Many argued that Europe can't stop buying Russian oil and gas and thus will continue funding Russian war machine. Well, it seems problem solved itself. Today Putin declared he'll sell Russian gas to unfriendly countries only for rubles
That makes position of those advocating for continuing this import much weaker. Just yesterday if you wanted to continue buying Russian gas you could simply keep status quo, which is easy procedure-wise. But now you'll have to abandon it and make active effort to keep import
Just yesterday those advocating for keeping the gas import from Russia had a high ground in a short term perspective. They could sabotage the efforts of those wanting to stop it while Russia keeps fighting. But now it's the opposite
Now opponents of gas import from Russia absolutely can sabotage the efforts of those who strive to continue it. You simply need to sabotage their every attempt to switch to rubles to pay for Russian gas until Russia loses. Under the EU vetocracy that's certainly a high ground
There is however a problem here. Russian gas continues flowing via Ukraine and Ukraine gets transit fees that help fund its war efforts. Absurd as it may sound, that's reality. Thus new sources of funding must be secured to compensate this loss, so that Ukraine can keep resisting
Russia Today chief Simonyan commented:
"Next step - barter payments with airplanes, high speed trains, whatever we need"
Sounds dumb. But it reflects the weak point of Russian economy: machinery. Russia desperately needs imported machinery and will soon be crumbling without it
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We have successfully documented the entire Russian missiles industry, mapping 28 of its key enterprises. Read our first OSINT sample focusing on the Votkinsk Plant, a major producer of intercontinental ballistic missiles. How does it make weaponry?
The strategic missiles industry appears to be highly secretive and impenetrable to the observers. And yet, it is perfectly OSINTable, based on the publicly available sources. This investigation sample illustrates our approach and methodology (31 p.)
Our first and invaluable source is the state propaganda, such as the federal and regional TV channels, corporate media, social media and so on. It provides abundant visual evidence, particularly on the hardware used in the production of weaponry.
In August 1999, President Yeltsin appointed his FSB Chief Putin as the new Prime Minister. Same day, he named him as the official successor. Yet, there was a problem. To become a president, Putin had to go through elections which he could not win.
He was completely obscure.
Today, Putin is the top rank global celebrity. But in August 1999, nobody knew him. He was just an obscure official of Yeltsin's administration, made a PM by the arbitrary will of the sovereign. This noname clerk had like 2-3% of popular support
Soon, he was to face elections
By the time of Putin's appointment, Russia already had its most favoured candidate. It was Primakov. A former Yeltsin's Prime Minister who broke with Yeltsin to contest for power. The most popular politician in Russia with massive support both in masses and in the establishment.
In Russia, the supreme power has never ever changed as a result of elections. That simply never happened in history. Now that is because Russia is a (non hereditary) monarchy. Consequently, it doesn't have any elections. It has only acclamations of a sitting ruler
Obviously, there has been no elections of Putin in any meaningful sense. There have been only acclamations. And that is normal. His predecessor was successfully acclaimed with an approval rate of about 6%. Once you got the power, you will get your acclamation one way or another
Contrary to the popular opinion, Russia doesn't have any acclamation ("election") problem. It has a transition of power problem. Like Putin can get acclaimed again, and again, and again. But sooner or later, he dies. What next?
My team has documented the entire Russian missile manufacturing base. That is 28 key ballistic, cruise, hypersonic and air defence missile producing plants associated with four corporations of Roscosmos, Almaz-Antey, Tactical Missiles and Rostec
The link is in the first comment
Our report How Does Russia Make Missiles? is already available for download
By the next weekend, we will be publishing the first OSINT sample, illustrating our methodology & approach. The rest of our materials will be made available laterrhodus.com
Key takeaways:
1. Missile production is mostly about machining 2. You cannot produce components of tight precision and convoluted geometry otherwise 3. Soviet missiles industry performed most of its machining manually
That was extremely laborious and skill-intensive process
No one gets famous by accident. If Alexey @Navalny rose as the unalternative leader of Russian opposition, recognised as such both in Moscow and in DC, this indicates he had something that others lacked. Today we will discuss what it was and why it did not suffice 🧵
Let's start with the public image. What was so special about the (mature) @navalny is that his public image represented normality. And by normality I mean first and foremost the American, Hollywood normality
Look at this photo. He represents himself as American politicians do
For an American politician, it is very important to present himself as a good family man (or woman). Exceptions do only corroborate the rule. Notice how McCain defends @BarackObama
Should Putin just suddenly die, @MedvedevRussiaE is the most likely compromise candidate for the supreme political power. He is the inaugurated President for God's sake. Which means, the anointed King.
"Not a real king", "Figurehead", "Nobody takes him seriously" is just intangible verbalism. Nothing of that matters. What matters is that he is the inaugurated President, consecrated by God. Opinions are subjective, anointment is objective
It is the fact
Medvedev may be one single person in the entire Russian establishment with a decent chance to keep power, should Putin go. For this reason, he may not even need to fight for power. The power will very probably be handed to him