In 2022 62% of Russian companies said that there was a lack of alternatives as sources for raw materials and equipment and by 2023 this has decreased by only 9% and 50% of companies had increased costs.

kommersant.ru/doc/6934180 Russian cosmetics company Geltek for example managed to replace their EU packaging with Russian and Belarusian packaging and all their peptides they used but this according to them accounts for 1-2% of the 97% of chemical Russia imported.

I have been thinking about Wellington's infamous letter for the last few weeks when looking at the Russian army. The one where he calls the British common soldier the mere scum of the earth. Russia isn't recruiting troops. It's press ganging prisoners and impressing the dregs of society. If Ukraine recruits prisoners it's recruiting Ukrainians who happen to be in prison. Russia is press ganging violent criminals who happen to be Russian.

Russian imports from China may rise in price by 10% due to issues with deliveries and the costs for Russian importers are growing even more and often reach 30%.

kommersant.ru/doc/6905203 This is due to new requirements by Chinese companies who will only ship to the country from where the payments came and because Russian companies use intermediaries in third countries the logistics become more complicated.

A very long thread on Russian civil aviation but please read it. Some juicy tidbits, Russian planes with domestic parts are worse and twice more expensive than Western ones and can be produced maybe only in single digits.
kommersant.ru/doc/6880281 The nearly 1 000 commercial airliners that are part of the Russian national program for the development of civilian aviation may have to be revised downwards based on what sources in the industry are saying.

The rate at which the volume of cargo turnover at Russian ports decreases is increasing. For the period January - April 2024 the decrease was 4,3% whilst for just Q1 the decrease was 3,3%. The main reasons for this decrease are gasoline and coal shipments

kommersant.ru/doc/6693657 For the first 4 months of 2024 cargo turnover decreased by 4,3% to 288,4 million tons or 12,8 million tons less. Shipment of liquid goods decreased by 5,1% and of dry goods by 3,4%. The decrease was greatest in the Azov-Black Sea basin where shipments were down 7 million tons.

Due to a deficit of blue collar workers Russian companies are forced to raise the salaries by 20% year over year. But this is not enough as such workers are often sought after by the military industrial complex and companies in the occupied territories.

kommersant.ru/doc/6726787 There's a shortage of 2,5 to 5 million blue collar workers in Russia. Some companies lost 70-80% of their workers which were lured to work in the occupied territories where they are immediately offered a new apartment and double their previous salary.

I have issues with the statements that Russia is recruiting 30 000 for the war every month. If we looked at the unemployed statistics for 2022 and 2023 we see a decrease by almost 520 000 in 2022 and 560 000 in 2023. This is for all unemployed ages 15-72 with >50% being women.

We also have population decline in 2023 by 530 000 and pensioners increase by 575 000. Which is the real big reason behind Russia's unemployement decrese. Now those 30 000 predominantly male recruits could be hidden in some growth of labor participation.

Russian gasoline production the week of 1st-7th of April declined again to 754 400 tons and diesel production dropped further than before to 1 585 100 tons. In 2023 during the week of 3rd-9th of April gasoline production was 833 200 tons and diesel production was 1 769 000 tons.

Gasoline prices for Ai-92 rose slightly from 50,62 rubles to 50,67 rubles per liter. For Ai-95 also rose slightly from 55,30 rubles to 55,41 rubles and for Ai-98 prices rose from 68,70 rubles to 68,91 rubles.

Ru business news 01/Apr/2024 part 2:
Ru pharmacies have run out of the oncology medication uromitexane. In 2023 6 900 packages were importer in Ru compared to 56 700 in 2022 and 46 300 in 2021. The generic available in Russia called mesna-lens is also out.
kommersant.ru/doc/6608891 Russia's mobile telecom Tele2 will do a rebranding by the end of 2024 as its license to use the Swedish Tele2 brand expires on December 31st 2024.

kommersant.ru/doc/6609129

We have data on the Ru weekly consumption of gasoline for March, it rose by 13 000 tons per day in March to 794 000 tons a week and currently Ru oil firms are supplying more to the market than they are producing with 13-19 of Mar supply of 779 400 tons.

kommersant.ru/doc/6596233 The Russian oil companies are covering the deficit via an accumulated pool of 1,9 million tons of gasoline as of March 22nd. However a smaller part of that is high octane gasoline due its production being impacted for a while now.

A thread on how Russian aircraft manufacturers are doing when it comes to staffing. It's far from the image being cultivated that everything is running smoothly. Many of these entities shed thousands of workers prior to 2022. Salaries are quite low with lots of offers < 50 000. Tupolev - Kazan
Short 3000 workers to carry out its assigned projects based on the CEO giving an interview in late February 2024.
36 different open positiosn starting from 25 000 roubles

kazan.hh.ru/employer/160690
116.ru/text/transport…

Russian regions with utilities stoppages January 22-28
Yes there's a utilities collapse. Disclaimer:
I have not added sewage break downs if they don't impact drinking water nor snow clearing so poor companies got fined nor municipal transportation breakdowns.
Also this is just a baseline as I am still building my database of local news outlets.

I will do a breakdown of the recent collapse in Russia's winter coping measures and why it happened in 2024 for those who don't follow Russian news. There's a combination of reasons which led to this event. For starters Russian heating utilities often do not do preventative maintenance to replace pipes. That's due to the ownership or management of central heating companies be it private or state owned is a cushy job that you may not keep for a while.

Rostekh has announced a plan to increase bulletproof vests production at its Tula factor Oktava by an order of magnitude, until recently it was producing 2000 units per quarter. 2000 PER QUARTER in 2023.
kommersant.ru/doc/6379545 Revenue of Russian companies was halved for the first half of 2023, yet their profit grew by 31% for the period. Since this is dominated by state companies there likely has been a clamp down on corruption to some extent
kommersant.ru/doc/6379166

Here's what the data I gathered on the more recently missing Russian soldiers says about their age and composition, they're older, they're more likely to be ex-convicts and mobilised men and the intake of young volunteers is remarkably low:



There's a myth going around that there's a steady intake in contractees, but the data doesn't support it. The numbers Medvedev talks about appear to be fictional and training is next to non-existant given the time from signing to being in combat.

Did a tally of the posts where relatives are searching for Russian soldiers who've gone missing on telegram. These posts provide more info than just KIA notices. Will run them through Power BI when I have some more time but here's what's immediately interesting. Units that were thrown in Bakhmut in general or Klesheevka/ Andreevka in particular:

The world's second largest oil producer had to ban gasoline and diesel exports because of domestic shortage.
And everyone saw it coming from a mile away :
kommersant.ru/doc/6162047 But we got to a ban on exports likely because the issue reached Patrushev junior who escalated to Patrushev senior, who has ready access to Putin which forced the Presidential administration to intervene in the least delicate manner possible.
kommersant.ru/doc/6210089

I had anxiety before the offensive regarding Ukraine's chances, I could have missed something or overestimated something else. But I wanted to go through the process of reviewing what we know about the state of the Russian troops and what they could accomplish. Ru troops we have seen are unable to hold ground under even moderately concentrated shelling. Some units will withstand that but the bulk that's formed recently seem unable to do so. We're also aware that portions of the front are held by nearly immobile units of mobilized men.

Because I have seen the news of the death of the chief financial officer of the Russian Western Military district I want to say something regarding such deaths.
fontanka.ru/2023/02/16/720… Some of the people in Russia jumping out of windows are jumping out of windows because they're about to be caught red handed, not because they've been caught. The state is perfectly capable of killing them in SIZO or torturing them afterwards in SHIZO.

I don't think the loss of Kherson west of the Dnipro river would be as beneficial to Russia as imagined in terms of shortening the front-line.

https://twitter.com/APHClarkson/status/1580573402426769408

First, as military historians like to point out , the line is shorter for both sides.
Second, sometimes the built up areas are important to hold for the sake of their built up characteristics. The bigger the town, the more suitable the housing is for quartering troops.

1/ Since 2013, the Russian military has had to deal with lower quality of forces, coupled with lack of financial ability to properly train its ground forces and other similar troops to a degree (naval infantry, VDV), as opposed to ignoring the importance of training. 2/I don't think the Russian army threw out the books or dismissed training practices, it just got squeezed by new tasks to the point it could barely field its diminished manpower, say nothing about actually training its official strength properly.