Russia's economy minister admits "reserves have largely been used up"

The problem with authoritarian governments is the lying isn't one-sided. They don't just lie to the public, their enemies. They lie to themselves up and down the chain. Guy maintaining nuke who sold a critical part to feed his family, "This one broke, can't fix it", his supervisor "Maintenance should be complete in a month.", His supervisor "maintenance should be completed in a week." His supervisor "Maintenance will be finished tomorrow", his supervisor "We have two working nukes". Guy at the top had the last guy who told him there were 0 working nukes executed. Every person in the line was lying to protect themselves. If they start reporting bad news, either they can't be hurt by the guy above them, or the news they are covering is MUCH MUCH WORSE.

That’s very fair, no one lies quite as much at the Russian gov

The way I see it is that if they're admitting this much, reality is probably much bleaker.

Exactly, when a russian minister 'admits' economy trouble, its pr9bably to inhibit an upcoming sanction or something, its never real

If this were the truth, would this minister be allowed to say it? And even if he did say it, would he expect to survive?

Which is why it's important to look at who said it and on what capacity. Public announcements always has an agenda. Bad news coming from the mouth of regime apparatus is nothing new. One even became a meme "SHOIGU! GERASIMOV!". With the amount of clips and talking points coming out in the past few days, it's possible they're testing the water for Putin to make a decision to "save Russia". As for what that is, it's anybody's guess. It could range from ceasefire, to full mobilization. They're gearing up their population for something.

And they started to 'admit' things are going bad after making billions from the Iran war...

I agree with this. Nothing comes out of Russia unless it has a target. It’s good to have hope though.

I think this is a valid point, but based on the fact that it’s literally been raining oil in Russia lately became of strikes on their oil infrastructure, that it’s going pretty bad.

My initial reaction was the opposite, that the fact they are saying they are low now means they were actually low months ago.

They don't just straight up lie and stick to it, that's not their propaganda strategy. Their strategy is more like disinformation overload, they tell different lies with different amounts of truth mixed into that. They contradict their own previous lies on a constant basis. Their goal is not to make you believe their one lie, their goal is to make everything not believable eroding the belief in the existence of truth itself. And there's also the fact that they constantly lie to one another internally like the other guy said

I think you nailed it with their strategy, but at the same time the russian economy is straggling. Inflation was bad enough a year ago. With the successful refinery attacks by Ukraine their available resource of fuel to run the country is bad enough for their economy, so I dont think their average living standards are improving. Now they introduce harsher internet censorship, that has got to be in part to limit conversation about discontent, they would only worry about that if their economy was doing terribly.

I've heard the Russian military bloggers are showing unusual cracks in their resolve over Ukraines success at droning their goons into near total ineffectiveness  And the move by Ukraine to gamify war has been both a resounding logistical success as well as a major blow to Russian morale. Blowing them up gets Ukrainian soldiers points. Those points can be redeemed for better gear, better drones and etc. So the most effective soldiers are organically receiving the most powerful equipment with very little overhead to facilitate the boost in effectiveness.  It's a little terrifying but it's working. And as a Russian soldier, the last thing you wanna hear is that the drone operators who are on a major killing spree are getting flooded with top tier stuff. That kind rumor is gonna linger with you as you set out to cross no man's land with little to no help as part of the endless meat trickle strategy russia uses to establish foot holds. And that trick isn't working like it used to either. They can eventually get a few dozen men in fox holes in a salient..  but then what? They just sit there under the constant whine of drones whizzing around with thermal cameras just waiting for them to peek out and expose themselves.  Nobody wants to make any bold assumptions yet, but if things go on as they are it seems Ukraine may be gradually gaining an upper hand. Black rain is falling in russia as kinetic sanctions continue and the Russian spring offensive simply didn't materialize because of the hammering they're taking. Ukraine set a goal for 50k Russian soldier casualties a month, well above Russian replacement rates. And they're just grinding it out.  Russia doesn't seem in any imminent threat of collapse just yet. But they are completely failing to achieve their goals and the pressure of this war is definitely wearing them down. Their war economy continues but they're cannibalizing their society to keep it going. Few of their troops are being properly equipped and trained for the missions they are given. And there's something called a death economy over there now. People sign contracts knowing they're gonna die but the payouts for their families is keeping whole regions economically afloat.  War is a horrible atrocious thing and this planet needs to take keeping craven monsters like putin out of power a lot more seriously. Because this never should have happened. It never should have gone on this long. It's just clear signs across the board that we all need to do a lot better than this at running our societies. 

Yeah, it's hard to believe that after all the ups and downs, the moment it would come to a head is when oil prices are back up to $100 a barrel with the potential to go much higher, and the US easing sanctions. And that they're eager for us to know this. I'm sure lower prices and sanctions for the past few years were depleting reserves, but their budget should look a lot healthier as long as the Iran situation is impacting global trade. There's not much informational value in official Russian statements. If they've chosen to project weakness all of a sudden, maybe they want Europe to turn their attention away from them for a bit or ease up on sanctions more. I doubt now of all moments is when their petrostate economy would falter.

> I’ll believe it when the ruble collapses. its been propped up by trump policies for 10 years now

At this point if resevres are used up they have to start printing money to maintain the internalized status quo of paying their troops, this will devalue everything and itll spiral from there

China enjoys massive beneficial mining, logging access to a lot of russian land. Im sure china will eventually reap the lands for its own when the the time is right to them.

Iran was a gift to Russia. High oil prices, delayed shipments of us weapons, excuse for trump to clown on nato etc

For context, Elvira Nabiullina is a head of Bank of Russia, and probably last professional person in entire government. She has been keeping economy afloat at any cost for years at this point, and (allegedly) tried to resign at least couple of times, but was denied by Putin. She is like Jerome Powell, and I'd always trust her estimations on how fucked everything is.

I would expect the Middle East conflict to be a net gain for their economy due to oil prices. Is there something else that would cause problems for them?

Just gotta burn more billionaires.

Deciding who will have been?

Everyone else would happily eat the hot, steaming excrement from their dear leader's putrid ass if it meant they can spit some of it at a neighboring country.

you americans have actually 0 idea of what that means. you think you do, you see how russia is somewhat fucked and you think "oh yeah, we are just as bad!" But nope. Not even close. Idk whats this f***** with trying to put down your own country as much as possible, but its just not the same. how the f can it be the same lmao? just take a look at the US stats and Russia stats. People in the US live better than ppl in Russia. ofc some people in the major cities in rus will have an ok lifestyle, but that's not a given. even more so, you think you have "zombies". the maga rats, sure. But lmao you have 0 idea how bad it can get in russia. Their whole damn country was zombified by putin. At least in the US, you have somewhat of an illusion of democracy. Russia is straight up an authoritan state. fucks sakes people. you saying "the US is just as bad!!!" is straight up disingenuous. reminds me of victim mentality olympics. how pathetic and sad can you make your situation out to be, when its not comparable. ugh.

Eh leave the vodka strike the actual military targets. Alcoholism is a huge drain on the Russian economy. Hell there have even been a lot of complaints from Russian soldiers of artillery crews literally drinking on the job and completely missing targets as a result.

Tipsy point.

Russian have potato. Potato make vodka.

We coulda had Nikki Haley. I hate 90% of her policy stances, but she was right on Ukraine.

Europe can step up at any time. Nobody is standing in the way.

A foreign overthrow of a government has only "turned out well" twice, Germany + Japan after WW2. In terms of other government overthrows, the "successful" ones only really ever came from within (France, SK, Portugaul) and are only a handful of examples of where it turned out well. But a drop in the bucket compared to the cases where it made everything worse.

The full scale invasion started in 2022

Just look at the difference in support. Biden treated Ukraine aid as a direct U.S. commitment funded by Congress. Trump has reframed it as a European responsibility, stopped seeking new U.S. appropriations. Reoublicans complained every day about funding Ukraine. Then turn around and say shit like this. Republicans live in a different world and I find it pathetic.

Sure enjoy drones

Sorry, yes - that is actually what I meant.

They’ve got plenty of natural resources which they can sell for hard currency or use for the own military and they aren’t nearly as reliant on foreign imports like the west is due to decades of import substitution. I don’t doubt their economy is down the drain but unfortunately that doesn’t take away their capacity to wage war. 

Yep. The US has never defaulted on their debt once in a 200+ year history and has the largest economy in the world. There also aren't a ton of sanctions on the US. If you're a Chinese bank maybe you could loan money to Russia but that would risk getting your bank blacklisted and unable to do any interactions with the west. Even if you do loan money to the Kremlin do you really think you'll get it back? They're using the money mainly to buy weapons which get destroyed rather than invest in infrastructure which adds value to the economy.

The concerted attack of right wing parties across Europe against the living standards of their own citizens, and getting rewarded for it at the polls, disprove that statement. 

> I mean what are Russians going to do? The problem is that poor people don't pay taxes. If the Russian economy is shit then businesses vanish and people have less money which means there is less tax revenue coming in. If you don't have the tax revenue coming in then you can't spend it on weapons for the war. If your army doesn't have weapons for the war then good luck overcoming Ukrainian defenses. Why did the Soviet Union make 100,000+ modern tanks and self propelled guns in WWII and yet today Russia isn't doing the same? Is it because Russians think that minivans are better for storming fortified defenses or is it because Russia doesn't have the resources to do the same today?