Natural gas prices in Russia up 34% since Putin’s 2024 invasion.
Since a State-owned company (Gazprom) has a virtual monopoly on the domestic market, that is essentially a tax on the population.
It is a break with the whole Putin era social compact, whereby the Russian people were paid off with rising living standards, in return for their acquiescence to Putin’s undemocratic and corrupt leadership. Now their living standards are being sacrificed in many ways at once.
As Abe Lincoln said, you can fool all the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all the people, all of the time. The Russian people are increasingly the bill payers for Putin’s disastrous warmongering - and they can’t all be fooled about it forever. Putin has sold out their future.
