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Russians Are Becoming FURIOUS About Putin’s War
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There's a myth about Russia that I've
been hearing for a very long time and
it's an aspect of the overall myth of
Russian invincibility. The idea that
Russia is an undefeatable nation, that
Russian people are so resilient, so
strong in the face of hardship, that
nothing could ever be bad enough for
them to actually quit or actually
surrender or actually demand changes.
And the aspect of this myth that I want
to explore today is something that's
repeated a lot when people say that
Ukrainian strikes can never actually be
successful in breaking the will of the
Russian people or making the Russian
people frustrated enough to actually
demand changes from their own
government. This conversation is very
important to have today because
currently Ukraine is actively striking
Russian infrastructure targets primarily
energy targets but also other sorts of
targets trying to make the Russian
people actually feel the weight of the
war in a way they never have before.
Right now there are massive gasoline
shortages throughout Russia and some
people are having to wait in line for up
to 8 hours just to get a 2 L ration of
gasoline. There are other problems
across Russia. There are problems with
air transit as Russian airports are
constantly being shut down and Russia is
about to enter the winter where they are
having massive energy shortages already
which could create severe problems. What
we need to examine though is if there's
even a point to all of this. Can these
types of attacks actually be successful?
Can Ukraine successfully change the
minds of the Russian people and turn
their attitude away from supporting the
war and towards demanding an end to the
war? On the surface, you would think the
answers to these questions would be
obvious, especially when you consider
the scale of the carnage that Ukraine is
able to inflict upon the Russian
economy. The fact that that carnage is
being sustained for a long period of
time, and the fact that that carnage is
getting worse, not getting better. Even
in Western societies, in response to
very minor things like minor rises in
gas prices or minor rises in egg prices,
you will often see people emotionally
demanding immediate political change.
And my point is not to say that all of
those things are completely irrelevant,
but when you consider the scale of those
things and how much they impact people's
lives compared to the scale of things
that people in Russia are experiencing,
it would seem obvious that any human
being would have a strong reaction to
this kind of pressure. However, in
Russia's case, people will plead to
social differences and they will
actually do something that is called
special pleading where they will argue
that Russia's case is special, that
Russia is not subject to the same
economic rules or the same psychological
rules that apply to everybody else
because Russia has such a history of
hardship that these things just don't
apply. However, as you'll see in this
video, that understanding of Russian
society is completely wrong. And we can
know it's completely wrong for several
reasons. First of all, because the
Russian government has done everything
they can to make the Russian people feel
like they are not actually undergoing
hardship or if they are, that it's much
worse in other countries. And second of
all, we can know that it's not true
because all of these conclusions are
based on a very selective understanding
of Russian history. A lot of people make
the mistake of looking at Russian
history and pointing out the hardships,
but neglecting to point out the
revolutions that came in response to
those hardships. For example, people
will point out that the Russians lived
under the Zars, who were just absolutely
brutal. And they'll say, "Well, they're
used to living under the Zars. They will
tolerate just about anything." And
they'll also say, "Well, the Russians
lived under the Soviet Union, and they
experienced so many terrible aspects of
the Soviet Union. We're talking about
goologs, famines, disease, political
repression, and things of that sort. And
they'll say, because the Russians have
this in their history, what they
experience under Vladimir Putin is
nothing in comparison. And so, why would
we ever believe the Russians would
actually stand up? However, the actual
reality is that there is a pattern to
Russian history. And Vladimir Putin has
very much been responding to this
pattern, and he's very much afraid of
it. And this pattern is that the
peasantry does not tolerate abuses from
their government forever. The peasantry
has demonstrated several times in
Russian history that they are willing to
rise up and demand changes. They are
willing to overthrow leaders and they
are willing to commit to social changes
when things don't go their way. We see
this because the Russian Empire
collapsed and the Soviet Union in fact
collapsed and that went in several
stages. First, the Soviet Union demanded
changes from the Stalinist era of purges
and stuff like that. And they demanded a
better society and even that was not
enough. The Soviet Union ultimately
disintegrated largely because of
internal economic pressure because the
people were frustrated with what their
government was doing and all of the
individual republics decided to go their
separate ways because they no longer
believed in the Soviet system. So the
idea that people within the Russian or
the Soviet sphere of the world simply
never rise up and overthrow their
governments is completely historically
false. Now nobody is more aware of the
fact that this myth is false than the
Russians themselves and also the
Ukrainians. And that explains a lot of
what we have seen from both Russia and
Ukraine throughout the war. Ukraine is
attacking Russia's economy, not because
they don't think it will ever work, but
because as a post-siet country
themselves, they understand exactly what
it feels like to be a citizen under a
repressive government. And they
understand exactly what it takes to get
those citizens to finally stand up,
revolt, and demand independence or
demand changes. They themselves again
have done that. And Russia for their
part also completely understands that
this is a massive possibility. And this
is why they have sought to control their
society the way they do. As we all know,
as soon as the war in Ukraine started,
millions of Russian citizens fled their
own country. And this is the exact
opposite of a people who will just lie
down and take anything that their
government is going to dish at them.
These people fled their country for the
exact reason that they knew pain was
coming and they actively wanted to avoid
it. And at that time, leaving the
country with was the path of least
resistance to get that. That has since
gotten harder because Russia actively
patrols their borders to prevent young
men from leaving. But it remains the
same psychology, although the path of
least resistance has now potentially
changed. We've also seen Russia respond
to people wanting to take the path of
least resistance in several ways. Russia
has cracked down on free speech since
they started the war in Ukraine so that
people cannot talk against the war or
what they call the special military
operation. This isn't just denial. It is
an attempt by Russia to control the
thinking of the populace. They know they
cannot control the entire populace, but
they want to control enough of them to
prevent a critical mass from forming
that could actually come out in
opposition against what they're doing.
And this is not something that
governments do because they are so
convinced the people will just lie down
and take whatever they dish. This is
something that governments do because
they are terrified that the people will
actually do exactly the opposite of
that. There are so many other examples
that we could cite that show that far
from having an attitude of bravado and
fearlessness when it comes to his own
citizens, Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin
regime in general are actually very
paranoid of their own people. We see
this at a high level just in the fact
that Russia has so much internal
propaganda trying to influence the way
its people think because they know they
have to do that. They have to try to win
the people over to their side if
possible because if the people are
against them, they can indeed demand and
they can indeed make changes. We also
see very clear examples of this in the
paranoia that is implicit, actually
probably explicit, whenever a Russian
elite falls out of a window or meets
their end in another way. Because you
don't just send elites to their death
for no reason. You send elites to their
death because you are terrified that
they know too much. They have too much
power and they can potentially
accumulate resources or people to
themselves to challenge you in some way.
And to ensure that that never happens,
you take those elites out. Not just to
take them out, but also to threaten the
other elites. Again, it is not exactly a
show of I don't think I could ever be
overthrown. It actually implies you're
paranoid of that exact result. And we
also see this very clearly in the way
that Vladimir Putin has approached
filling the Russian military even for
the war against Ukraine where the last
thing that he has been willing to rely
on is patriotism.
Very notably, very explicitly, Vladimir
Putin has not relied on conscription or
mobilization to force young Russian men
to go to the front lines against their
will. Instead, he has focused on tactics
of deceiving people to go to the front
lines, usually through large military
paychecks. And they might tell them that
they're going to rear areas and then
send them to the front lines. But they
are very unwilling to grab Russian men
off the streets and put them on the
front lines. And this is because they
know better than we do that if they were
to do this, the fabric of Russian
society could unravel far quicker than
we might even imagine. So instead, they
have resorted to bribing people with
large paychecks. Not just to get them to
go voluntarily and to reduce a lot of
the effects because a lot of Russians
will say, "Well, they had it coming to
them because they got paid a lot of
money for it." But they also do this to
put a lot of money into the Russian
society so that the Russian people
artificially feel like things are going
better than they actually are. There are
constant surveys that show a large
portion of Russians still support the
war, which are hard to believe for a lot
of reasons. Number one, because if you
said anything else, who knows what the
government would do to you. But to the
extent that these surveys are
legitimate, and to a large degree they
probably are, there are a lot of
Russians who want to support the war and
think it's a good thing, that's because
the Russians have been tricked into
thinking that the war has been good for
them economically. It's very similar to
how in the United States a lot of people
kind of jokingly in reference to World
War II will say, "You know what we
really need for our economy is another
war." Because during World War II,
things were just so good and it kind of
brought us out of the depression and
things like that. They didn't realize
that things weren't actually that good.
The only reason our economy boomed after
World War II was because every other
major economy on Earth was devastated by
firebombings and things like that. And
so we had a monopoly on manufacturing
for quite a while and that caused us to
rise to the top. That sidebar aside,
it's similar with the Russian economy
and the war in Ukraine. Russia has
worked to create an artificial sense of
prosperity around this war. That most of
the Russian people are not connecting
the dots on. They think somehow that
their GDP has grown even though their
country has been heavily sanctioned.
Therefore, they have lost the majority
of their revenue through oil and gas.
And even if you believe oil and gas
revenues are doing better than a lot of
people say, it would be crazy to argue
that Russia is actually doing better
with less revenue than they had prior to
the war. Nevertheless, a lot of Russians
believe this because through military
spending, Vladimir Putin has put a lot
of money into the Russian economy that
he saved up over a very long period of
time prior to the war. And he has also
funded the war through inflation, a
mechanism that most Russians don't
understand, which causes the economics
to become terrible, but people might
temporarily feel rather rich. And all of
this is an attempt to rather than making
the Russian people feel the cost of the
war, make the Russian people feel like
the war is actually improving their
lives. Because Vladimir Putin knows that
if the Russian people feel the cost of
the war, they will almost certainly turn
against him. All of this though is a
very big problem for Vladimir Putin
today because the problem with
artificial perceptions is you can only
keep them up for so long. And if you
don't achieve the goal of the artificial
perception and you're not able to
convert the artificial perception into a
real durable advantage,
everything will eventually fall out from
under your feet. And that is what Russia
is now facing today. Russia is facing a
crisis on every front, on a military
front, but primarily on an economic
front. And they're facing that crisis
for several reasons. They're facing it
because the savings account that they
built up to get them this far has
largely, if not completely, run out and
it is only being sustained by massive
inflation. But they are also in an
economic crisis because of the pressure
of Ukraine who I already mentioned at
the beginning of this video has been
intentionally ramping up their strikes
on the Russian economy on Russian
infrastructure particularly oil and gas
targets to make the average Russian
person feel the effects of the war in a
way that they never have before. The
timing of that might not be a
coincidence. Due to all of this,
Vladimir Putin seems to realize that it
is going to be increasingly difficult
for him to keep the Russian people on
his side and therefore to keep his power
and potentially even to keep his own
life. And because of that, we have seen
a whole lot of changes in Vladimir Putin
and his tactics domestically over the
past year or so, but especially ramping
up over the past several months. We have
seen, for example, and I've talked about
it in other videos on this channel, a
lot of discussions of purges within the
Russian military, a lot of discussions
of potential coups, which I have argued
are an attempt by Vladimir Putin to kind
of root out disloyal elements because
these discussions have been so public.
And all of this looks like an effort for
Vladimir Putin to try to get control of
the elites in a way that he has never
had to, at least up to this point in the
war. Up to this point in the war, of
course, he has had people falling out of
windows and things like that, but we
have never seen anything this explicit
that looks this desperate and shows this
much fear in Vladimir Putin. We have
also seen Vladimir Putin have to go to
his people and basically make
concessions about the war in Ukraine to
his people, at least publicly. Who knows
if he will actually make those
concessions, but he definitely felt
compelled to promise them. In
particular, he felt compelled to promise
his people that the Russian military
budget would be lowered next year, which
implies a lot of things. First of all,
the economy is a real problem despite
what Russia says. Second of all, the
Russian people know that the economy is
a problem and they know that it's
because of the war. And third of all,
Vladimir Putin fears that push back
enough that he felt compelled to throw
them a bone. Vladimir Putin knows that
the Russian people will only tolerate so
much. Unlike a lot of Western
commentators, Vladimir Putin knows that
his current country is a
postrevolutionary state and that they
have actually gone through several
revolutions. He knows that when things
start to impact people in a real way,
people respond to that. And that
response might look different than we
expect in Western countries. it might
seem to come a little slower, but that's
because the Russian people are starting
from a lower baseline and so it is
harder to hit them hard enough to where
they feel the impact in a more real way.
But once they feel that impact in a real
way, they respond to that impact. The
same way we here in America respond to
the impact of gas prices or rising egg
prices, Russian people are people, too.
And when they have impacts that finally
reach them directly,
that's when things can hit the fan.
Putin has again been trying to push this
off through artificial means as long as
he could. I mentioned the military
paychecks, which were largely stimulus
for the Russian economy. Vladimir Putin
has also been printing a lot of money to
fund subsidization of commodity prices
within Russia to try to keep food prices
low and to try to keep energy prices low
to try to keep the costs of all of the
basics that the average Russian person
actually buys as low as possible. The
Russian people don't realize that these
prices are actually rapidly increasing.
They're just increasing in the form of
currency depreciation rather than actual
price tags. Although sometimes even
still they are increasing in terms of
actual price tags too. All these
artificial means though have a hard
limit and that hard limit is now being
approached. The problem that Putin faces
is immense because the moment the
sherrod can no longer be kept up as we
see currently today with rising gas
prices, the Russian people don't have a
whole lot of margin to work with. Once
the Russian people start to feel a real
impact on their actual budgets, most of
them do not have enough spending money
left over after expenses to get
anything, they are used to that low
level of spending money. But because it
is so low, it can also go away rather
quickly. So as soon as we see food
prices increase or energy prices
increase or food prices increase because
energy prices have increased or any
other number of things that will very
quickly thin out Russian budgets to the
point that is no longer sustainable.
That then will cause the Russian people
to actually feel the impact of the war
for the first time in a way they haven't
felt it before. And there is no amount
of money the Russian government can
print today to make up for that. They've
already printed basically all that they
can print. Just for example, in some
statistics that I found, which are
always directionally correct, but never
precisely accurate. In poorer regions of
Russia, the average monthly income is
equivalent to only about $400.
That is a very low income, not a lot of
margin in it. And under current
conditions, Russians use about 45% of
that income to buy food. So about $180.
They will then use approximately $50 to
$60 a month on heat, $50 to $60 a month
on fuel in terms of gasoline, and they
will spend an additional maybe $40 to
$60 on rent. And when you add all of
those things up, you find that the
average Russian in a poorer region of
Russia might only have $50 to $100 of
their income left to work with. This is
a major problem because in recent days,
literally this month, it's not yet
reflected in the data, but we have seen
gas prices in some regions of Russia
increase from around $2.40
to prices that are approaching $3.80,
approaching $4. That is a huge increase.
And it's not only a direct increase when
people buy gasoline, but it also
increases the cost for everything else
they buy. That increase alone in those
regions can eat up all of the tiny
margin that the Russians living in those
regions had. And that will quickly cause
their lifestyle to change drastically.
Because when you go from being able to
buy a few luxuries to being able to buy
zero luxuries, that is a much bigger
difference than for example in America
when we go from being able to buy a huge
number of luxuries to a somewhat smaller
selection of luxuries. Now, $50 to $100
of spending money a month is a very
small margin. Not all of Russia has the
same margins. For example, in Moscow,
people make a lot more money per month,
but the costs are also a little higher.
They also have thin margins. Their
margins are more in the hundreds of
dollars per month, not in the tens of
dollars per month. But those margins are
still small enough that relatively small
impacts into the Russian economy can
have a major impact on people's
lifestyles. And that is really what
needs to be measured when it comes to
Russian people's resilience. You need to
measure things not in dollar amounts,
but you need to actually measure things
in hard impacts on people's lifestyle.
This is what a lot of people don't
realize. Russia has been working very
hard throughout the entire war to make
sure that Russian lifestyles don't
experience a large impact. And they've
been able to do this through a large
number of economic tricks. Because the
Russian baseline is so low, it doesn't
require a ton of money to keep the
average Russian's lifestyle consistent
with what they've always experienced.
Russia, though, is now running out of
these economic tricks. The average
Russian will now start to feel not just
a financial difference, but they will
start to feel a lifestyle difference.
And when you start measuring things in
terms of how long does it take me to get
a liter of gasoline that lasts me like 5
minutes, takes me 8 hours to get 5
minutes worth of gasoline. then you
start to realize the serious impacts
that could actually cause the Russian
people to start demanding some changes.
It is within this context that Ukraine
is continuing to ramp up the pressure on
the Russian economy through long range
strikes and where they have also just
recently introduced longrange strike
capabilities, the Flamingo missile,
which can take out more targets
directly, but also spread Russian air
defenses more thinly, meaning that
Ukraine will do an incrementally and
exponentially better job at damaging the
Russian economy. Not only this, while
this is happening, Russia is now
entering into the winter months, which
is also going to make things worse in
and of itself. And you can see how bad
things can really become. Now, in my
videos, I never really give a sense of
timing, and that's intentional cuz I
don't know the timing. I can only see
how things are directionally going, and
we'll see how things play out logically
over time, but we will never know
exactly what time the climax might come
and some big event might come. But as
you can see directionally, everything
lines up. Things are looking really bad
for Russia. Things are looking really
bad for the Russian economy. And
therefore, things are looking really bad
for Vladimir Putin. And this is in a
country that has experienced not just
one revolution, but several major
revolutions within the last century.
Things really could change. We need to
stop believing in the myth of Russian
invincibility. We need to remember that
Russian people are people, too. That
matters from every perspective possible,
including their ability to stand up to
immense pressure. If you watched this
far into the video, I hope it's not
presumptuous to say that you probably
got something of value out of it. Maybe
you heard new information. Maybe you
heard dots connected in a way that you
hadn't heard them connected before.
Maybe you heard things explained in a
way that made everything finally click.
Whatever the reason, if you got
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You guys really do make it possible for
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