Topic: Russia More Than Triples Current-Account Surplus to $167 Billion (Read 561 times)

now I don’t remember the work where this phrase comes from, but all the “greatness” and “successes” of Russia today are ideally described by this phrase: “things on the collective farm were not bad. You could even say good. But every day it gets worse and worse” ))
You can, of course, continue to replicate the squeals of Russian propagandists and tell fairy tales, or pull figures out of the global context as "proof of victories", but it's enough to listen to the official reports of the Ministry of Economy to understand where is a deliberate lie and where is reality.

Let's listen to the Russian ministers:

""The prospects look terrible." The Ministry of Finance reported on the collapse of oil and gas revenues of the budget"

"... In August, revenues from oil and gas corporations to the federal treasury decreased for the fourth month in a row and were at a minimum since June 2021, the Ministry of Finance reported on Friday.
Over the month, the budget collected 671.9 billion rubles of oil and gas taxes - almost 100 billion rubles less than in July, and 23.9 billion rubles less than in August 2021.
Compared to the maximum shown in April, when the budget received 1.797 trillion rubles from oil and gas against the backdrop of soaring prices and taxes last year, fees have collapsed by 2.6 times.
At the same time, oil revenues remained stable, according to data from the Ministry of Finance: despite the fact that China and India reduced purchases of Russian barrels to a minimum since the first month of the war, NPDI fees for oil increased by 40.4 billion rubles, and export duties - by 10 billion (compared to June).
However, the gas part of the budget continued to rapidly deflate along with the production and exports of Gazprom, which in August collapsed by 34% and 59%, respectively.
During the month, the budget received only 33.7 billion rubles of gas production tax - the minimum amount since the "rainy days" of the 2020 pandemic. For comparison: in April and May it was 70 billion rubles a month.
Income from the export duty on gas from July 57.3 billion grew to 80.6 billion rubles. But compared to June (217.4 billion rubles), their collapse has become almost threefold ... "
https://www.moscowtimes.eu/2022/09/05/perspektivi-viglyadyat-uzhasno-minfin-otchitalsya-o-krushenii-neftegazovih-dohodov-byudzheta-a23931

Russia was listed as one of the militarily superpowers of the world until it made the fatal mistake of attacking Ukraine. It is worth noting here that Russia won all the wars with the active participation of Ukraine. After seven months of war in Ukraine, the regular Russian army is practically defeated. In September, the Armed Forces of Ukraine liberated about nine thousand square kilometers of their territory from the invaders. This is what forced Putin to introduce mobilization and try to correct the situation at the front by throwing in "live meat".

Loss by Russia in Ukraine of 2262 tanks, 4807 armored vehicles, 255 aircraft, 220 helicopters, 1361 art. systems and other equipment is already forcing it not to export military equipment, but to look around the world where it can be bought in order to throw it into Ukraine. So, we see that recently Russia managed to purchase about a thousand drones in Iran. But with other equipment and ammunition in Russia, there is a clear shortage, since even the former allies refuse this to the aggressor country.

As for "sustainable Russian economics", this is also a myth, and this issue should be returned to at least a year later. That's when it will be clearly visible.

I think in today's world its very difficult to know actual facts since media is mostly under government control and governments uses media as a tool to build there narrative in minds of people. If you see media of pro ukarine countries they say Russia is doing nasty things and ukarine is winning and vice versa.
I was reading edward snowdow book where he wrote that usa media prints news to invade Iraq before usa actually attacked Iraq. This was done to build a narrative in usa that Iraq war in necessary.

Ever since this comment, some more information has come out (both sides are still denying it though).
1. Iran's Army commander recently confirmed the Su-35 purchase which approves the second part of my comment above.
2. An unknown picture surfaced where they claim they've shot down a Shahed-136 drone!


There is no image of video of it flying or being shot down or even if the picture is recent or from Ukraine not somewhere else like Syria which they've been used against terrorists.
If this is indeed Shahed-136, due to their size, material and speed they are impossible to track and shoot down specially when they are diving. Not to mention that they are used in a swarm and in coordination with everything else, not as a single unit to be shot down alone.
Which means if the image is not all propaganda, then it is the remainder of the drone after successful impact and destruction of its target.

---

The way these loitering munitions (or the layman terms: suicide drones) work is that a swarm of them are deployed easily from for example back of a truck:


They remain in the sky until they detect their target(s) and are equipped with AI and are usually accompanied with a "mothership" that acts like the commander and can perform air-to-air fights, shoot its own missiles or deploy its own drones out of the back (I don't think the "mothership" is sold though since it is too high tech and is basically considered classified).

If the picture is not pure propaganda then what happened could be something like this for example:
A RU fighter plane is getting close for operation, the NATO intelligence reports that so they activate Buk-M1 (medium-range surface-to-air missile systems), the stealth drones already dominating the sky detect Buk-M1 and send a single unit of the S-136 to dive for the kill. After the success was confirmed and the operation ends, the rest go back home.


You can see them in the video below during a military exercise from a while ago (the last 2 pictures are from the video).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcZEJ40Gt9M

If there is any interest I'll try to post more analysis if more information comes out.

I love the "sect of believers in the miracle of great ruZZia"
Let's return to your post exactly one year later, and tell us how easy and relaxed life is in Russia?
Seriously ? There are a lot of witnesses and participants who will be really interested to see how all this will end? If Russia gets out and returns to economic indicators, well, let it be until 2021, I will apologize in front of everyone, I recognize the Russian economy as really powerful, and my forecasts and understanding of the process are primitive. You can even screenshot my promise. But if the economy goes into stagnation, production and economic indicators continue to fall - is that already your word, with the recognition of mistakes? Goes?

When we put it in perspective, Russia is in a very good financial position. It has more than enough cash to withstand any sanctions the European Union throws at them. This doesn't even take into account the large amount of money that Russia is taking in from oil exports, which the E.U. may have to look elsewhere for if they want to get their oil fixed.

The United States might have some influence over this outcome, however, as it could potentially use its dominance of the oil trade to prevent other nations from buying oil from Russia. All things considered, Russia is doing fine. Sanctions have failed economically and politically. There are great opportunities for both Europe and the US in working with Russia if I am not mistaken.

OK. Now Facebook and Twitter will decide who is a terrorist and who is not one? I stopped following Twitter and Facebook because they always censor people who tell the truth. If you compare the posts on war, in both Twitter and Telegram the difference is obvious. If you just depend on Twitter or Facebook for your information, then you will get an assumption that Ukraine has already captured Crimea and are marching towards Moscow and St.Petersburg. Despite my lack of knowledge of Russian, I am forced to follow Telegram to get to know the truth.

Really. It turns out that few people know Russia. Modern Russia is a ban on social networks that are normally perceived and work all over the world, as well as the recognition as extremist of everything that contradicts the propaganda of the Kremlin. There is reason to talk about the successes of Russia. As well as the protection of Ukraine's own territory from occupation is declared terrorist acts. I think that international sanctions should be recognized as extremist in Russia and the problem of sanctions will be solved.

So according to your definition, only 15% of the world population is civilized and the other 85% is uncivilized? Two of the most popular nations, China and India have refused to approve sanctions against Russia. The same can be said about every other non-Western nation, including Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, GCC group, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico and Nigeria. The problem with Western governments and most of their citizens is that they still believe that the world revolves around them. This is not the 19th century. Third world nations are fully capable of making their own decisions. We don't need any advice from you guys. Thanks.

The naivety and hypocrisy in this statement is phenomenal.

For starters, what you call "civilized countries" have committed worse crimes than Russia over the past century and a lot more of it too. Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Russia, just pointing out your naive way of thinking. If any country cut its ties with Russia it wasn't because they were "civilized" it was only because either they had some benefit in it or they had no other choice.

Secondly, what you call "civilized countries" have been the only reason why Russian currency has been soaring against every other currency and has reached its all time high exchange rate in the past 5 years. In other words not only they are still doing business with Russia, they are doing it in Ruble to strengthen it!

I love how angry you get at the supposed "pathetic sanctions" because it just shows they are working exactly as intended. No civilized countries want to do business with Russia any more, which is where the most creative minds are producing useful goods and services. It was inevitable to see a spike in oil and gas prices, which is Russia's primary remaining export, because of the impact of the war which Russia started against Ukraine. However that is just a short to medium term issue, as the whole world is now creeping towards recession, although Russia's will be much more painful to endure, because of the inflation this disastrous and pointless war has created.

It's 20% with that territory of Donbas and Crimea, quite a funny since your marvelous prediction Russia has lost more land that it has conquered in Ukraine.


So you admit yourself that even if the country is completely shut down the GDP doesn't go to zero, and we have Russia's economy going down 5% last most, that would be like 2/3 of it being shut down, not bad. /s
Should I mention that despite all that catastrophic meltdown somehow EU's economy has grown 0.9%.


I love your laugh, obviously, it's the laugh of somebody who is on the brink of going insane, you mean that Russia is not selling LNG to India because Europe pays more even with a third party?
So the outcome for India is that they don't have gas, they don't have money to buy it, and Europe will collapse?
How many times have I told you that the one with the money dictates everything?
How many times does it take to finally get it?


You see kiddo, this is your problem, you try to find the things you want in a problem, like in this case you want this , weakness of your adversary to be the cause of the fall in price, you're not looking for the actual thing.
And it's not the "emptying" of the SPR as they only release 1 million barrels a day, and they still have 523 million only in the SPR not counting commercial reserves which the US can buy and dump, and those are, prepare for a heart attack another 400 million barrels.
So all of it will be emptied in about 3 years!

But the problem is that is not that which is driving the price of oil down but the lack of consumption, it's full US and EU driving season and the consumption is 1 million barrels below target for the US alone, at the end of the month this will come down again by at least 20%.
That's why oil is at 88$ as we speak, or 69.48 for Russian oil. 


(Collapse of the USSR - Invasion of Afghanistan) / 3  since Russia is half of the USSR and its economy globally is 1/4 of what it was


Vodka as they don't need anything else.
And btw, yeah, Russia imported both vodka and caviar, vodka from Sweden and Poland, and Caviar from Italy and China!

Facebook is banned in Russia, and the Meta company is recognized as extremist, so Mark Zuckerberg does not earn money in Russia.

This is the main reason for the failure of sanctions against Russia - it seems that in the West no one really knows what modern Russia is and are based on the old stereotypes of the era of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. They tried to sort of shake up the topic of "oil in exchange for food", but it suddenly turned out that Russia also has plenty of food.

Everyone considers what Russia could give to the world, and nobody asks what could world give to Russia. What you are forgetting is that while they may have some things that the world wants, we shouldn't forget that there are a lot of things that the world can provide which Russia wants. Even something as simple as a facebook ad goes from a Russians pocket to Mark Zuckerberg’s pocket with that logic.

This is why it is quite important that if the world finds a way to not use oil or gas or wheat from Russia, and yet in the future Russians still use products from other nations, the money that they have right now would go down more and more and more, which will put them in trouble.

Russia won't fall down that easy. It seems that they're too ready for this war and their economy is still surviving despite the sanctions. But the question is, how long could they handle the sanctions? I'm sure that it would still hit their economy in the future. The sanctions will test the foundation of their economy but for now, they could still bear it.

That's what they are going to face real soon. The idea that they could get away with literally a war, seems like a pipe dream that Russia lovers could only imagine. Of course, they will fail to sell anything but what other nations absolutely need, which is gas and oil, outside of that they won't be able to sell anything. On top of that, we are talking about them not being able to afford anything from west soon and that will hurt their finances as well.

This all comes down to the fact that Russia will have a big trouble. It's of course looked better for a short term because they brought in so much money, but that was a short period due to sanctions, it's not sustainable.

Russia survived the initial sanctions shock quite easily, much easier than Western analysts expected. And for several months now it has been living in conditions of deflation against the backdrop of a consistent reduction in the key rate by the Central Bank of Russia. This is the difference and the key advantage of Russia in its economic confrontation with the European Union, which is forced to live in conditions of inflation and rising prices, against the backdrop of a growing key rate.

You cite the decline in car production in Russia as an argument, but there is a nuance. Several European manufacturers immediately stopped their factories in Russia due to sanctions and a special operation, but who really suffers from this - Russia or European automakers?  

Financial affairs in Russia are not so good. Indeed, due to higher energy prices, the fall of the Russian economy in 2022 has undergone an adjustment from 10–30% to 6–9.5%. And the level of annual inflation decreased from the projected 20% to 12-15%.

However, the sanctions have already affected the domestic economy. The reduction in the production of Russian cars in June was 62% compared to this month last year. Industrial production in June fell by 1.8% compared to the same period in 2021. The main sanctions against the Russian energy sector have not yet entered into force. December 5 will earn sanctions on the export of Russian offshore oil to the European Union. February 5, 2023 - Russian oil products.

The volume of sales of Russian gas to Europe is now a third of last year's level. It looks like it will decline from now on, and will practically stop no later than 2024. Then Germany expects to be completely independent of Russian gas. After the entry into force of all European sanctions in the oil and gas sector, Russia's income from energy exports is expected to decrease by 40%.

Russia is reducing gas supplies to the countries of the European Union, therefore losing its main sales market. After the end of the war with Ukraine, economic ties with the Russian Federation will not resume for a long time, and therefore the impact of sanctions will continue to operate for some time even after they are lifted.

Although Ukraine didn't lost half of it's territory, it is a fact that it lost 20% of the territory that remained after the annexation of Crimea. Not too bad, IMO.


Indian GDP went down by -7.3% during 2020-21. The 4% reduction in Russian GDP is not surprising. And given the massive amount of sanctions and embargoes (Russia is now the most sanctioned country in the world), I expected much worse.


Oil prices are down by 20%, because the Americans are emptying the SPR before November midterms. It has nothing to do with Russia. Russia had to reduce exports to India and China in July because of increased demand for crude oil from Europe. 


LOL.. seriously? Gas prices are so high in the Europe that Gazprom Germania diverted some of the supplies earmarked for India (GAIL) to Europe. Even after paying the penalty to India under the "take or pay (TOP)" terms, selling LNG to Europe was more profitable for Russia. This is actually what happened.

https://www.freepressjournal.in/analysis/india-in-a-fix-as-russia-dithers-on-oil-lng

What is all the data worth when the average Russian believes that it is all just Western propaganda and that the Russians, like in 1945, are liberating Europe from nazism and fascism... I understand that in every war there are those who fight for money and spoils of war, but that so much death and destruction has not yet opened the eyes of the average Russian to understand that wars of conquest in the 21st century are not something they should agree to.

First, young naive people die, and then their fathers come next - and right now, people aged 55+ are being mobilized. The fact is that 80% of them will never return to their homes. They say they're called tigers, but to me they look like old and battered cats (cannon fodder).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggcNHGcypns