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Posted on 08/16/2026 5:06:24 PM PDT by Apparatchik
Andrei Klepach, the chief economist at Russian state development corporation VEB.RF, was reportedly fired on Aug. 16, a day after Russian media widely circulated his warnings that Russia was losing its economic and technological competition with the West.
Russian independent media outlet The Bell reported Klepach’s dismissal on Aug. 16, citing two people familiar with the matter. The report came two days after The Moscow Times published excerpts from Klepach’s May remarks, which were subsequently picked up by other Russian media.
Speaking at an event organized by the Moscow Exchange’s Nikitsky Club, Klepach reportedly said Russia would be unable to sustain competition with the West in a prolonged confrontation and predicted that the country would eventually face a social crisis.
According to one of The Bell’s sources, VEB.RF head Igor Shuvalov dismissed Klepach following an order "from above." A second source confirmed that the firing was connected to Klepach’s May remarks. The Bell said it had requested comment from VEB.RF.
(snip)
"We are falling behind. We are losing both the technological and economic competition in the world. And, as I have already said, we are losing it not only to China and the United States — in some respects, we are losing it to Ukraine," Klepach said.
"Ukraine’s economy has, of course, been partly destroyed, and there is a demographic catastrophe. But again, despite everything, the Ukrainian economy is surviving. Of course, it receives enormous financial assistance. (…) With that support, their military spending and their own expenditures amount to almost 50% of our budget," he was quoted as saying.
"We will not win this competition in a war of attrition," Klepach continued. "We have this illusion that everything there will collapse. It has not collapsed, and it will not. Our costs are growing."
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
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I do believe Scott Bessent knows what he’s doing. He has experience.
How many days, or perhaps hours, will it be until Mr Klepach “falls out of a window?”
Because that will make the problem go away.
Beat me to it.
Andrei Klepach
Andrey Klepach no longer VEB.RF chief economist — press service
Photo credit: Egor Aleev/TASS
I have to agree. I watched video of Bessent speaking extemporaneously at some forum, and it was remarkable. I think he is the best we have seen in decades.
I mean it’s accurate. Overtime they will continue to lose out...just like the soviets did.
China is the real issue. They are masters at stealing tech and info. How do we stop them?
Take a hike, Mike. I mean Andrei.
This is my take, too. The Trump-Vance administration, Bessent among many more, has fielded some big talent in the overall scheme of things.
Quite the inverse of the Idiot Obama's "fundamental transformation" treasonous malarkey.
The Russian economy is apparently less than that of Texas.
He should probably stay away from windows, because Russian buildings tend to sway a lot in the wind.
(((PING!)))
To be added to the zeeper follies pinglist, ping me bro... we need laughter!
I expected a massive heart attack, or a traffic accident.
“With that support, their military spending and their own expenditures amount to almost 50% of our budget,””
grok says Andrei’s reference was to 50% of the entire russian federal government budget, so it sounds like Andrei was saying that the total ukranian military expenditures (both domestic and foreign support) are equal to half of the entire russian federal expenditures for everything ... that’s an astounding statement, and would indicate that russia is in a world of hurt if it continues its ukranian adventure ...
Bessent is DEFINITELY the best SecTreasurer i’ve seen in my lifetime ... i’ve never seen a SecTreasurer wield such power so broadly and so imaginatively as Bessent has in support of implementing several of President Trump’s major policy degrees ... together, Bessent and Rubio have been some of the most effective cabinet appointments that i’ve ever seen ... [just for grins, contrast Rubio’s results with SecState, Hillary Clinton]
No good deed goes unpunished. Especially in Russia.
If I may take a minute of your time to expand on this! (If not, I get it...but I have never been a 240 character limit kind of guy)
Up until the age of 40 or so, General George Catlett Marshall was one of the accomplished generals who stood on one of those reserved pedestals. You never heard bad things about him in school, only positive things. I always viewed him as a high-ranking officer to be inferior to Nimitz, but in the same general class. He even had the Marshall Plan named after him.
But as I got older and began delving into information outside of what was taught in school or what the "historians" wanted you to know, my view of history became broader (which is a natural thing as you age, I would think) and as in real life with the media, I began to look between the lines of the established history taught to me.
One of the things I knew little about earlier in my life was Marshall's confused and changing explanation for where he was and what he was doing on the morning Pearl Harbor was attacked.
There is an anecdote in the book "America's Retreat From Victory" by Senator Joseph McCarthy (widely accepted as ghostwritten) in which the subject is the acquiescence of American Foreign Policy to the wishes and demands of the Soviet Union during WWII and the few short years after.
Rightly or wrongly, Senator McCarthy accused General Marshall as being a driver of this approach. He himself admits that he would be pilloried in even voicing it aloud, and that he would pay a price for it, which he did) That said, McCarthy may indeed have been mistaken in this accusation (I don't think he was mistaken) but one of his justifications certainly rang true then, as it would today in evaluating, for example, both the Obama and Biden Administrations.
In the effort to determine if our soft and accommodating national approach to the Soviets during and after WWII was due to misfeasance (stupidity, incompetence, or ignorance) or malfeasance (deliberate actions taken to help the Soviets and hurt the West) McCarthy wrote:
"If Marshall were merely stupid, the laws of probability would have dictated that at least some of his decisions [regarding the Soviets] would have served this country's interest. Even if Marshall had been innocent of guilty intention, how could he have been entrusted to guide this country further? [through his mid-war and post-war policies regarding the Soviets, China, and the subsequent Soviet domination of millions of people in what came to be "The Eastern Bloc"]
In his book, McCarthy offers this anecdote (from Reader's Digest in 1944 describing a press conference in Algiers where Marshall met with 60 Anglo-American correspondents in Algiers) as an indication that Marshall had significant intellectual gravitas, and so incompetency was not the more likely explanation:
McCarthy then points out how "interesting" it was when Marshall, when he testified on what he was doing the morning Pearl Harbor was attacked, was unable to remember accurately.
He originally said he had been out riding horseback and thus could not be contacted. Then, he said his memory had been refreshed, and he had been having breakfast with his wife. Then, an excerpt was published in a book from the diary of a well known Soviet Aviator named Litvinoff who flew from Russia to the United States, in which he stated that he met with Marshall at the airport that morning.
The upshot of this is that Marshall made decision after decision after decision in the war that benefited the Soviets, and then after the war, made the same series of decisions that benefited the Communist Chinese in their goal to conquer China.
He was a political appointee to rank, under the auspices and guidance of Eleanor Roosevelt who it is widely thought to have guided his rise to power in the Army. This is significant in my eyes, given the path of Marshall's military career.
He served in the first WW on General Pershing's staff and became good friends with him. After the war, his career languished, and in 1933, he looked up Pershing and asked him to intercede on his behalf (laplata, you can see already as a vet and military brat, I don't like Marshall. He went the political route) which Pershing did. General Douglas MacArthur, who was Chief of Staff of the Army at that time, was willing, but said he thought that Marshall should go through the channels which he thought he should easily be able to do. To assist him in this and grease his path, MacArthur gave him command of the Eighth Regiment in Georgia, which was the finest unit in the army. It was a plum assignment. MacArthur botched it so badly, that the Eighth Regiment went, in one year, from the best in the country to one of the worst. MacArthur said he couldn't promote him.
Then, six years later, after then-Colonel Marshall had been relieved of command of the Eighth Regiment for taking them from First to Worst, he was promoted over the heads of 20 Major Generals and 14 Senior Brigadiers.
A political appointee due to his time running a large CCC camp (not even the Army!) where he got exposure the civilian side of the government, and found that there were other ways to flag rank without the aid of the Army.
His guiding patrons were Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins. That tells me something.
Then, if you look at his conduct during the war and how he worked with Hopkins to manipulate Roosevelt away from any Mediterranean operations which would have caused Europe and the Balkans to be split with the allies instead of allowing the Soviets to swallow those areas whole...which they did. I get that there were a lot of other factors that absolutely played into this decision, but in retrospect, preventing those splits might have had a lot of value. I recognize the arguments for the Overlord side and have always agreed with them.)
Getting back to the original point-it is often difficult for me to assign stupidity. But to paraphrase McCarthy as he said in his ghostwritten book America's Retreat From Victory:
"If [INSERT LEFTIST HERE] were merely stupid, the laws of probability would have dictated that at least some of his decisions would have served this country's interest."
“The Russian economy is apparently less than that of Texas.”
____________________________________________________________
Yep. Immediately behind Italy, but immediately ahead of Brazil.
In the US, California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Illinois each equal or far exceed the GDP of Russia.
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