When the war started it was seizure-this and sanction-that. I’ve read that $350B in Russian assets were seized and held, while major companies exited the Russian market, the ruble crashed, and inflation rocketed.
Meanwhile the cost of the Russian war must be astronomical to maintain, imports/exports have halted with Europe, there’s no financial aid to Russia (that I’m aware of) and multi-billion dollar resource supplies were cancelled.
All this, and Russia seems to still be having a good old time. Russians are on holidays en mass, the country is buying up arms and fossil fuels like its church Sunday, and their war machine still powers away and is prepared to keep fighting for a decade if it has to.
How? How does a country take that much of a financial beating and still be thriving? Where is the point of being broke and not being able to fund a war anymore?
Adding to all the reasons already listed, Russia isn’t striving. For example, right now there is a number of towns and cities experiencing outages in central heating (with houses designed around central heating so basically no other option to heat their appartments) while the weather dips to -20°C (around -4°F). All because the centralized boiler facilities weren’t properly maintained due to the lack of money (or, to be more precise, due to money being diverted towards the war).
There are other signs, like plains malfunctioning and flights getting delayed because some component broke and cannot be replaced due to sanctions, and they happen more and more often. Also the less noticeable stuff like prices of common goods increasing by a factor of two in the last couple of years while salaries barely increased at all.
So yeah, Russia is keeping itself afloat, but it isn’t thriving at all
Also the less noticeable stuff like prices of common goods increasing
I mean Putin had to apologize for high prices of eggs, that was very noticeable (of course a show to make him seem to care for the common people, which he doesn’t give a f*ck about). https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-rare-apology-over-price-eggs-2023-12-14/
I meant that these things aren’t as noticeable from outside of the country. Like, foreign news outlets probably won’t report on it much. Plus, eggs are more of an exception because of sudden shortage and prices rising rapidly. For most of the other goods the price grows more gradually and isn’t as obvious. Like in that metaphor about slowly boiling a frog.
Another problem that is noticeable from inside the country (at least by those affected by it) is that certain medications are vanishing from the pharmacies because they are no longer imported and they were never produced locally, or the local production is insufficient to meet the needs. I don’t know the full list, but the stock of ADHD meds is definitely low, and I’ve heard from friends that they had to switch to a different antidepressant due to shortages.
By the way, the RuSSians thought that if they could no longer fly to vacation in Europe or the USA, they would be able to vacation in Dubai, but after they bought tickets for the return trip, they could not even (there was news recently) return to RuSSia by plane, because the plane (RuSSian plane) broke down and they, as always, were “stuck” at the airport for several hours, ha-ha
… The way which you wrote this made me think there was a far more dramatic ending than being stuck at an airport for several hours due to mechanical failure.
My brother in Christ, I experienced that in Cleveland…
But I am not sure what you mean at the end - are these guys STILL in Dubai?! You said they were stuk at the airport for several hours… Like… What, they had to stay at the airport to wait for their boat because, as you said, they couldn’t return by plane? … Or they waited several hours at the airport to catch another flight…? What are you saying?
They are technically still on the way, on day 117 of an epic, unplanned, and wholly uncontrolled kite-surfing misadventure.
