Eduard Ruzga
2 min readAug 23, 2024

--

Hard to say. Many Russians still claim that everything is all right and prices are not going up. But those are from regions that are "hiding" situation the best.

People further from those regions report about rising prices and empty shelves, especially on imports.

Like I remember reports that even Chinese cars are 2x priced in comparison to pre-war prices.

There is also a secondary issue. Russian central bank itself reports that inflation is not low, and that they expect to keep a high interest rate on loans(18%)

They hoped that such a high interest rate would lower amount of people taking loans, but people are still taking it because they expect that next year it will be even more costly to take a loan.

What business can return 18% yearly? Almost none... This thing is going to default on debts.

It all seems like a repeat of the Afghanistan war, loss of people, money, and reputation. A decade of stagnation, low living standards, dissatisfaction and dissent, and loss of reputation and control by the party, led to the USSR's collapse.

I do think we are witnessing a repeat of Afghanistan but way worse, it seems like damage to the economy is bigger, and damage to the human population is bigger. It could lead to the collapse of Russia. Russia still has many republics under it that are not reallyRussian:

Adygea, Altai, Bashkortostan, Buryatia, Chechnya, Chuvashia, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Kalmykia, Karachay-Cherkessia, Karelia, Khakassia, Komi, Mari El, Mordovia, North Ossetia-Alania, Sakha (Yakutia), Tatarstan, Tuva, Udmurtia, Ingushetia.

There are high chance that movements similar to Baltic State independence movements will start as the Kremlin loses control.

--

--

Eduard Ruzga
Eduard Ruzga

Written by Eduard Ruzga

We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers — Carl Sagan

No responses yet