From ‘The Analyst’ (Military & Strategic) X: MilStratOnX

RUSSIAN ‘ECONOMIC LIES’

Eight EU finance ministers have signed a letter stating in considerable detail, that the Russian Government is basically lying out of its bank teeth in regard to its economic activity.
I doubt you’re surprised.
Russian official inflation figure are now at a high 8.3%. Unofficial figures say it’s 36%.
Interest rates have been raised to 18.3%. That means interest on a mortgage is around 23%.
Factory gate prices are officially rising by 14% - which means the official inflation rate is clearly out of step.
Russia has stopped exporting sugar in all formats. They basically haven’t got enough for domestic use and can’t buy enough to meet demand from abroad.
All refined oil products remain on a black list. Again, refinery capacity has been reduced, and mechanised systems just don’t have access to repairs to make them viable again.
Add a shortage of workers, tight consumer goods supply but high demand, and you have a recipe for inflation.
Yet the Russian economy is longer a capitalist one, it’s become re-sovietised. The state prints money, the state spends that money on weapons, the company building the weapons pays the people who work for it, they pay taxes to the state that circle eventually back into their salaries. But they are building weapons. Weapons that have to be maintained and paid for until they are used up. The state is paying again. Everywhere the state is the buyer and bill payer. And the state is struggling to find the money, its currency is valueless outside of its own country. Only an ever thinning export of oil is propping it up.
It’s a closed circle incapable of investment and self financed invention.
Russian companies claim they are being deliberately bankrupted by the state not paying its bills. Forcing the company into liquidation- and suddenly along comes the state to buy up the shares of owners while they are near worthless.
Russia is not some economic success. Its figures are lies, its economy is struggling to stand up and it has turned to soviet era economics to get its way. These are simply unsustainable.
Russia knows it, we all do. The question is how long can they keep it all going? That may depend on the national wealth fund - but even that is declining at a rapid pace.
All of this would indicate why Russia is so desperate to resolve the front line to its advantage now. It simply doesn’t have the means to do it later.