1/ Russian horse breeders are reporting booming sales due to the ongoing fuel crisis. Despite the expenses of owning a horse, they are now cheaper to maintain than constantly refuelling an SUV. ⬇️
"About a thousand horses were saved from slaughterhouses in Russia due to the rise in gasoline prices."
3/ "Villagers are increasingly buying four-legged animals instead of off-road vehicles - it's cheaper to get around off-road, go to the forest, mow hay, and engage in farming.
4/ "Breeders told Mash that sales have skyrocketed. In the last month alone, some have sold or reserved seven or eight horses, whereas previously, one could wait two or three months for an owner.
5/ "The reason is simple: keeping an animal in many villages turned out to be cheaper than constantly refueling off-road vehicles like the UAZ or "Niva". A working horse now costs 100-200,000 rubles [$1,300-$2,600] – depending on age, breed, and training.
6/ "There are also expenses: hooves are trimmed approximately every six weeks (~3,000 rubles), horseshoes are changed every two months for a thousand rubles, hay (2,000–3,000 rubles), supplements (~5,000 rubles), and veterinary care (~6,000 rubles/year).
7/ "But for many rural residents, even with these expenses, a horse has turned out to be more affordable than a car."
1/ Russia has doubled the rate of personal income tax to cover the budget deficits caused by the war in Ukraine. However, as a gloomy Russian commentary notes, it's likely to have dire effects on the economy and the country's already declining demographics. ⬇️
2/ 'Political Report' writes:
"In 2025, Russian authorities doubled personal income tax collection at rates exceeding 13%, turning citizens' incomes and savings into one of the fastest-growing sources of budget deficit financing."
3/ "The federal treasury received 763 billion rubles [$9.72 bn], up from 339 billion rubles [$4.32 bn] the previous year.
1/ Gas prices were lowered, restrictions were lifted, and queues vanished temporarily for a visit to Irkutsk by Vladimir Putin. Russians are calling it a modern-day Potemkin village, but it appears to show how hard Putin's underlings try to hide Russia's problems from him. ⬇️
2/ The original Potemkin villages were said to be fakeside river towns built by Grigory Potemkin to fool Empress Catherine the Great in 1787 (though it appears to be a myth). However, it was an attempt to fake success, rather than hiding failure from a leader inhabiting a bubble.
3/ The Russian Telegram channel 'Honesty, and that's final' reports on unusual events that happened during Putin's recent visit to the western Siberian city of Irkutsk:
1/ Russia isn't winning in Ukraine and it's all the fault of Russian society, says an angry Russian warblogger. Seeking an explanation for why (in the eyes of warbloggers) Russia has not yet started "fighting for real", he blames ordinary Russians for apathy and cowardice. ⬇️
2/ Russian society has been massively atomised under the rule of Vladimir Putin, with the near-destruction of most civil society organisations (apart from a limited number approved of or tolerated by the state). Passive subservience is welcomed; collective action is discouraged.
3/ This nuance seems to have passed by the author of the 'It's Time To Go Home ZOV' Telegram channel, who thinks that his fellow citizens, rather than the oppressive regime they live under, are to blame for the current situation:
1/ Wildberries sellers are generally blaming the Russian government, rather than Ukraine, for their losses. It's an interesting and striking dynamic, which Russian warbloggers say the Russian government itself has created through its suppression of bad news. ⬇️
2/ Over the last couple of weeks, Russian social media has been flooded with videos of distraught Wildberries sellers weeping over their huge losses as a result of Ukrainian drone strikes against warehouses across Russia.
3/ Tens to hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses have lost much if not all of their stock, with total financial losses just from inventory alone already reckoned to be in the billions of dollars. Ukraine, however, has received surprisingly little blame.
1/ A rare Russian armoured assault on 22 June ended in disaster, with the loss of numerous vehicles and the reported deaths of scores of Russians. Russian warbloggers are scathing about the losses, seeing the attack as incompetent. ⬇️
2/ FT military correspondent Andrey Filatov is highly critical, using a standard euphemism for the Russian army to evade censorship:
3/ "The enemy's video report is all standard fare: analog FPV, fiber optics, Mavics. The new thing is a strike wing approaching a stationary "shed" [turtle tank] All these threats can be worked on, but they're not for the brilliant commanders of the Laotian army...
1/ Vladimir Putin has strongly hinted that Russia should claim the entire eastern half of Ukraine, going far beyond the existing annexation of the Donbas and southern Ukraine. He foresees a future in which western Ukraine is also annexed by its neighbours. ⬇️
2/ In a meeting with sailors in St Petersburg to mark Navy Day today, Putin extensively discussed Russia's historical rights over Ukraine, highlighting in the process his obsession with Russian and Ukrainian history and his dubious reading of it.
3/ He told them that "Ukraine has always been divided into Left-Bank and Right-Bank. Left-Bank Ukraine has always been considered not just Russia-oriented, but part of Russia."