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Prune60 Profile picture
@Prune602
Jun 27 • 355 tweets • >60 min read • Read on X
‼️ Russian Bonds & Other Bad Economic News Thread.

I have a feeling this is going to be long, so you might want to bookmark this.

Also some history? Image
First, I recommend you read the previous information. Follow the links to associated thread
And this too.
Expect this thread to continue until I say it’s done. I’m going to have to do it a bit at a time.

And, well this happened.
If you’re new to these threads, WELCOME. I need to prepare you for a few facts.

1. Russia hides a lot information
2. When it’s bad news they’re more likely to hide information
3. They also like to “wag the dog” so you can assume that their statistics mean what you think
4. Everything in this thread
5. I am not an economist, I am an engineer, but I one of the few people putting this data out there, with sources, and I’m honest.

6. I don’t have all the answers and I’m always learning, and sometimes, I’m just going to have to give you the data and tell you I have questions.
7. The difficulty in understanding or even finding some data is a feature, not a bug. It is a bad sign.
So I wanted to just explain what happened with the bond sales & move on, but I fell down the rabbit hole.

So THIS is where we have to start Image
I know Russia wants to say that sanctions don’t work, but they hurt Russia even if they evade them, because things often

- Get more expensive
- Talk longer
- lower quality

The price increase is standard.
They’ll say it doesn’t hurt, but really it’s this ⤵️
And they’ll also complain that it’s the worst thing ever, without acknowledging that it is a NONVIOLENT METHOD to try to get Russia to change its behavior.

They’re being grounded instead of spanked. And they continue to rack up more punishments the longer they continue.
They never discuss what the alternative to sanctions are 🙃

And the troll brigade like to argue one narrow topic and try to avoid the big picture. Which is what we going to look at.
I wrote this thread that helps explain how some of this critical thinking goes astray.
These sanctions have been building up, and things have been getting more expensive, thus the government has been having to spend more.

There are a few big dividing lines in time you need keep in mind
1. In the beginning, Russia was running on equipment and components that it had stockpiled and ASSUMPTIONS of what they had stockpiled

They had prepared for this confrontation somewhat, but they forgot that other people do what they do, and corruption is everywhere.
See, before they invaded Ukraine, they didn’t tell a lot of people they should have. And therefore, no one confirmed there was a lot of stuff missing! Because a lot of people IN RUSSIA didn’t think Russia would invade Ukraine.
There was a plan, an awful evil plan, but it’s like it was put together by simpletons. 🤔 That just worked it out on paper but never audited or investigated anything. Maybe because they never thought it would ACTUALLY happen.
I recommend reading this document they gives details about what the plans were:



From multiple pieces of evidence it appears that they took their data from the Chechen wars and proportionally expanded to Ukraines population. static.rusi.org/202303-SR-Unco…
Image
There’s a reason why every time Ukraine would liberate occupied territory that you would see the same thing: Torture Chambers

Because that was part of Russia’s plan, along with who would need to be immediately liquidated.
I recommend giving it a read. The number 2 million dead Ukrainians keeps coming up, which to me suggests that was the plan. Then to use the conquered Ukrainians

- To fix their demographic problems
- For labor
- As their mobilization resource to attack NATO next.
2 million dead Ukrainians
Chechnya
Mobilization resource
So you can see the supporting evidence they had a plan. And they were trying to get the 8% collaborators they felt they needed for the invasion.

One of the failures was a lot of the collaborators they THOUGHT they had, turned on them, or were always double agents.
Now the terrifying thing is that in a lot of the occupied territories where they DID secure 8% collaborators…it seemed to work. That all it takes us 8% is terrifying.

Plus the torture. But there are a lot of partisans that are just waiting for their moment.
But back to this thing having an evil plan…but not necessarily a well prepared plan.

This again goes back to it being something that it appears works on paper, by maybe people who didn’t have the knowledge of what exactly was the reality.
So this is what happened to A LOT of the Russian military & military equipment in the beginning of the war
Seriously, that thread explains so much about what happened to a lot of Russian military equipment. The Russians had a LOT of equipment. But a combination of that 👆 and all of the equipment that only existed/or was operational on paper meant things went downhill fast.
It’s also worth pointing out that a lot of the Ukrainian military studied with the Russian military but were also getting training from western sources. The Ukrainians knew what the Russian weaknesses are, and they used it against them.
A couple favorite examples are the Ukrainians buying stolen tank engines from corrupt Russians. Therefore both

- providing themselves with spare parts
- disabling a Russian tank

Without a single shot fired.
Also when Ukraine bought ALL the racing drone parts from China. ALL OF THEM, so the parts weren’t available for Russia to buy.

🤣
The next thing was ammunition. Russia was supposed to have unlimited artillery ammunition. And the HIMARS weren’t supposed to be a game changer…

Have you seen the wait list to buy a HIMARS now?
So Ukraine started blowing up ammunition depots. And they kept doing. And tankies kept saying it was fake news & that Russia STRONG! And that they were NEVER running out of missiles etc.

But then they did.
2. The next phase: Russia can no longer rely on their stockpiles, which is money they already spent previously and stuff they got from the Soviet Era.

NOW they have to start manufacturing new stuff or buy it from someone else. And evading sanctions is expensive!
This is a big shift that tankies seem to ignore happening.

🇷🇺: WE NEVER RAN OUT OF AMMUNITION OR MISSILES! IT’S ALL WESTERN LIES.

But they are importing Shahed drones from Iran and ammunition from North Korea
We’ve seen the dates on missiles Russia has used as being newer. These are funds that had to INVEST to manufacturing after exhausting old stockpiles.

They build a drone factory, again that costs money. NEW MONEY.

That’s in addition to all the other increases in costs.
Evading sanctions is not cheap. Look at how much more expensive things got. And remember that companies like Aeroflot are mainly owned by the Russian state. That means the these costs hurt governments income.
And these sanctions packages keep rolling out.

- EU
- US
- Japan
- Australia
- New Zealand
- etc

Rinse & repeat it builds up

🇷🇺: IT’S ONLY MAKING ME STRONGER! (😭)
Note: I did warn you before 😂

They keep walking into the trap
But then the U.S. took it to

THE
NEXT
LEVEL
3. The NEXT Phase

At the end of 2023 the U.S. put out the threat of SECONDARY SANCTIONS. And the US treasury department started having little meetings with foreign banks, and whatever they said must have been TERRIFYING
Because the payments began to stop
Even transactions that were “allowed” were severely slowed down because bank REALLY wanted to make sure they had ALL the paperwork to PROVE they weren’t breaking the rules before continuing the transaction.

Probably because they knew how Russia is.
Also maybe because of whatever they were shown in those meetings.

At a certain point, people/countries access the risk and see that Russia just isn’t worth it. It’s not worth jump through hoops. It’s not worth risking a ton of your business for the fraction of Russia.
🫠
This is an oversimplification, because there are a lot more way that Russia has shot itself in the foot. But in general terms, these a 3 big phases to keep in mind when considering Russia’s economy
3 Main Phases

1. When Russia was using stuff it already had
2. When Russia had to start spending money to build or purchase new stuff
3. When their revenue and ability to carry out transactions was severely cut off.
Obligatory:
Here’s a hard truth:

Idiots think someone like Rambo what will win a war. Alpha Male cr*p…etc

You should fear the people who prioritize logistics & stan the US Treasury department.

(Imagine if I didn’t use my powers for good)
And that’s nothing against anyone who serves in the military. They too understand the importance of logistics. (Or they should)
Remember, the secondary sanctions threat didn’t really come into play until 2024.

So that’s a dividing line to keep in mind. Anything from 2023 doesn’t include that surprise. And it’s really beginning to hurt.
And you’re going to see what a problem it is.
Time out: Did you see how many people complained about the Moscow Times automatically, EVEN THOUGH I gave a second source?

It’s like an automatic thing they’re assigned to say. Also they sort of prove that there’s no free media in Russia?
🇷🇺: I banned them because I control all the media and independent doesn’t exist here. If I don’t like you I’ll declare you a foreign agent.

🤡: You should listen to that site because they’re a foreign agent in AMSTERDAM!
💁‍♀️: They had to leave or else they would be jailed. Also I gave another source just for this reason

🤡: You’re a [insert insults] FAKE NEWS!!!!

🤦‍♀️: *sigh*
What you’ll notice the Russian Central Bank was worried about, was they wouldn’t be able to find a way around these payment problems.

Secondary Sanctions are painful!
To be continued…(the thread isn’t over yet)
I’m back! Like I said, I’ll be doing a little bit at a time. So here we go!
Also, during the break…

Solovyov is still mad that he lost his Italian villas 😂
I told you that earlier that Russia likes to “wag the dog” but also…I feel like there could be a whole branch of forensic accounting dedicated to the kinds of stuff Russia does.

There’s a reason this job exists

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensic_…
So in the first year of the war we started seeing pressure for oligarchs to pay for troops. On top of this there were a ton of PMCs that popped up
There were several ESTABLISHED PMCs before this kicked off besides Wagner, but this began an era of like…vanity PMCs?

It got to the point where Prigozhin was concerned about it. Gazprom had a couple and they were pressuring employees to join.
Which also can we point out how quick Russia went from:

👉 We aren’t connected to Wagner

To

👉 We are totally in charge of Wagner
Why do people seem to forget Putin does this stuff?
Also, there the time they were looking for a corporate sponsor for a Russian Navy Nuclear Heavy Missile Cruiser
You need to be prepared for Russia’s VERY creative accounting. Criminal even!

Some of these structures do go back and ding the government eventually. For example Gazprom, if they’re funding a PMC, most of that money is tied back to the Federal Government umbrella
Because Gazprom is mostly owned by the government. But that doesn’t mean that it’s going to be clear that losses from
Gazprom are caused by them funding a PMC.
Here is thread covering some of the different PMCs and there is some interesting data on the Gazprom PMCs for example
And now there is a shortage of labor in oil and gas.

I know…shocking, after they LITERALLY pressured their employees to join the company PMC
I’m not sure where to put this, but it’s important to point out again, that they’re burning SOOOOO many bridges with the international business community.

It’s not just sanctions cutting them off, it their business decisions. People are CHOOSING not to work with them.
And, it annoys me, so I’m going to bring it up. Pro-Russian people will try to say things like:

DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY NATURAL RESOURCES RUSSIA HAS?

Then why is Russia so bad off? The problem is staring you in the face!
If your logistics are bad and you don’t have enough labor then it doesn’t matter how many natural resources you have!

You still need to get it to market AND find a buyer.
This is another one:

RUSSIA ACTUALLY MAKES STUFF UNLIKE THE UNITED STATES!

The U.S. makes things, complex things. We also are a major food producer. We also have some the best educational institutions in the world.

Russia…couldn’t package milk
They are dependent on other countries for poultry
Metallurgy
Those foreign companies that some Russians got to buy for a bargain? They’re going to start going on the market because they can’t meet required metrics.

They cannot run them as well as the foreign companies.
So a lot of the stuff the trolls yell is just noise. Russia really does struggle to manufacture basic things. And there is a labor shortage EVERYWHERE.
Once again, I want to reinforce that you have to watch the BIG PICTURE. Because of these mysterious accounting practices, and the fact that they’re hiding things in weird places.
Another thing to point out is there are also way the companies are sort of paying an invisible tax?

Because the value of the ruble kept slipping, the government forces companies a large part of their foreign exchange earnings. This artificially propped up the Ruble value.
These are costs the company would not had to incur if it weren’t for this requirement, and fees were high, like 6% or more.

That doesn’t show up on a tax bill anywhere but it does help the evaluations look nice in certain accounts that were presented in USD right?
So when you see things like this, where there are revaluations, and they’re presenting things in USD, but they are also manipulating the exchange rate through forced currency sales…

Can you see how murky this all gets?
Which is why I started doing this👇 so you could see the liquid assets in their for actual form, NOT their estimated equivalent value.

And the result was that the liquid assets were getting smaller every month. And then they stopped letting me see the website. 🤨
Feel free to try the link yourself and see if you can get through.
I put this together that went back a bit further. You can see by towards the end of 2023 how the gold dropped SIGNIFICANTLY.
So in 2023 I think it’s fair to say we’ve definitely moved into stage 2👇 and the government can no longer just rely on the stockpiles anymore.
It was reported that in November 2022, Wagner had taken delivery of equipment from North Korea.
The US had assessed that in December 2022 that Russia would run out of the “good stuff” as far as artillery ammunition in early 2023 if they continued the way they were.

(Note: Russia was often firing on their own positions because they were adequately trained)
The reports from Russians on the ground were that they best ammunition was the older (but not expired) ammunition. The newer stuff that Russia was manufacturing had defects, and the older stuff was expired.

That was before the North Korean stuff showed up. 😬
The Iranian drones showed up in 2022. And it became a big weird thing for everyone to pretend they both were & we’re NOT getting drones from Iran.

It was very clear they were getting drones from Iran
So I think it is clear that 2023 was definitely in Phase 2
Also remember that a TON of Russians left, especially when the mobilization happened.

I will warn you that I have looked at estimates of how many people have left Russia, and the estimates vary WILDLY!
I’ve come to the conclusion that no one REALLY knows how many people have left Russia, but they all agree that it was A LOT!

(There are a variety of methods for them to do this like visa stays in certain border countries)
To be continued…(the thread isn’t over yet!)
I’m back! So we’re talking about the transition into 2023.
Prigozhin is running around causing drama. This is the end of 2022
This is a finely crafted joke that I’m still proud of Image
Here he is
I also recommend you watch this video from January 2023. It gives an interesting snap shot of what they planned for Ukraine, their feelings on North Korea, and what their actual manufacturing capabilities are like.
Russian propagandists have had to try to change the narrative from

👉 At least we’re not North Korea

To

👉 😅 North Korea is great and they’ll save us!
People sometimes think I might be exaggerating, but I’m not. Like I said, I’m honest
We had all the prison recruits, and the meat waves while Prigozhin and Wagner attacked Bakhmut.

You’d see video of Russians that only have a few bullets in their pockets. Ammunition was a real problem for Russia.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of…
As more and more problems were exposed on the Russian side, you’d see a lot of Russian propagandists adopt a strategy of:

There’s a problem, we should address it so it gets fixed, and it we bring attention to it

- We control the narrative
- It might actually get fixed
And at the time, even when no one else could protest, people who were protesting FOR WAGNER were allowed.

People figured that this was fine! They were pro-war! So it should be allowed.

And it was, for a while
So you would see people like Prigozhin, Solovyov, Igor Girkin, & Kadyrov spouting off.

Prigozhin & Solovyov hated Girkin and Girkin hated them back.

And in all of this fighting, I don’t think they thought things through.
I keep saying this: Kadyrov is SMARTER THAN PEOPLE THINK.

I would Kadyrov, like Lukashenko, are survivors. And they did not get themselves into the position that Girkin & Prigozhin did.
It’s not easy being a brutal dictator while also appearing goofy enough that you’re not seen as a threat to Putin.
Seriously though, the infighting
lol
😂
Took a swing at Putin
Igor Girkin is an awful human being, but I’ll admit, I miss the infighting.
It’s great because all the people that are infighting are horrible people.
Until suddenly they realized that all of this was making Putin look bad. And that’s who Putin REALLY cares about

👉 PUTIN

So the “SHUT UP!” Campaign started. They weren’t focused on fixing the problems, but rather covering them up.
Here you can see the effects of the “SHUT UP!” Campaign
So there are a few things with this plan. Some of it was to protect Putin, but some of it was also used to help military commanders to cover up what THEY were doing.

See, corruption and lie are in every level.
There was (still is) a campaign against the unapproved military bloggers that expose what is actually going on.

And, if you share any information about reality that makes Russia look bad, you get in trouble for “discrediting the military” or “spreading fakes”
You can even get into situations like this 👇
None of this suggests that problems are getting fixed.

It is worth noting that while all kinds of budgets are getting cut in Russia, the propaganda wing is well funded.
People like Solovyov have a ton of airtime to fill. With all his tv shows and radio programs, it’s a lot.

And he was give warning to stop pointing out the problems in the war.

So how do you fill the airtime as the list of approved topics gets smaller?
The long pauses got even longer. Solovyov decided to avoid talking about what is happening at the front all together.

He became extra religious while inciting genocide. And he’d fall into the same default messages over & over again.
Also speeches about the glorious (fictitious) past, spending increasingly significant time yelling at people on telegram, sometimes he tries to sell it with gravitas…but it still sounds ridiculous?
The best Russia can really come up with as good news is if something bad happens to someone else. Or if they insult someone.

In the whole as far as TANGIBLE good news…not much of anything. A lot of unfulfilled promises, but that’s it.
Russia did work on beginning to increase their military industrial base because they had begun to exhaust their stockpiles.

But that has costs

- It takes up labor
- It costs money

This is on top of importing stuff from Iran & North Korea.
There is a LOT of stuff that Russia doesn’t make, so they have to import components for many of the things that they DO make.

This is where the sanctions battle was being fought. We’d up a road block, they’d have to stop & find a way to work around it.
This slowed them down AND increased Russia’s costs.

You can see how this can compound. So you go from having

👉 minimal costs, because you had huge stockpiles

To

👉 Exponentially increasing costs
They built a drone factory in Tatarstan and staffed it with children.
They keep lower the working age. They want to get 14 year olds working full time, and *maybe* taking classes at night.

RUSSIA’S FUTURE EVERYONE
And remember, this increasing low “historical low” unemployment numbers include teenagers in the calculations
They’re trying to get the pensioners to work.
Russians are realizing that they now have some power because of the huge numbers of open jobs.

You’ll see business publications where businesses will moan that the era of cheap labor is over. They aren’t happy about it.

On the flip side…
Due to Russia being Russia, the mobilization was carried out is some of dumbest ways possible.

Highly skilled personnel that were vital to Russia’s success were dragged out of a company mobilized and through into a meat assault.

Often because quotas had to be filled
There are certain special classes of people that aren’t supposed to be mobilized. They should be deferred. But, your employer would be responsible for making sure that didn’t happen.

So it did give companies a certain amount of power over the employees.
Companies would then complain that even if they offered better pay, they couldn’t attract certain employees.

If you were in a GOOD situation with your employer where you felt protected, why would you leave?
Meanwhile…

Russia was tried to used energy blackmail and propaganda to get Europe to cave. Europe really only needed enough time to get through the 2022-2023 winter. Then they would be fine to cut off gas from Russia.

And they had hoped to import energy from Ukraine.
Here you can see a link to the discussion. Europe just needed to get the LNG ports set up. And all the nuclear power plants would help reduce the need for gas from Russia.
Early in the war, Ukraine did the amazing thing of cutting itself off from the Russian/Belarus power grid and synchronizing to European one.

Because of the way it’s set up they moved Moldova with them at the same time.
The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is the largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and one of the 10 largest in the world.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhz…
This entire war, energy has been used as a weapon. You can see how for Russia it would be a priority to take control of that power plant.

They would like to have the power for themselves, but if not, the next best thing would be to shut it down.
So if you want a motive to why Russia would stage provocations and make it look like the best thing that could be done is for it to be shut down for safety, there it is.

They had a motive, a big one.
But, their big gamble with Europe failed. They made it through the winter.

But a lot of the things Russia has been doing has increased costs for everyone.
And I still don’t understand why people don’t make that connection. We’re paying more because of Russia. They started all of this.
And these increases in costs are going to come back around and hit them too! You made things more expensive, the some of those things you import from the “evil west” get more expensive too!

That’s just math! I did warn people 👇
And this starts to lead you into paying attention to what EXACTLY caused the problem.

Maybe I pay attention to this stuff because I’m an engineer and failure CAUSES are important. Not all failures are the same.
People will want to assume the every single problem is caused by sanctions or propagandists will blame it on the evil west.

Sometimes it’s just business.
So costs are going up for Russia, income is going down, things are going wrong, problems are being hidden NOT fixed.

Prigozhin is going to lead a rebellion & die.

Labor shortages caused problems. SURPRISE! I warned you the egg shortage was coming way before it did!
Food prices began to skyrocket and by the end of the year Putin had apologize about the Egg situation. They swore that they would fix it but eventually just said Russians would have to live with the new prices.
This lie still blows my mind btw.
This one too 😂
Russia started looking for funds. Like an excess profit tax
This is from March 2023. They’re going back and picking up tax on profits from 2021-22

meduza.io/en/news/2023/0…
Image
And there’s Belousov, the new Minster of Defense, he was in on the plan!

He was also behind the currency sales to prop up the ruble. Image
Putin issued his property seizing decree
2023 was when they really started to burn bridges with the International Business Community.

🤦‍♀️ What’s that saying? When you’re a hammer every problem looks like nail?

Well they think threats and force solve every problem.
Medvedev read old Stalin telegrams to the military industrial base…because that helps?
From the attached article you can see how the government can randomly apply fees at random 👇 see how they were introduced in September 2023?

This started happening everywhere!
Image
If you read the agricultural thread, you’ll see how they began to squeeze farmers in a way that it makes the become unprofitable while still making the precious inflation numbers look ok
The “official” inflation numbers didn’t look great but if they hadn’t been manipulating things, they would have been terrifying to see the reality.

And here is part of the con with Putin’s precious Purchasing Power Parity numbers.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasin…
It what I mean by “wag the dog”

If Russia is doing this creative accounting so the price will fall an item is artificially low, but someone is paying for elsewhere that ISN’T covered in the calculation…well then sure! You can make those numbers look great!
And then they say stuff like this
I’ve tried to point out all the ways the Russian Goverment is looking for revenue.

Because 👇
🚨 WARNING 🚨

Russia will and has hidden how bad things are until they *suddenly* are unveiled.

2 trillion rubles disappeared from the LIQUID ASSETS of the National Welfare fund in a one week of December 2023 & no explanation was given.

LEAVING only 4.7 trillion rubles
And we learned that the deficit was much worse than they were signaling.
That’s not good. 👇 And remember, we’re still just in phase 2!
To be continued…(the thread still isn’t over yet)
I’m back again! Let’s talk about how bad things were for 2023!
These article is from 26 June 2024

“The [🇷🇺] State Duma plans to consider a draft law on the execution of the federal budget for 2023 at a meeting on Wednesday, according to the agenda of the parliamentary meeting.

interfax.ru/business/968084
Image
And Anton Siluanov, Minister of Finance is going to be presenting a document, which we probably won’t be able to get access to…so that’s shady. Image
According to the document for 2023:

budget revenues = 29.124 trillion rubles
expenses = 32.354 trillion rubles
deficit = 3.230 trillion rubles.

‼️ But also

federal budget revenues for 2023 exceeded the projected volume by

👉 2.994 trillion rubles Image
Remember how I just pointed out all the ways the Government started looking desperately for cash? How they started squeezing funds from everyone?

There’s where a lot of the extra budget revenue came from.
It wasn’t the Russian economy doing great, it was the Russian government taxing more (by what ever name you want to call it, tariff, VAT, etc)

And that didn’t even cover the companies that had to eat the cost of currency conversion to prop up the ruble.
Now let’s consider what would have happened if Russia DIDN’T find a way to increase their revenue.

What would the deficit have been if they kept their projected revenue.

👉 6.224 TRILLION RUBLE DEFICIT
Here you can see the discussion about how, they lost money, but it OK because actually the evaluation went up!

But did it? Image
You can read the fine print there on the bottoms left.

The illiquid assets are shown in USD and they’re manipulating the exchange rate.

Also, can we trust how they valuing the illiquid assets?
Meanwhile the actual liquid assets have been getting smaller every month, regardless of how it valued.
“The State Duma Budget Committee in its conclusion draws attention to the fact that the volume of the liquid part of the National Welfare Fund for the period from the beginning of 2022 to the end of 2023. decreased by 3 trillion 441 billion rubles, or 40.7%.”

🍿 Image
And they point out it’s getting more expensive to service the debt. Image
To be continued…(the thread isn’t over yet)
I’m back!

As we move forward, there are going to be some overlap between phase 2 & phase 3 because the problems of phase 2 haven’t gone away (and they won’t)
So we need to discuss what exactly is the trigger for Phase 3
This is the trigger for phase 3

whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…
On 22 December 2023 🇺🇸 President Biden signed an executive order “that strengthens U.S. sanctions authorities against financial facilitators of Russia’s war machine” Image
“The E.O. makes clear to foreign financial institutions that they risk losing access to the U.S. financial system if they facilitate significant transactions relating to Russia’s military industrial base.” Image
THIS is what locked up all the payments ⤵️ Image
So because of all the shadiness before, NOW foreign banks wanted all the paperwork in place to PROVE that it wasn’t breaking the rules.

That significantly slowed things down.

And it’s Russia, so a lot of stuff was shady.
Imagine you’re a business in Russia that is shady (because it’s Russia) but you’re NOT messing with anything related sanctions.

You’re shady but not in a way that’s related to the war. But now you ALSO may fall under this guideline of proving the transaction is legitimate 😂
Good times!

And the US treasury department went on trips and had conversations related to this where they must have showed banks something terrible, because THIS seemed to work.
Boom!
Here is another example
See how the export of goods stopped
Multiple Countries have stopped
Kazakhstan
lol
Lolol
Lololol
Lolololol
Lololololololololol
🇷🇺: What if we try bartering?
🇷🇺: QR codes?
They tried a banana scheme…that failed

(Remember the whole Banana war with Ecuador? They burn bridges everywhere they go)
*sigh*. It’s important to realize that Russia likes to fall back of this propaganda that “the Global South” is with them!

Not really?

Much of Russia’s “friends” are actually

- frienemies
- or purely (or mostly) transactional
This is a theme for them. If something looks bad they’ll blame it on someone else. If it looks good, they’ll take credit for it.

If they have shortcomings they’ll say look at what my “friends” have…but that doesn’t mean YOU have it!
They’ll say something like “well China can provide us with [insert item]” or “India is with us”

It doesn’t mean they will.

Remember the peace summit in Switzerland?

They’ll cheer that India didn’t sign on, but what they DON’T point out is that INDIA SHOWED UP.
Which is something Russia didn’t want.

I don’t understand why so many people can understand the classic stereotype of how hard it is to figure out seating arrangements at a wedding, but then want to simplify countries into 2 teams.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyway, back to the payment problems!

Is it possible that Russia will find a way to work around this?

👉 maybe

I assume they will figure something out at least a small scale. BUT

- Can they do it fast enough?
- Can they do it big enough?
BTW…while all this is happening the Ukrainians are hitting the Russian refineries with Drones and the Russians have shown that they are unable to protect them.
And much of the stuff Russia claimed about how great their military equipment is has fallen flat.

China roasting Russia over the “hypersonics” and other equipment is still on of my favorite things EVER!
Even if you wanted to argue the Russian military equipment good or “not that bad” Russia still can’t DELIVER it. Several countries are still waiting on equipment they ordered.

India wasn’t even sure they could get spare parts!
Russia has now dropped behind France in terms of arms exports.
Now this presents several problems for Russia:

1. They lose the income from weapons sales and thus investments to develop new weaponry.

This is a long term loss. I’ve send assessments that suggest that without outside sales they do not have enough funds for development
It could be a long term killer of the industry

2. They lose the political influence that the weaponry may provide. Remember that there are several way that the producer of weapons can have influence on what is done with them
3. Like with the hypersonic missiles, Russia has lost credibility concerning what capabilities they actually have. If no one believes you, they you can’t use it as a bargaining chip.
So if you’re a country like China and Russia is asking you to accept the EVEN RISKIER sanctions risk to continue to provide sanctioned goods to Russia, what do you have to offer them?

Has Russia already promised them something but China found out it was a lemon?
In order to accept the significant risk, that means a significant cost. That’s just how it works.

But at a certain point…it’s just not worth it anymore.
With China, there just a tidbit I want to throw in here. No one knows exactly how they would handle an ACTUAL fight.

But it’s worth remembering that:

- We have seen the population protest before
- You can’t assume how the population will respond to an action like Russia’s
While they DO have a huge population, you cannot overlook the effects of the one child policy.

A single death could kill off an entire bloodline.

Just something to consider.
Another thing to address: RUSSIA using Gold, gems, etc to carry out transactions either from their own mines OR stolen from Africa.

Is this likely happening? YES

BUT…it’s been happening for a while and it hasn’t solved their problems on paper
I told you that Russia used creative accounting. And we’d have to look at the overall trend. If they’re doing it, it’s not helping enough.

Is it possible that they could increase that somehow? 🤔 maybe…but why wouldn’t they have done it already?
So now we need to talk about a loop of destruction that Russia finds itself in.

This same function keeps repeating in multiple ways. And they appear to learn nothing
Let’s start with the old failures haunting them.

1. Russian Railroads: what a mess. They eliminated their maintenance department years ago, can’t keep up with the maintenance, didn’t replace old trains in a timely manner. They didn’t expand the network.
The end result is an overextended railway where no one seems to actually know the full capacity but due of continually reducing locomotives availability…it’s getting smaller everyday.

The railway is Russia’s backbone. They do not have good road network to replace it.
No one seems to have taken into account that lack of transport might be a limiting factor to GROWTH!

Therefore the loss of a Russian Railways locomotive could directly reduce Russia’s GDP. And everyone will be surprised when it does.
2. The labor shortage 🤦‍♀️ I told you about that here. And I have been yelling about it for months & months
Here is a thread that is an example of this. Don’t trust in Russia’s predictions of growth.
They’re still doing it
3. Infrastructure: After threatening to freeze Europe, this past winter was mild for Europe but devastating to Russia. A lot of Russians were cold because Russia didn’t invest in infrastructure for years!

And they probably won’t again!

Thread here ⤵️
4. Burning bridges with the International Community.

Russia didn’t want foreign companies to leave Russia. So they decided to make it VERY PAINFUL to leave. In order to exit Russia you had to sell for at LEAST a 50% discount of the assets value (something they determined)…
AND you had to pay an EXIT TAX directly to the Federal Government. Plus you had your get approval to leave.

The longer people waited, the worse it got.

It went from THE BEST a company could hope for, was to leave with 45% of their assets value to most recently 35%
And even then it was possible that Russia could just seize it with his property seizing decree.

By the way (see this thread) I was surprised to learn Dmitry Patrushev, who was at the time the Minister of Agriculture, was dealing with the Danone & Carlsberg seizures.
Now I went into detail about this here. In some cases it did work, and companies stayed. But would you invest in capital you had outside of Russia into these businesses if they could just be seized? Or you could only take 35% of the value when you left?
If you just got burned leaving Russia and last 65% or more of your assets value would you be willing to go back? Would you be interested in helping the new buyer?

How about the risk to your intellectual property?
And they keep making things worse.

Under this same topic, we can talk about what happened with seeds, where countries wouldn’t take their phone calls.
And the mistakes of the Banana war with Ecuador, and that they’re getting ready to repeat AGAIN
Oh also, they’re still messing with stuff. The FAS will show up and pressure you if they don’t like your price increases.

They will drive these companies that stayed to bankruptcy
The FAS will also show up and threaten you if you tell people that prices are going up

(This is AFTER they banned foreign analytical companies)
5. Russia burns bridges with the RUSSIAN business community. The nationalizations were a BAD idea.
Putin gave a speech in April and basically said, don’t worry about nationalizations…but if we do it, IT’S JUSTIFIED!
Nobody clapped for Putin, no one believed him.

And sure enough, a ton more nationalizations happen. IN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE. They want to turn a profit from the property they stole.
In this scenario, do you think anyone is going to want buy these properties that Russia might just steal back?

What about invest capital into businesses, the government might seize?
Remember all those foreign businesses that Russians got to buy at bargain basement prices?

Well people are going to start selling them. For a variety of reasons
They are finding that they can’t run the as well has the previous owners, thus can’t meet Key Performance Indicators outlined in the sale.

I have a feeling that there are probably projections of how great growth will be in Russia based on these KPI metrics and…
…they’re just going to be shocked with those projections are very wrong.

The other reason they want to sell is that they’re afraid it will be nationalized and they’ll lose their money.

None of this is likely to result in improvement in production.
And like I said, they don’t seem to be listening to Elvira anymore…
Are you seeing signs of economic growth in the future with any of this?

I’m not sure that advertising on a Rocket is bringing in much revenue
To be continued…(the threads not over yet)
I’m back!

I’m writing this as I go and I’m trying to keep this in a logical order…but I’m only human and I’m doing it in my spare time so it’s probably not going to be perfect as far as organization.

At least it’s free 😊
There are a few extra things to add to the list that…sort of qualify.

6. Just like Putin telling Russians not to worry about Nationalizations, Russia tries to tell “friendly countries” not to worry about anything happening to them.

They don’t believe Russia either.
For example the recycling fee (another one if these things I call a tax by another name)
Russia will put this on goods because they can’t compete with foreign companies. And they continue to CHANGE the rules to make sure they come out on top!

Without recognizing that downside to always changing the rules 👉 wise people walk away.
And remember China & Russia are frenemies! (China walking away might be the worst outcome.)

Tankies and others automatically assume that China will do something for Russia. Why?

Have you seen Russia respect agreements?

Did they protect Armenia?
See this project that the Russian government had to save? They tried to get China to invest in it first. They didn’t.
They know what happens to companies that try to leave. (Sometimes people get thrown in jail)
I don’t know if this ever happened 😂
I’m not sure how much this is playing into things. And I don’t the China is pleased about what the Houthi’s are doing to trade.
According to this new report, Putin was considering giving the Houthis cruise missiles.

So it’s not just that Russia is friends with Iran & the Houthis are related to Iran

👉 it’s a direct connection from Russia to Houthis.

middleeasteye.net/news/us-offici…
Image
Apparently in December, Putin went and asked Saudi Arabia if they could please give the Houthis cruise missiles. Saudi Arabia said NO
Image
Image
As an aside here, Russia keeps violating its OPEC+ agreement AND it’s been selling oil at HUGE discounts to places like China.

How do you think that makes other oil producers feel? To be massively undercut by Russia?
So China is applying pressure to Russia. Great risk requires great reward.
It’s annoying me at the moment that I can’t find the story in the Russian business news about this, but this was reported on there too.
Seeing these 2 fight is kind of fun
🍿🥤
And then, Russian media put out stories like this where they try to…bend the narrative in a way to try to make things not look like a failure?

This…😂…I wouldn’t put much stock in this explanation.

mk.ru/politics/2024/…
And you might wonder why I would pay attention OR point out something I don’t think is true.

Well…

- you should know what is being said, even if it isn’t true
- even when people lie you learn something
7. Russia is an a-hole and is weirdly proud of it. They think it makes them look strong.

When in reality it makes you look disrespectful and/or incompetent.

Just like Putin’s weird thing about making people wait for him for hours.
So look at what Russia did during auctions for HIV medications
Eventually companies are going to say “f*ck this noise, I’m out”

And they were. People don’t want to find a way to make things work.

You can read this thread about how bad healthcare is ⤵️
And you can read here an explanation of why India is unlikely to provide much pharmaceuticals to Russia
This is becoming a problem for concluding contracts where the production facilities are OUTSIDE of Russia.

Which is probably where production facilities should remain if anyone wants to be sure they will continue to own them.
8. Russia often gives people jobs based on loyalty instead of competence. Sometimes business goes wrong because they’re idiots and/or they didn’t prepare.

See hilarious example below ⬇️
To be continued…(thread STILL isn’t over yet)
I’m back!

Yes, I know we’ve covered a lot. But I’m actually really trying to simplify things. This is the streamlined version!
The next thing that went wrong for Russia

👉 Mother Nature

Some of this stuff was not Russia’s fault, just a fluke thing…but because it’s Russia, everything is also worse that it should have been.

It shouldn’t have been THIS bad
Russia had a once in century late freeze.

Basically it was warmer that usual for awhile so everything started to bloom & sprout

Then in May there was a deep freeze that killed a ton of things
When you think about how bad that is, it would be logical to expect food prices to increase.

But if you put that in writing the FAS will come around and give you a warning!
If you’ve read the agricultural thread you’ll know that a lot of the farmers were barely surviving even with all the record harvests they were having. Why?

Well remember in phase 2 when Russian government needed to find revenue? Look at who they took it from!
The price fertilizers also skyrocketed, and in order stay afloat, the farmers stopped using them
And guess what happens if you don’t have a fertilizer and/or crop rotation program…
So now the crops aren’t doing so well. And there’s also drought conditions.

Oh and the dam in Ukraine that RUSSIA CLEARLY BLEW UP is also causing drought issues in Ukraine.
And the predicted harvest numbers for Russia continue to go down, even as the government tries to hide it.
Here is an example of what we dealing with:

Russia lost a lot of apples from the frost. And unlike grain which they replanted, you can replant apples trees and expect to fix the harvest.
But Russia has this “genius” in charge
He told the new Minister of Agriculture to figure out how to import apples WITHOUT raising prices.

I want you to think about that for a minute. Of course he doesn’t want for this to mess up his precious inflation numbers. So there’s going to probably be a trick here.
So they might get them from North Korea…probably in exchange for livestock and dairy products.
Forecasts say that exports are going to be significantly lower than last year.
Things are bad, and getting worse. Oh also there is a fear because some of the stuff that was replanted so late that it may freeze before it can be harvested so it will be lost again.

YUP! Bad
Oh on top of the Frosts, and the drought, there’s also FLOODS!

Significant flooding occurred in Kazakhstan and in the regions of Russia north of Kazakhstan.

The government didn’t really help, things were worse because, due to corruption the levees to hold back water failed.
Here’s a huge thread from when it was happening. If you see them talking about a dam…think levee instead of dam.

But people were really mad, a lot of houses were destroyed, people lost everything. And the government basically did nothing much.
Agriculture was also hurt here
There was flooding in multiple other regions too but those were separate events. But those still cost money

So, Frost, Drought, Floods, what else?
FOREST FIRES! They don’t have enough people to manage the forests or fight forest fires!
Doesn’t this look fun! 😅
Meanwhile on Russian State Media:
All of this should indicate that in PHASE 3 a significant amount of trade and income has been CUT OFF

- because if the secondary sanctions threat
- and because things aren’t going well

In addition expenses are going UP

- because of ALL THE THINGS!
A lot of people don’t see the Russian economy as having trouble because they look at the GDP numbers without understanding the caveat.

See how Russia has pretty much blown the Budget by February?

That’s because of all the government spending at the beginning of the year.
I wrote a thread warning people of how this would turn out.
People then read the GDP is 7.7% without realizing the way the spending works and that IT WILL GO DOWN.

Russia would not sustain it.
Look at where it was in May! It’s because they did most of their spending at the beginning of the year.
The economy isn’t getting better. And Russia, in order to fix the increasingly bigger budget holes decided it need to increase taxes again!

The increases government revenues is coming from increases in fees and taxes NOT from Russia’s economy doing better.
This is getting ridiculous
See what I mean…
This guy…
And remember I told you about the problem with fertilizers? Well guess who decided they need to be EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE!

Yup, he’s increasing the taxes on them!
*sigh* let’s all just take a moment to enjoy the fact they made him ride the bus in China.
So…what does this have to do with Bonds you may wonder.

Well, we know the National Welfare Fund is getting depleted. And they need to be able to cover the deficit…which also I have questions about just how much it is.
Remember who much higher it was at the end of last year than expected? So we need to be prepared for that. And there’s only so much you can tax someone. The nationalizations are backfiring and Siluanov already got the deficit increased.
See the Treasury said it was nearly 4 trillion rubles. But then they tried to cover it and say no…it wasn’t that bad, we just hadn’t gotten the tax revenue accounted for.
He’s like: Guess what! It isn’t really 4 trillion, but it has gotten larger by over half a trillion rubles which is a lot considering it was less than 1.5 trillion dollars before this…BUT 2.12 trillion is better than 4 trillion right? 🤗

Can you guys approve this please?
And the Ministry of Economy is wondering if they can increase how much they can spend out of the National Welfare Fund.

And even Finance is like: ARE YOU CRAZY?

We don’t even think they HAVE 6 trillion in liquid assets in the NWF
Meanwhile Putin is approving projects like crazy out the National Welfare Fund. And I guess no one wants the Prigozhin treatment, or to fight with gravity in general…so it gets approved.
Not things like Kindergartens

🇷🇺: Sacrifices have to be made
But a resort in occupied Zaporizhzhia Ukraine that will probably use Ukrainian PoWs as slave labor?

🇷🇺: APPROVED!
So they’ve got to find the money for this. But the key rate is high. For some reason there was this big propaganda campaign suggesting the key rate would go down in the fall.

Which never made sense to me, because LOWERING hadn’t even been an option at any of the RCB meetings
This is a thread that might be helpful, but at the press conference following the last Central Bank meeting even she seemed to be frustrated by it.
She probably tired of being asked that when NONE of the things she said needs to happen for it to lower are happening.

The only thing being discussed is RAISING it. AND NOW the number 20% has begun to enter discussions.
So no one wants to buy bonds at the rates the Russian Federal Government finds acceptable especially if the rate is going to go up. And the Russian government also doesn’t want to SELL bonds at the rates they really need to for people to buy.
Plus, what happens to these bonds if the Russian Government collapses. Do you feel confident that these things are actually going to pay out?
At the beginning of the this long thread I gave you the previous Bond threads to review. I recommend you read them if you haven’t before we continue
To be continued…(the threat STILL ISN’T OVER)
Nope!

kommersant.ru/doc/6793971
Image
How much damage did the worm do? Image
I’m going to throw this video out there again about the future Russia was promising BEFORE the invasion versus where they are now.

If sanctions made them stronger, then tell me why none of this stuff is happening ⤵️
FINALLY we’re going to talk about the bonds. First, I have a ton of sources for this and hopefully I’ve got them all gathered together.

I may not use all of them, because this thread has gotten long 😂. So I’m going to a quick dump of links so you have them if you want them.
(Also so I don’t lose them). Don’t worry I’ll do the normal thing that I do when I talk about them. So you don’t have to follow the links if you don’t want to.








kommersant.ru/doc/6791651
quote.rbc.ru/news/article/6…
interfax.ru/business/968160
moscowtimes.ru/2024/06/26/min…
moscowtimes.ru/2024/06/26/min…










moscowtimes.ru/2024/06/26/obo…
kommersant.ru/doc/6791867
archive.ph/yyzXE
interfax.ru/business/968479
interfax.ru/business/968471
moscowtimes.ru/2024/06/28/min…
See why I think it’s funny when people think I don’t do my homework 😂
As far as I can tell there weren’t any records of any more placements from this previous auction day.

Which meant that going into the last auction day of Q2 they had only placed 444.3 billion rubles worth of their 1 trillion ruble goal for Q2.
Both auctions WERE completed. One was a constant coupon and the other was a floater (variable interest rate).
‼️ OFZ PD-26244 had the highest interest rate since they started taking records in 2015

👉 15.34%

This was constant/permanent coupon bond

*the highest rate so far 😉

kommersant.ru/doc/6791651
Image
Here’s another source that gives you the Series number

They placed
👉 15.9 billion rubles of it

moscowtimes.ru/2024/06/26/min…
Image
One interesting thing to point out

If you’re the Russian government & you think this is a blip moment and the key rate definitely won’t go UP at least not a lot for a SIGNIFICANT amount of time. Which would you rather have

👉 locked in at the high rate
👉 the variable rate
“The emphasis will be on placing long bonds with a constant coupon yield (CC). The press service of the Ministry of Finance explained…that this choice was determined by the government debt repayment schedule & the need to limit the risk of rising debt servicing costs.”

🤨 Image
So they want long term bonds locked in at THESE RECORD HIGH RATES?

what does that tell you?

quote.rbc.ru/news/article/6…
Image
The other placement was the Variable Rate Coupon OFZ-PK 29025

They placed 45.3 billion Rubles of it.

moscowtimes.ru/2024/06/26/min…
Image
That means for Q2:

Goal: 1 Trillion rubles
Actual: 505.5 Billion Rubles

They BARELY met half of their goal.

interfax.ru/business/968160
Image
In Q1 they achieved their goal and placed

👉 804.55 billion Rubles Image
That means that Half the year is over and they have placed

👉 1.31005 Trillion Rubles in OFZ Bonds

🍿 It’s going to get worse.
Also keep in mind that the expenses are going way up & their income is going down.

So their initial predictions they had for setting goals for the year. They might be off 😂. They might have more debt than expected.
In order for the Russian government to cover the repayment of securities on the OTHER bonds they need to secure

👉 1.442 TRILLION rubles

So half the year is over and they haven’t even covered that yet. They need over 130 billion more rubles for that.

interfax.ru/business/968479
Image
Side note: They’re predicting that the costs for covering the debt in 2025 will be over 2 trillion even with moderate loans.

They just placed record breaking ones. So…🙃

moscowtimes.ru/2024/06/26/min…
Image
Back to this though: This is most recent update that DID lower the amount they want to get from OFZs in 2024 to

👉 3.921 trillion rubles Image
That mean by the end of year, unless they change their goal, they need to place

👉 2.61095 trillion rubles

Which is basically DOUBLE what they’ve placed in half a year.

🇷🇺: 😅 What could go wrong?
Their goal for Q3 is 1.5 Trillion Rubles

Which again, is more than they’ve placed in 6 months!

interfax.ru/business/968479
Image
If you empty the National Welfare Fund and you can’t place bonds…what happens next? 😃
More notes:

What is this guy smoking?

moscowtimes.ru/2024/06/26/min…
Image
There are still people who believe the key rate will start to go down soon. I have no idea what facts make them believe that.

kommersant.ru/doc/6791867
Image
And the Central Bank keeps telling them

🇷🇺 🏦: LAY OFF THE LOANS YOU FOOLS!

But nobody’s listening, because Russia keeps telling everyone the economy is going great right?
🍿
I want you to remember the Minister Defense had been in or even championing some of the dumb decisions that led to this mess. Putin was listening to him and the Minister of Finance instead of Elvira. 🙄
Meanwhile, Russia is trying to tell people it’s going to do these amazing things. The sanctions are helping! They’re going to build and develop everything themselves! They’re going to make a video game console, and build new ships without foreign parts…
…they’re going to figure out how to shave those extra 6 tons off the MS-21 that’s already almost a decade late on delivery and be building their own planes! They’re going to develop their own AI and conquer the world! Etc.

That’s why I said this ⤵️
Image
Even if you make adjustments for how GDP is measured and due to their military industrial complex…you can still look at it terms of sheer magnitude of scale.

If I told you that I was going to buy a jumbo jet…you’d think I was crazy! I don’t have money for that! Same thing
And this doesn’t sound so crazy anymore does it?

All the naysayers in the comments seemed to ignore 2 things

1. There were 2 sources
2. It was said by someone at the RUSSIAN CENTRAL BANK!
How is the Russian government going to fix all of this? Can they fix it? How bad are the things they’re hiding?

Even better 👉 HOW WILL THEY MAKE THINGS WORSE?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

- THE END -
@rbukovansky *couldn’t

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More from @Prune602

Prune60 Profile picture
Sep 24
Notice: I was trying to up date my spreadsheets in preparation for tomorrow’s OFZ auction date when I noticed a change to some Russian Central Bank Data that I have started regularly sharing with you.

👉 The banking sector liquidity deficit/surplus
When I started sharing the data, I pointed out that due to “accounting reasons” the surplus liquidity in the Russian Central Bank data is displayed as a negative number.

That hurt my head. It just seemed counterintuitive, so I switched in my chart to a positive number.
In last week’s OFZ thread it was reported to be 391.3 Billion rubles as of 19 September
Read 13 tweets
Prune60 Profile picture
Sep 24
‼️ Russia: “Putin's aide calls for reducing school and university teaching time”

OMG wait until you read the quote. It’s like being completely divorced from reality.

moscowtimes.ru/2024/09/24/pom…
Image
"Time dictates a reduction in the duration of secondary education, the fact that we have 11 years is an unaffordable luxury. As if we were living in the 19th century. It must be compressed"

~ Vladimir Medinsky

The average American gets 13 to 14 years of education BEFORE college Image
That’s Pre-school (more common now), kindergarten, then grades 1-12. With most people graduating from High school at age 17 or 18.

THEN you go to a Trade School, College or University

Note: Margarita keeps lying about the American education system
Read 9 tweets
Prune60 Profile picture
Sep 24
‼️ Russian Elevator Update

“In Russia, about 22 billion rubles are needed to replace elevators in the three-year term, Deputy Chair of the State Duma Committee on Construction and Housing and Utilities Svetlana Razvorotneva told Parlamentskaya Gazeta.”

interfax.ru/business/983248
Image
Previously we discussed this problem.”, here’s the thread.
“"The number of elevators that are not replaced in a timely manner is constantly accumulating. We were supposed to replace all elevators that have reached the end of their service life by 2025, but most likely this deadline will be postponed (...).” Image
Read 15 tweets
Prune60 Profile picture
Sep 23
‼️ The Russian Trucking & Logistics Thread

I read a some new information, looked at some old information, and 😵‍💫 things are very confusing. But one thing is certain, things don’t look great.

Let’s talk about it. Image
I think the best place to start is with what we do know and what we know we don’t know?
1. There is a labor shortage everywhere in Russia

Normally I would modify my statement and say “practically everywhere” and maybe I still will but, I can’t think of a large field without a labor shortage. There are areas that are more dire than others.
Read 152 tweets
Prune60 Profile picture
Sep 23
‼️ Russian Agricultural Update:

“Dry weather in southern Russia could cause the corn harvest to fall by almost 30% year-on-year, making it the worst in six years. This creates new risks of rising grain prices within the country, businesses fear.”

🌽

kommersant.ru/doc/7179825
Image
It’s important to remember that corn is an input for a lot of other industries, which means the increases in costs will be distributed through multiple products.

It’s not just the volume but the quantity also appears to be down.
“The corn harvest in Russia in 2024 will amount to 11.9 million tons, having decreased by 29.5% year-on-year, according to calculations by SovEcon. This is worse than the dynamics of other crops.” Image
Read 27 tweets
Prune60 Profile picture
Sep 22
‼️ THREAD: Dairy problems in Russia?

This might be something to keep an eye on. Last fall we saw eggs become icon of skyrocketing food prices in Russia.

This year it might be Dairy products.
Previously I put together this thread the walked through some of the issues Russia was having with dairy. In particular, remember that the problem with cultures is going to begin coming prevalent.
As I’ve discussed before, Russians are getting all the signals that food prices are getting ready to skyrocket.

The big price decrease due to the harvest coming in that people were expecting/hoping for never materialized.
Read 40 tweets

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