From "The Analyst":

RUSSIA’S INTERNAL CRISIS

A medium sized dam collapses, not from anything other than neglect. There is no money to maintain such structures.
The level of water is horrendous - Orsk and Orenburg are flooded. Some 250km of land as much as 5km or more has been flooded. It’s the worst humanitarian disaster inside Russia since Chernobyl in 1986.
On the border with Belarus another bridge collapsed - it’s been needing repair for over a decade but has been ignored. Such tales of woe in Russia emerge almost every other day. There is no money to pay for basic maintenance- the war against Ukraine is sucking the country dry.
The attacks on refineries by Ukraine have started to pay dividends. Russia has been forced to buy a staggering 100,000 tons of refined petroleum and diesel from Kazakhstan because its own refineries have no capacity to sustain domestic demand. Prices are starting to rise.
Russia has been one of those countries that produces so much oil it has never had to think about a strategic reserve of fuel or oil.
America has the SPR - millions of barrels stored in old wells around Texas and elsewhere that acts as an emergency reserve in case of war or crisis. It was mostly established during the days after the oil embargo’s of the 1960-70’s.
Even though the US is now a net exporter of oil the strategic reserves are a vital part of the national security strategy of the US. They often get used to balance prices if they rise too high.
Russia has no such thing. It pumps it out of the ground, exports it as crude or refines it as finished products for domestic use and export. There’s so much in the ground nobody ever thought to be bothered about saving any. In practice if it was needed you simply drilled for it and produced it.
It never crossed anyone’s mind that the refineries would be so badly damaged that they would in effect cease to function - and with it much of Russian refining capacity would be gone. One more of those unexpected things that happens in war nobody planned for. Russian petroleum is basically a just in time product - it’s produced as fast as it’s needed and arrives just in time. There is no back up. Ukraine truly found a weak spot in Russia’s oil industry. And the worst part is it’s not easy to fix any of these systems - even with Iranian help.
And even worse news - the revenue from Russian oil and gas is continuing to fall.
The first quarter of this year shows a 41% reduction in revenue - more than 50% if priced in dollars.
Even more annoying for the Russians is that the US is focused on making sure that no matter the price of oil, Russia gets no more than $60pb under the sanctions regime.
The rest of Russia’s economic outlook is deceptive. Charts show what appears to be sharp increases in domestic non-oil & gas revenue, making up 66% of the total (the reverse of the position in 2021). Bit there are two realities to that. If oil income falls then domestic revenue automatically looks better on a chart as the percentage grows.
The revenue being generated internally is higher, but so is inflation, and as we discussed before, the ‘printing’ of money to supply cash to pay the governments debts has its own dangerous alchemy. And that is still playing out in high hidden and official inflation and interest rates, as well as chronic currency devaluations.
What is happening is that war is inflating state paid for production of weapons. The state pays - to make, to operate and maintain what it buys. What it is producing is war - it’s not making anything that brings any return. It’s a total cost, there is no longevity in this type of economy.
Once this war ends, Russia faces a catastrophic industrial collapse as the state stops pouring billions into weapons. Russia is spending almost 35% of its GDP on the war and it’s still not winning.
Russia is not making a profit. Its 2021 revenue was a profit of nearly 10 trillion roubles. By the time of the end of 2023 the country is in the negative - almost 3.5 trillion roubles in losses.
Russia is selling less oil, far less gas, exports little else and has become deeply dependent on China for more than should be considered healthy.
Its oil industry is in trouble, its economy is driven only by military requirements and its losses financially show it cannot afford the war - despite the billions being spent.
Russia is in a bubble. Eventually bubbles burst and Russia will have to face that day when it happens - and when it does it’s going to be a national disaster. Short term gain for long term pain. War is expensive. Surviving it is even more so.