Just another Putin Parrot genocide apologist whose analyses and forecasts have been wrong so often he's a perfect contrarian indicator I'd love to securitize so I could trade against them.
He never writes now how he recommended Ukraine surrender to Russian genocide AFTER Bucha's and Irpin's mass graves were discovered.
New readers won't know he forecast Russian victory just before Kharkiv and Kherson, forecast that Russia would freeze Europe and shut down Ukrainian energy infrastructure last winter.
Russia's middle class: you can believe the evidence free fantasies of this customer service rep from Colorado who's likely never used a passport, or me, an historian speaking conversational Russian who's:
1. Been to Russia four times between 2015 and 2017 and talked to dozens of Russian gaming industry and other tech entrepreneurs and venture investors, many now exiled.
2. Lives in a building in Jurmala, Latvia that used to be filled with now sanctioned rich Russians, especially from the media, entertainment and financial services industries.
3. Stayed in rooms and apartments rented by impoverished academics at elite universities who spend 10 % of their salaries on tram and metro tickets--when they're paid--which is often 3 to 6 months late. One 95m2 apartment rented for only 35 euros/night even though located on the Moyka (моика) canal, a short walk from the Hermitage.
4. Was a client of a Russian IT firm in St Petersburg developing an ID verification app.
The idea that such a mafia with a flag kleptocracy had a middle class worth mentioning was laughably naive even before Putin's war and mobilization forced 1.3 million of Russia’s most cosmopolitan, talented and educated into exile. One apolitical techie I got to know well left the first week of the war, saying "they've stolen our future." He's now in Belgrade, via Tallinn.
Defense industrial base: Russia has one tank factory. Capacity: 20 per month vs losses of 200+ per month. Russia is tossing its armored Soviet inherited furniture into the fire.
She'll count: Russia's is down 75% since last summer's peak and it has to beg from that NE Asian superpower North Korea. Putin's already acknowledged Russia is short of weapons and Prigozhin's rants about executing Gerasimov and Shoigu for depriving his convict army of ammunition are too well known to bother quoting here. But this Putin Parrot can't be bothered to listen to Russian sources on Volymedia and Telegram who know what a deep hole they've dug themselves into.
This writer’s narcissistic hubris leads him to project his wish for an industrial revival in his own country onto an imagined neo Soviet Russian economy that long ago became an extractive deindustrialized resource cursed kleptocracy. Its brutal Wagner-run tentacles extend to mining enterprises trading murderous repression for blood diamonds, oil and gold in Sudan, the Central African Republic, Mali, Burkina Faso, Syria. The idea that Freeport McGowan, Rio Tinto or BHP monopolies that behave like Wagner is simply laughable Russified Whataboutistan idiocy.
