Because Nationalizing will be suicidal, it’ll mean no company will feel safe about investing in Russia, ever again. It’s a nuclear move that will end up eating Russia like cancer. If it’s so easy for Russia to get parts then why are they struggling to get tires for their military, why aren’t they getting enough chips for smart bombs? Why are they struggling to get food for their soldiers? Machine guns instead of WW2 rifles.
You must not have seen my earlier post about China being terrified of western sanctions, let me put it here again:
Chinese oil and gas company cancels $500m investment in Russia
XI JINPING appears to have lost patience with Vladimir Putin, after a Chinese energy company cancelled a $500million (£380million) investment in Russia.
www.express.co.uk
Regarding your comment about business as usual in Russia: it’s business as usual until items run out. Russians will get some of their products internally, but it’ll cost more, higher end appliances or products like Louis Vuitton are no more. It’ll take decades to ramp up production, this is globalization we’re living in, every country is dependent on others for something. What’s taking tesla so dang long to ramp up to 20 million cars per year? We only need thousands of parts, Russia is in need of millions of parts to fill the void. When we went through Covid we were getting supplies, exports and imports were still operating, this is not the case in Russia. That’s the difference.
Russia is bluffing on nearly every word they speak:
The Group of Seven nations have said it is "unacceptable" to pay for Russian gas supplies using rubles.
www.newsweek.com
And finally, in order to sustain a ramp up in production, investments has to be made, you can’t make investments for future growth when the state will be struggling to pay employees, it’s soldiers, dead/wounded compensation and financing this expensive war. Putin is leaving his soldiers to die in the field because it’s cheaper than bringing them back home, their entire state depends on selling gas, but what happens when western countries cut future consumption:
BERLIN (AP) — Germany and Austria activated early warning plans Wednesday amid concerns that Moscow could cut natural gas deliveries, while Poland announced steps to end all Russian oil imports
nonpareilonline.com
It’s a slow burn, and I know Putin and Russia is hurting right now. People are shopping at malls in hope that they can make purchases to flip that item around for a higher price when inflation rises. When inflation is 20%, you make purchases to get rid of cash and hang onto electronic goods, appliances, etc. just like Venezuela:
It’s as if it were all a clever, nation-wide marketing scheme. Venezuelan shoppers were whipped into a frenzy by President Hugo Chavez’s announcement last week that he would devalue the bolivar, the country’s currency, by 32%.
qz.com
They can’t even get parts of their tanks:
A RUSSIAN tank commander killed himself after discovering the majority of his reserve equipment had been rendered unusable, according to reports from Ukraine.
www.express.co.uk
If it’s so easy to replace parts, why does Russia struggle with tank production? Their tank lines are reported to have halted:
A RUSSIAN tank commander killed himself after discovering the majority of his reserve equipment had been rendered unusable, according to reports from Ukraine.
www.express.co.uk
The Ukrainian military reports Russian state-owned company has ceased production and repairs due to a lack of foreign-made components.
fortune.com
It took 2 years after their botched war in Afghanistan for the Soviet Union to disappear, I expect the Russian economy to also endure a few years before faltering.
Another translation from the FSB analyst who goes by WindOf Change
Igor Sushko - #FSBletters from the Wind of Change inside the FSB (KGB) - Racing & Beyond
This letter was from March 16. A few points of note, the Russians had planned to have mass pro-Russia protests in Ukraine and the FSB spent billions of dollars to recruit actors who pocketed the money and never showed up. (The billions was mentioned in another letter I think.)
This guy is expecting protests soon, and he doesn't think the internal police will be able to contain them
"- OMON (riot police), police, Rosgvardia (National Guard), and all the rest. Let me tell you a military secret: when there are large-scale rallies in Moscow or St. Petersburg, we have to gather forces from all over the country."
"But the situation also cannot be controlled without transitioning to domestic fascism: In essence the country is already governed by martial law, it’ll get much worse.
"We have 3 months left even under extremely favorable conditions until we reach this crisis, which is difficult to even imagine. 3 months – is the boundary with the most ideal preconditions, beyond which is not yet rock-bottom, but the beginning of real problems. Happens sooner – I believe it, later (than 3 months from now) – no way."
This is from an FSB analyst who looks at these sorts of things for a living. Max 3 months until Russia goes through some massive turmoil.
Oh and the price of sugar is going up because of the army. I saw a video done by a Ukrainian unloading a captured Russian backpack. He said that when soldiers are on the march, they need a lot of extra energy. Most armies provide things like energy bars and even some candy bars. But Russia uses only one thing: white sugar in little packets of 10g each. He commented in an aside that all these guys are going to get diabetes.
The Russian-occupied Donbass areas are now largely depopulated of everyone who is/was pro-Ukraine unless they were too old & poor to get out since 2014. That is one of the big difficulties in holding a referendum(s), i.e. who is eligible to vote and what about their children etc. Similarly so in Crimea though that is a different situation. (My neighbour is actually from Ukraine, but this is stuff I have been following for a long time).
It is well documented (Bellingcat et al) that Russia was using Wagner, Chechnya and other mercenary troops in Donbass & Crimea, as well as 'regular' Russian troops and other personnel (KGB/GRU/etc) both in their correct uniforms and in other clothing. This has been a deception play from the very beginning (well before 2014).
Ditto for Ossetia, Ingushetia, Transystria ....
Yes Russians masquerading as separatists have been bulking out the rebels since the beginning. If Russia descends into chaos at the end of this war, a truly fair election might go Ukraine's way even if the occupied Donbas has been depopulated of pro-Ukrainians.
If they allow displaced residents of those regions to vote too, it would likely go in Ukraine's favor by a healthy margin.
Zelensky is for a referendum, but Putin is against a free and fair election (the Russians have talked about a Russian style election). That's probably an indication how both men think this will go if put to a real vote.
We're still a long ways from any proposed solution for Donbas and Crimea becoming a reality.
This. The underlined part which is only visible if you expand the stopcracypp quote above...
There's also a lot of good counterarguments in that article itself:
"
.../ [Analysts] argued that polls in wartime have limited significance, with
many Russians fearful of voicing dissent, or even their true opinion, to a stranger at a time when new censorship laws are punishing any deviation from the Kremlin narrative with as much as 15 years in prison. /.../
“
Enthusiasm [as in support for the "special operation"] — I don’t see it,” said Sergei Belanovsky, a prominent Russian sociologist. “
What I rather see is apathy.” /.../
On Wednesday, Lucy Stein, a member of the protest group Pussy Riot who sits on a municipal council in Moscow, found a photo of herself taped to her apartment door with a message printed on it: “Don’t sell your homeland.”
She said
she suspected a secretive police unit was behind the attack /.../
Putin [has] signed legislation effectively criminalizing dissent over the war /.../
“These laws have been effective because they threaten people with prison terms,” [Boris Vishnevsky] said. “If not for this, then the change in public opinion would be rather clear, and it wouldn’t be to the benefit of the government.”
In a phone interview, a political analyst in Moscow, 45, described visiting police stations across the city in the past month after her teenage child’s repeated arrests at protests. Now, the teenager is receiving threats on social media,
leading her to conclude that authorities had passed along her child’s name to people who bully activists online.
But she also found that the police officers she dealt with did not seem particularly aggressive, or enthusiastic about the war.
Overall, she believed that most Russians were too scared to voice opposition, and were convinced that there was nothing they could do about it. She asked that her name not be published for fear of endangering her and her child.
“This is the state of someone who feels like a particle in the ocean,” she said. “Someone else has decided everything for them. This learned passivity is our tragedy.” [My
underline].
"
The stream of anti-war letters to a lawmaker in St. Petersburg, Russia, has dried up. Some Russians who had criticized the Kremlin have turned into cheerleaders for the war. Those who publicly oppose it have found the word “traitor” scrawled on their apartment door. Five weeks into President...
www.yahoo.com
Dictator's want their followers to be motivated to show their support and they want apathy from everyone else. Apathy (along with heavy drug use) is what happens when people's spirit is crushed. They give in to whatever is happening because of learned helplessness.
GERMANY has been left in shambles as Vladimir Putin reportedly has cut off the crucial Gazprom gas supply amid the ongoing crisis with Ukraine, a new report has claimed.
www.express.co.uk
Interesting wonder how Germany will manage without 40% gas
Germany is working hard to shift to other sources. Among the sources, the US is encouraging all the closed in wells to be put back online and produce as much gas and oil as possible. The US's current LNG terminal capacity is equal to about 80% of what Europe buys from Russia now.
On another note, I came across this today
UAWarData
It's produced by this person
https://twitter.com/HN_Schlottman
This is probably not comprehensive, but it only appears about 54 BTGs are active in Ukraine right now. That's down from 120-125 at the start of the war. Some are probably just not accounted for yet, but it's possible about 1/2 Russia's starting force has been withdrawn or ceased to exist at this point (most probably still exist, but are shells of the former unit). Schlottman estimates there are actually 60-70 BTGs still in the field.
There are a lot of BTGs in that salient east of Kyiv. I would think cutting those units off would be a good move to strangle a fairly good sized force.
. There’s 2 pipelines from Russia to Germany so 2 big taps
. 
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/HKOD2G5FN5LPNMLNIYSA56OVUQ.jpg)
, unless you live in Ukraine or have family there
(I hope you don’t)
