It’s both sick and funny to see the Zeepers running around here using Alinsky tactics of trying to focus all EVIL in the world into one person, Putin, while TOTALLY IGNORING all of the Evil coming out of DC (and enjoying it, in the case of the Left going after Trump).
But regarding Russia, get rid of that EVILLL Putin and Russia takes off the gloves, as they’ve said exactly that, and if there is only take-away that should be learned from the Neocon disaster in Ukraine is that Russia keeps their word.
Russia is an oil enterprise that’s going broke. In the short run, its economy will continue spiralling downward, triggered by budget shortfalls, devaluation, economic contraction, and more capital outflows. In the long run, Russia’s exports will diminish along with the rouble, causing imports to crater and bring its domestic manufacturing to a complete standstill. Already, companies representing 40 percent of its GDP have closed, its financial markets are in crisis, and Russia cannot attract foreign investment. This is not an economy that’s performing well. This is an economy that is sputtering and dying.
“Russia is in a tailspin,” said Yale University Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld in a recent interview with Germany TV network Deutsche Welle. “False data is recycled. Every industrial sector is down, retail is down, and it’s losing $1/2 billion a day on energy exports. Rouble values are another fake number. It is not an exchange-traded currency and there isn’t even a black market for it. It has no value because nobody wants a Rouble.”
“Russia keeps their word.”
Good one!
You could do stand up.
If you look at the GDP per capita of Russia - it fell from $16,000 in 2013 to $10,000 in 2020 -- and there was little change in Russia's population at that time
Even if we take that in rubles, not in USD (to discount currency fluctuations, Russia's GDP per capita fell by 16% between 2013 and 2020 -- during this same period there was eonomic stagnation, some mega projects, some fancy events like Sochi Olympics and World Cup 2018, controversial and poorly thought decisions during 2014 crisis in Ukraine, which later proved to be wrong. Economic sanctions by the West, half-hearted import substitution attempts. Unpopular pension age reform.
Since 2020, he has damaged the Russian economy irrevocably to stay in power.
As I've said before, pre-2014, Russia was winning Ukraine the same way it was winning Belarus - through soft power. There was the inevitability that the Russyski mir would absorb the two by the simple fact that people were consuming Muscowy's media.
If Putin had not invaded in 2022, then he would have won. But hubris got to him
“t Russia keeps their word.”
You gotta be kidding.