www.theguardian.com
Link feeds to German (untranslated) on my end, but better read as title rhymes auf Deutsch
. Maybe translation should be “Vaccination shy and Putin ally…”
Full of strawmen and unbacked claims."Sanctions ... have a devastating effect on Russian Economy"
Actually, the Russian Economy Is Imploding
Nine myths about the effects of sanctions and business retreats, debunked.foreignpolicy.com
Latest estimates are that Russia is losing troops at the rate of ~180/day and Ukraine at the rate of ~30/day, KIA. That is a 6:1 ratio.
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and
Ukrainian losses significantly reduced since peak of war, says Zelenskyy
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that about 30 soldiers were dying on the frontline everyday now, a significant reduction since the peak of the ongoing war in May and Junewww.business-standard.com
Some non paywalled versions out
ukrainetoday.org
The data for the slide on the right comes from the Russian Central Bank. The slide excludes the most recent week, which showed a rebound to 585m. That's equal to May 13, but we can't say reserves stabilized at +/= 585m because two months is too short a period for a number this noisy.I've now looked at the slideset myself. For me the key slide is #40, the forex. This seems to show a reduction from ~$640bn to ~$570bn between Feb-22 and Jul-22, or $70bn reduction in 6-months. Given that $300bn appear to be restricted that suggests it would take a further ~24-months to deplete the remaining ~$240bn of unrestricted reserves to zero if the observed flow were to continue.
If inflows (gas sales, oil sales, coal sales) were to reduce in volume or price, or both, and given that outflows have already crashed, then the forex reserves would likely not last the calculated 24m. Running to zero gets increasingly difficult, especially if institutions like the World Bank and IMF are not being supportive. That is if nothing further goes wrong within the Russian economy.
Putin clearly prepared Russia carefully for this and other similar ventures, amassing these very substantial reserves over many years for exactly an eventuality such as this. Nevertheless one has to wonder if the Russian system can last more than ~12-months on this trajectory.
Despite the very obvious attempts to crack Western resolve, my personal opinion is that the West will hold firm, even if energy rationing is required to get the EU through the coming winter. And by next year the EU will be fairly permanently off Russian energy (never to return), whilst Russian forex reserves will be getting nervously low. Russian reserves of troops, equipment, weapons, and ammunition will be similarly low by then.
Overall the West - and Ukraine - are better placed for a long war than Russia. As to Putin, I think he'll need to make personal security his primary concern.
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For external consumption it is natural that the Russian leadership team should not show worry, from their perspective this is a game of who-blinks-first. What I said in my post above was simply on the basis of going through the slide deck. I've now read the paper which has the following to say about that slide #40 (see p62 in the paper) and it does somewhat consider the "hidden reserves" point you raise.
The problem with the "Russian FX Reserves Over Time" graph is that the Y axis does not start at zero, so it looks far worse than it is. (Not that I wouldn't love to see the same downward slope on a Y starts at zero graph.)I've now looked at the slideset myself. For me the key slide is #40, the forex. This seems to show a reduction from ~$640bn to ~$570bn between Feb-22 and Jul-22, or $70bn reduction in 6-months. Given that $300bn appear to be restricted that suggests it would take a further ~24-months to deplete the remaining ~$240bn of unrestricted reserves to zero if the observed flow were to continue.
If inflows (gas sales, oil sales, coal sales) were to reduce in volume or price, or both, and given that outflows have already crashed, then the forex reserves would likely not last the calculated 24m. Running to zero gets increasingly difficult, especially if institutions like the World Bank and IMF are not being supportive. That is if nothing further goes wrong within the Russian economy.
Putin clearly prepared Russia carefully for this and other similar ventures, amassing these very substantial reserves over many years for exactly an eventuality such as this. Nevertheless one has to wonder if the Russian system can last more than ~12-months on this trajectory.
Despite the very obvious attempts to crack Western resolve, my personal opinion is that the West will hold firm, even if energy rationing is required to get the EU through the coming winter. And by next year the EU will be fairly permanently off Russian energy (never to return), whilst Russian forex reserves will be getting nervously low. Russian reserves of troops, equipment, weapons, and ammunition will be similarly low by then.
Overall the West - and Ukraine - are better placed for a long war than Russia. As to Putin, I think he'll need to make personal security his primary concern.
View attachment 832920
gagadget.com
That's about the same as a Javelin missile (without the launcher, which costs about $78k), so pretty good value for the type of targets it can hit.
