This January’s rate of deficits would wipe out the Russian Government’s once huge (in percentage terms) financial and gold reserves completely by Christmas, if it continues.
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Hummm. Maybe China won’t have to invade to get Siberia - they can just buy it.
“Maybe China won’t have to invade to get Siberia - they can just buy it.”
That is roughly the likely outcome of Putin’s folly, to a greater or lesser degree. The Chinese Yuan is rapidly becoming King in Russia. Like other countries with natural resources to extract, China will go in with their Belt and Road Initiative debt trap deals, and end up controlling the valuable assets there in a few years, for pennies on the dollar.
Smart Siberians (and Muscovites) who can’t leave, would be well advised to start learning to read Chinese characters now. They take a lot of work to learn, compared to phonetic alphabets.