Tag Archives: Russian economy

Important for understanding sanctions as economic warfare. They are neither efficient nor effective unless dependency is high, which Russia's is not relative to the US especially and the West in general.What is happening is "regionalization" toward the Global South and East, which portends eventually to isolate the West.Unfortunately, this make the transition from the use of economic and hybrid warfare to kinetic warfare more likely as the US views itself as losing global hegemony as "soft...

Inflation remains at annual rate of 2.4%, confounding Central Bank’s fears of a sharp rise Russia FeedECONOMY UPDATE: Despite surging oil prices and falling rouble Russia’s inflation rate continues steady Alexander Mercouris

Russia responds, not tit-for-tat, but asymmetrically as it said it would. Navalny helped the EU compile sanctions on the people who made Crimea’s return to Russia possible in 2014. A year later, he submitted a list of Russian bureaucrats he believed should be sanctioned to the FT, many of whom were indeed later sanctioned by the West. Also in 2015, professional oppositionists Mikhail Kasyanov and Vladimir Kara-Murza traveled to the US to lobby Congress into putting Russian journalists –...

Kudrin demoted. Kudrin is pro-Western and neoliberal.Dances with BearsAlexei Kudrin Accepts Accounting Chamber Post From SubordinateJohn Helmer

As for the real damage to the Russian economy recorded since 2014, the State Department officials report “that oil price volatility explains the vast majority of the decline in Russia’s GDP and import demand, with very little left to be explained by sanctions or other factors. Thus either sanctions had only a small negative effect on these variables or other positive factors largely cancelled out the effect of sanctions.” The real losers, they add, of the combination of sanctions and...

"In general, our key task for the next few years is a significant raise of the citizens' real income. And there is a good foundation for that now. The economy has grown more stable, it has handled the sharp fall of oil prices, attempts to put pressure via sanctions, the changes of the global political settings," the president said, as quoted in the press release of the Kremlin, issued Monday. Sputnik International Putin Names Key Task for Russian Government in Coming Years

Health care and infrastructure.  How to pay for it? "We'll figure that out later." So much for affordability versus the common good and general welfare. Russia takes a cue from China?Fort Russ‘Oligarch’? Putin decrees a massive budget-doubling of socialized healthcare Joaquin Flores

As a long-term columnist at the NYT, Thomas Friedman apparently never feels the need to know anything about the topics on which he writes. This explains his sarcastic speculation that Putin could be a CIA agent, since he has done so much to hurt Russia.For all his authoritarian tendencies, it is likely that most Russians think primarily about Putin’s impact on the economy, just as is typically the case among voters in the United States. On that front, Putin has a very good record....

Not just about the impending Russian election. It's a brief summary of most of what's important going on in Russia, none of which the Western media will touch.Asia TimesIt’s all Putin’s fault… but still he wins Pepe Escobar

I would estimate that there is a certain amount of truth to this, but the author is looking at Russia through American eyes and seeing Russia replicate the US defense industry and military Keynesianism as integral to the US economy. At the same time, as the author points out, militaries and defense industries in all countries are looking to enhance their interests, which are served by larger appropriations. On the other hand, as the author also admits, the Russian military is need of...