the force correlations in such dramatic opposition that it’s not even funny; Ukraine isn’t even within a weight class or two of Russia, in terms of resources/military potential. Yet… Still, they persist in existing, and fighting Russia Stronk!!! to an effective standstill. Huh.
I have no idea why anyone expects Russia to win; they haven’t managed to win so far, they’re losing more and more stored resources, and are reduced to borrowing manpower/weapons from failed states like North Korea and Iran, speeding up the eventual collapse of all three powers. The amount of money lost in Syria alone by both Russia and Iran is spectacular, and mind-boggling when you consider the paucity of resources both powers actually possess. The resource-extraction economies of both are going to cave in, once the rest of the world decides they’ve had quite enough of the BS from both parties. Observe what happens when Saudi Arabia decides to start in on their economic end-game, in order to utterly crush the Iranian-created Houthi problem once and for all. Even if they don’t want to help the incoming administration with their Abraham Accord programs, the raw fact is that the only path to victory in the south of the Arabian peninsula is the utter destruction of the Houthis and their partner-state Iran.
I suspect that this spring is gonna be interesting, with the world oil market. Regardless of the military situation in Ukraine, the Russian/Iranian axis is due for an unpleasant awakening. Oil drops to $25-30.00 a barrel? LOL… Buh-bye Russia and Iran both. Sanctions from the new admin, effective ones? That’ll be the second blow, and I doubt either party recovers from it.
Russia has spent the last three years expending its seed corn, in both economic and manpower terms. The piper’s bill is shortly to come due, and it’ll be ugly for all parties concerned. Were I any of the abused parties on Russia’s borders? I’d have my ducks in a row to retake my lost lands, because the Russian Federation is very likely to be in a state of collapse within a very short period. It’s going to go just like Syria; slowly at first, then all at once. Look for the warning signs in regional governances “splitting” from Moscow; I expect that there are going to be some major changes coming shortly in Georgia and Trans-Dnistria. As in “Buh-bye Russian influencers…”
“Reality? Russia hasn’t managed to win after three years of trying, with the force correlations in such dramatic opposition that it’s not even funny; Ukraine isn’t even within a weight class or two of Russia, in terms of resources/military potential. Yet… Still, they persist in existing, and fighting Russia Stronk!!! to an effective standstill. Huh.”
Numbers larger than 21 seem to elude you, so let’s simplify things:
Since October, the Russians have been advancing at their fastest pace during this entire war. They have occupied an area the size of Delaware.
Since April, one-in-six AFU combat soldiers have deserted. One-in-three have deserted since 24 February 2022.
In contested zones, the life expectancy of an AFU combat soldier is three days. This explains the high level of desertion.
Russia is still outproducing NATO by a six-to-one ratio in six inch class artillery rounds. These artillery rounds are producing 70% of all casualties in the war. This explains the short life expectancy of AFU soldiers in contested zones.
NATO GPS guided munitions do not function along the front lines due to Russian jamming and spoofing. Ukraine has fired off all the inertial guided NATO munitions, so they are no longer able to support their combat troops. They are now using NATO PGMs to attack Russia proper in areas stripped jamming and spoofing sets. But this doesn’t affect Russia any more than the V1/V2 campaigns affected Britain during WW II. Russia is a very large country with many backup sites for those hit.
It will take at least 8 years to replenish NATO stocks of PGMs and SAMS, during which time the Chinese are expected to attack Taiwan.
Your level of optimism is right up there with Hitler hoping for Steiner to show up in Berlin.
Wait and see. The last three years have been Russia playing Wile E. Coyote and going out over the edge of the cliff. Soon, Putin is going to look downwards, then back to the cliff’s edge, and realize that gravity is about to get its vote.
I’m sure we’ll hear all about how you predicted this, and how you’re always right, when it happens. Which it will; the only question about any of this has been when enough reality would build up for the whole “effect” thing to take place. The more money Putin puts on the table, the worse the carnage is going to be when the house calls it all in.
I’m pretty sure you’d have been one of the delusional types in the French and British governments, discussing when the “Russian Steamroller™” was going to run the Germans and Austrians over… Purest fantasy, based on no real knowledge or observation; they had no idea what they were looking at, and neither do you.
No army with the piss-poor internal order and discipline that the Russians have displayed is going to win any sort of protracted conflict. The corruption that’s been on display over these last few years, and the paucity of combat equipment we are seeing on the front lines? There’s no way they are going to last out 2025. If Putin and his commanders were at all rational, they’d have thrown in the towel after about June-July of 2022 at the latest. Should have done it about the time they had to withdraw the northern columns heading for Kyiv, but that would have made too much sense, and would have been admitting that they’d f*cked up. So, they kept doubling-down on the bets, and soon the house is going to rake it all in.
Frankly, I strongly suspect that the Saudi oil taps are going to be turned on in early spring, screwing both the Russians and the Iranians. Odds are, the Houthis go down, next, followed by who knows what. Iran has been living on borrowed time, relying on American traitors in government to get along, and that’s about to come to a halt. Where that ends, nobody knows, but the odds are good that Iran’s mullahocracy is going out the way Syria’s Ba’ath party did.
He needs workers, we want to get rid of illegals.
Donald Trump, make the freaking deal!!!!!!!
The price of eggs in Russia has been a recurring point of some commentators here, declaiming their food price inflation. Extra large eggs are about $ 3.50 per kilogram in the metro areas of Russia at the current exchange rate. This is about $ 2.50 per dozen.
The same, extra large eggs on America’s West Coast are now running $ 8.00 per dozen plus. $ 3.25 to $ 5.00 per dozen in the supermarkets near me.
The price of butter is now $ 8.50 per kilogram in the metro areas of Russia. This would be just under $ 4.00 per pound at the current exchange rate.
Russian butter would be a bargain at my local supermarket.