Putin’s War Economy is CRUSHING His Citizens!

Putin’s War Economy is CRUSHING His Citizens!

is Putin pulling out all the stops to finance his War Machine even as Ukraine gets more and more cash from its allies I’m Paul US Army Combat veteran let’s talk about it okay so this is a really interesting uh story from the Kev independent about the Russian Financial system and this is one of the things that when you’re fighting a war of attrition as Russia is it’s less about the actual tactical units because they’re so high casualties among tactical soldiers that uh having a brilliant tactician here or there doesn’t really make a difference when you’re trying to get hundreds of thousands of soldiers to fight but what does make a difference is your ability to be even a little more efficient than your opponent where if you’re again if you’re Fielding uh 25,000 soldiers every single month then if you’re able to be two three 4% more efficient uh that results directly in thousands more soldiers on the battlefield so this is uh where Russia’s best minds are actually thinking but there’s only so much that Putin can do given the constraints he’s operating under right so since the fullscale invasion of 2022 uh Russia has had to go in some ways Allin to funding the war it’s a really tough situation because the Kremlin refuses to put its whole society on a war footing notably not conscripting uh implementing a general conscription or deploying Russian conscripts to Ukraine but it is focusing on pivoting its economy to a war focus and it’s but you cannot you cannot take your country’s resources extract them and then destroy them in a war indefinitely right war is is inherently a poor economic investment in almost all cases um the amount of the blood and treasure that gets expended in a conflict at Le especially in the modern industrial era is simply not worth it right and so here’s how Putin is kind of solving the problem first off Russia’s national defense spending Rising again from the 51 billion doar US dollar in 2021 up to$ $20 billion or onethird of the entire Russian uh government’s spending here in 2024 so increasing by almost threefold and this means inherently that Russia needs to take it a lot in a lot of cases from social programs and this is dangerous because remember Putin’s so afraid of a general backlash against his conflict that he refuses to implement a general conscription something that would give him the military manpower to likely win the war but Russian public won’t tolerate it yet at the same time Russia is slowly tightening social spending right these are programs that the average Russian depends on uh old age pensions for example um uh General Health Care schemes um veteran pay all of these things are being cut right and they again consist of nearly 21% of the Russian budget and so Russia is is increasingly finding itself having to pull more and more sort of fiscal tricks in order to make its budget work right now before the invasion Russia was actually running a federal budget surplus or about of about7 billion something that W most western economies don’t really have um but it’s had to as the war is dragged on become more and more uh desperate right it’s current budget deficit is around 2% of its total GDP about $47 billion um and it’s expected to be about 1% of GDP uh here in 2024 now some of the ways they’re doing it first off Russia has had to raise taxes and if you’ve studied American history you know that at least Americans don’t really care much for tax hikes but the Russians seem to be just kind of taking it uh a there’s a 15% tax rate uh a tax hike uh for income exceeding $57,000 which yes Russia is a um somewhat poorer country than the United States but $57,000 is the equivalent of like 120,000 in the US so something that doesn’t really Target the Russian upper upper strata Instead This is attacks focused on Russia’s upper middle class which is a dangerous Target because as we know Putin’s power base is skewed heavily in favor of the the um metropoles particularly Moscow and St Petersburg that’s where kind of the upper middle class Russians who Putin depends on uh for support really congregate Putin also depends on kind of ultra nationalists um like like the rural kind of the Russian version of like a red State um kind of ultra nationalist uh uh support but again somebody in the upper middle class is going to be uh losing the upper middle class would be very very dangerous for someone like Putin right Russia’s finance ministry in fact last month amount announced new income tax hikes including up to 22% which is very high for Russia um on any income exceeding just $228,000 so again now Putin is targeting his middle class again playing a really dangerous game um by by punishing these folks and it’s obvious to almost anyone that this is done to fund this war in Ukraine right and remember if already it’s fairly clear based on both the level of Destruction within Ukraine and on the level of expenditure that the Russian government has done that there’s no way Russia’s going to make this back just by seizing uh economic territory or even at best he might return to Baseline by having sanctions listed If he if he gets a really really sweet peace treaty um or he is just willing to withdraw uh likely that would create you know in exchange for total sanction lifting you also see the Russian corporate tax raising by almost 20% right and mineral production and taxes of of uh um like uh raw materials something that is core to the Russian economies also raising by almost 10% um so these kind of taxes are going to really really piss off a lot of segments of Russian Society um a lot of oligarchs who depend on mineral rights um and other kind of raw materials uh you’re going to of course have any large or midsize Russian Corporation is going to be very obset at this large tax increase and of course the Russian middle class and so the fact is that everyone’s it’s obvious to anyone that this is about war spending um and there’s a fear that of course it this may trigger inflation um but it may also trigger a uh it can also trigger a uh deflation within the civilian sector um a slowing of the civilian sector economy as the defense sector uh ramps up but again this is that’s not a way to run an economy that’s a temporary solution that you can do for two years in order to get sort of people back to work and get wages back Back In Pockets but to do so uh particular in the face of a war that kills off large numbers of your best most productive workers able-bodied men is a really really playing with fire um but that’s not all right um Russia is also selling a lot of oil and gas a lot by bypassing sanctions um and in fact Russia’s oil and gas revenues Rose by 28% immediately after the invasion um but and while they fell initially as the first round of sanctions hit them um this year Russia’s oil and gas revenues are going to increase again this is because Russian buyers are basically China and India whose need for raw materials is far greater than their need to score brownie points with the west and ultimately the cheap Russian oil right the discount that Russia gets to sell it at makes such a huge difference for an industrializing country uh a rising country like China and India that they just feel that it’s too good a deal to turn down in fact Russian government’s oil and gas revenue is June in June is set to rise by more than 50% year-over-year and this is a huge problem but the fact is that you wouldn’t Russia wouldn’t be raising taxes in such an unpopular Move If This Were sufficient and we know that Ukraine has made targeting Russian oil infrastructure a big priority um so yes this is raise is rising but uh Ukrainian efforts to Target Russian oil infrastructure they see is kind of Russia’s Achilles heel um again able to because it allows them to circumvent Russian uh Russia’s best way to to improve kind of their national uh budget right Russia also used a few other tricks like its Sovereign wealth fund um to finance military spending um and again this is sort of a rainy day fund that a country holds um particularly this is popular among oil producing Nations if your nation um produces a lot of oil generally the states collect a certain tax on it um because again it’s oil it’s extracted literally from the soil of your country and so this tax then funds a sovereign wealth fund that is meant for well not funding Wars but it’s supposed to ensure balanced budgets or uh help Implement kind of make these kind of long-term Investments That a country might need that might not come from the private sector either because they’re too speculative they’re too big or because they’re too long-term in Vision um of course the final strategy which is never backfired on anyone is printing money the Russian Russia Russia’s money supply Rose by 133% um in 2021 uh but then grew by 24% to 2022 then it grew by 19% again so uh somehow inflation has remained relatively under control in Russia uh with just 8 uh 12 and 7 a half% inflation over the last three years but again some Russian economists argue that the actual inflation figures are much higher and more worrying is that it’s a little bit like the United States for a decade the US tried to generate inflation they tried to um print money to offer Banks very very cheap rates to reduce uh the total interest payments but none of it seemed to work until eventually what happened is the the what seemed to have occurred is that a glut of money sat in kind of that investment class right that’s why you had things uh for about 10 years companies like uber any tech company with a pulse and three lines of code would be be valued at something like 10 or 100 times Revenue um and that valuation that money was because there was all this glut of money in the upper Financial system right it s it similarly sat in speculative Investments like cryptocurrencies but then at some point all those speculative assets began to collapse and that money finally dumped into the durable goods economy the economy the rest of us live in right we don’t sit there and feed our families or pay our rent with meme coins right we do it with dollars we purchase homes we buy groceries we buy new cars right things that people actually need in the real world and once that money worked its way into those businesses inflation began to explode it was caused by a bunch of other things including covid spending and a lot of other um uh insane levels of government spending um but understand that a lot of those conditions are sitting in Russia and if Russia proves unable at some point this money supply increase is going to filter down right so right now it’s sitting somewhere likely in kind of defense spending uh coffers but at some point those people that work in the defense industry or the soldiers who are promised salaries or uh defense contractors who get bigger and bigger orders placed there that money is going to get into the the real economy of Russia and you’re going to see the money supply increase minus the GDP increase which is like you know I think a few percentag points that’s what you’re going to see the inflation rate look like and when you do again combined with higher taxes and higher cost of goods the Russian consumers going to absolutely lose their and once they do so then you’re going to see um you’re going to see pressure get put on Putin and the Kremlin in order to really alter the fundamental uh deal so to speak between Russia’s people and the government the authoritarian government they tolerate now if you are looking for your own better better way to solve your problems you don’t need to print fake money you don’t need to raise your taxes on I don’t know your kids maybe uh instead just get some strike gum guys strike gum is the zero sugar energy drink alternative and we’re having a Fourth of July sale Fourth of July sale is 20% off period that’s it wherever you live whatever you order just get 20% off that’s it 4th of July when you log in there’ll be a 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full of Old Stock from the the the gwat AA from the global war on terror and we want to buy new stuff so why don’t you guys take this off our hands in fact to the tune of three Bill 2.3 billion coming up this week military aid and it’s going to be anti-tank weapons yikes for Russia big yikes interceptors and Munitions for Patriot missile batteries and other air defense systems right and most of this or actually 150 million is going to become from what’s called presidential draw down Authority and the remainder from this Ukraine security assistance initiative that the PDA allows the Pentagon to take weapons from its own stocks this is the old stuff and ship them over to Ukraine stuff that’s going to get replaced anyway right and the United the Ukraine security assistance initiative of course is more about putting weapons on long-term contracts somebody make it and they put it out right Austin said quote make no mistake Ukraine is not alone in the United States will never waver in our support yo dude I don’t know if you were here like 3 months ago there was a lot of wavering FYI a lot of wavering like let’s let’s not say things we don’t mean there Lloyd right but critically us isn’t alone up to 50 allies and partners are providing now remember some of this you go oh you know providing these weapons frees up the Ukrainian budget to handle other things that its Western allies and partners can’t necessarily Aid them in so this will include uh you know now for a while the US was providing Ukraine cash to balance its budget I think the US has backed away from that kind of program because the Optics are so bad and and I kind of agree with that um you know we’re happy to support our allies in their fight against Russia right by sending the military gear we’re freeing up their funds but it’s that way if there is a um issue with corruption or misappropriation of funds it’s Ukrainian funds that are being misappropriated right you can’t misappropriate an artillery piece just like if I sent you an artillery piece what would you do with it you go oh I’d sell it well to who dude on eBay like you can’t you can’t like pull a fast one and be like I don’t know how the aeran has got your M 7 Howitzer it’s like no dude the howitzers are good for one thing and that’s shooting Russians so like you don’t have to worry about military gear of a certain caliber being expropriated because it’s military gear of a certain caliber right uh cash money doesn’t quite work as well so again happy to see our tax dollars our old weapons being used put to good use and certainly Ukraine enjoying some advantages that Russia simply doesn’t anyway guys that’s all I had huge thank you to the colonel tier members of Comb news.com including uh H young Fran zarius Mark James Porsche Robin curn Dave Roberts Donald Moore jofre blank Anonymous Alpha redacted and Mel S odm I really appreciate you guys and I app apprciate the lieutenant tier members could not do this without you guys hopefully you’re enjoying the newly redone site and the new benefits for each tier so you guys should absolutely check it out because frankly it’s great anyway thanks so much guys and I will see you in the next one cheers

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Original Video:
https://deepstatemap.live/#10/50.1563/36.5534
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates

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Original Video:
https://deepstatemap.live/#10/50.1563/36.5534
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates

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