I think it's possible you're right. But I see it somewhat differently. The goal is to pressure Russia via India, which with this new added risk and pressure will either force India to break its contracts or renegotiate them. Their contracts have the standard force majeure clauses that would apply to any long-term contract like this.
So you’ll increase inflation and make everything more expensive in India as well as America and this will somehow force Russia to stop a war they’re winning?
That’s kinda retarded.
Remember in 2022, when they announced blocking all Russian assets, kicking them out of SWIFT and the toughest sanctions ever?
Now if you go back and look at the media then, the neocons claimed that not only would Russia be forced to negotiate, Putins whole regime would likely collapse. How did that go? They were wrong then, and they’re wrong now. And they’re just sperging about tariffs because they don’t know what else to do, and are rich enough not to be affected by higher inflation.
How precarious is the Russian Federation's state?
Not very. Economy was close to overheating last year, this year it’s cooling down with about 4% growth. (More than Europe has seen in decades, mind you.)
Recent opinion polling by a Western affiliated institute had Putins approval rating around 70%. Lower than previously, but still an approval rating most western leaders would sacrifice to Moloch to get.
This whole “But THIS TIME it’ll work! Just trust us!” Narrative is straight out of neocon think tanks who’ve never been right, and are out of touch.
How much of it is dependent on the ATMs running out of Gazprom?
Not much. Russia isn’t “a gas station with nukes” as it was in the 2000’s.
Oil and gas make up about 15% of the Russian GDP, and Its share of the Russian federal budget is shrinking. (Last year tax revenues for the first time made up more of the Russian budget than oil/gas. Food and grains are another area that is bringing in huge revenues lately.)
And it of course ignores that when oil/gas prices go up, Russian revenues will go up. Either through countries like China, who buy it slightly below market price, their numerous other buyers, or countries like Turkey that mixes it with Saudi oil and sell it.
Turkey recently became an EXPORTER of oil and gas. Despite having barely any. Where do you think it came from?
That fat retard Prigozhin met basically 0 resistance on his retarded and insane dash to Moscow--how durable and loyal is the state to this war of extremely dubious strategic value?
You may want to ask Russians if it’s a war of dubious strategic value. As for how durable and loyal it is? Ukrainian intelligence recently reported that Russia is still recruiting more contract soldiers than they need for replacements of losses.
That doesn’t say everything, but it is certainly an indicator of both public opinion and regime stability.
The way I see it the goal of any solid coercive policy isn't simpy to raise costs on the enemy, but to prevent them from being able to win.
Well yeah, but that’s clearly not on the table, and Trump doesn’t really have any leverage. He tried with offering to lift sanctions, they weren’t interested.
Their budget is what can be hit at, and tariffs and secondary sanctions are a decent move for the US here. Russia needs its current levels of gas revenues, probably not much lower, and to get those it needs a couple of middle powers who aren't sanctioned or on the US shitlist to bankroll them. They can't produce or indigenously develop everything they need, they need some forex, they need some outside partners. So far that's been China, India, and then reduced but still-there purchases from the EU and Japan. The EU and Japan can probably be squeezed with some effort. China cannot be squeezed. But they're not exactly Russia's ally in this venture, and their energy purchases from Russia are somewhat limited by pipeline infrastructure and China's massive domestic coal industry. The bulk of their electricity is from coal, not gas. India though? Maybe! Even marginal reductions in Russia's gas revenues make their ability to fund an open-ended attritional war and attendant rebuilding of what they blew up (and thus bought) complicated to difficult.
Problem is that Russia is a continental power that produces everything from raw materials, food, and much of what they need for military hardware themselves. Everything else they get through China or sanction busting.
Or through the rest of the world that doesn’t give two shits about the war in Ukraine.
Trying to squeeze them through oil/gas is the equivalent of pissing your pants to stay warm at this point.
The sanctions that were put in place definitely hindered the RF's ability to fight in Ukraine for the past 2 years,
Doubt. Russia currently produces close to a thousand advanced cruise missile drones a week. If they need more hardware, I’m sure the Chinese will be happy to help. And given their export economy Trump has zero leverage on China.
(Keep in mind that almost everything “Made in the US” has Chinese sub components. Even American military hardware is dependent on it. If China blocked exports to America, the economy would grind to a halt in a few months. Even the MIC and aircraft manufacturers were affected when Trump tried the trade war on the chinks earlier this year.)
given the general underperformance of their military and the disastrous grinding strategy chosen to conduct the war.
The Russian army definitely underperformed in the first year, but has since not just defeated a major NATO planned offensive, but also consistently grained ground.
As for the “grinding strategy” that seems to be more the result of 21st century warfare, a battlespace that has been heavily built up with defensive structures over a decade, and trying to limit casualties.
Still, I do think this is too little too late. The dynamics in Ukraine aren't good and favor Russia more and more each day. Russia's gaining ground fast, Ukraine is either retreating or just running dangerously low on manpower
They’re winning the war, and hurting the American or European economy to try and drag it out is top dollar retarded.
Still, I think Trump is betting that 1) there is enough time and 2) that the higher prices will be ephemeral since Russia cannot really tolerate much further reductions in their market. Russia losing even some of its market for energy puts a serious cramp on that victory budget of theirs, especially since the aftermath has them still living as a pariah state.
Pariah state among who? Europe? Who cares. Europe is broke anyways. The rest of the world doesn’t really care all that much
(Shit, at a recent G20 summit, they couldn’t even agree on a statement that went beyond: “War is bad, mkay?”)
and Europe’s share of the world trade and GDP has been steadily shrinking.
As for America, America’s business is business, and there’s plenty of corporations who’ll be more than happy to do business there as soon as they can.
(Shit, plenty of European and American corps still do business in Russia.)
They're already forced to sell oil at a discount, the risk pushes safe energy buys up in priceand dangerous ones down, and fucking with their money and forcing our allies to accept higher prices for energy or no export revenues and being on the American shit list is a decent strategy. It's better than the mountain of dead slavs strategy from Biden and co. The risk will turn, I think, into a deeper discount on Russian gas, not following the trend of the rest of the energy market. The risk gets exceptionally high.
Slightly lower prices? Sure. But not much. The “oil price caps” never really took. And even at a discount, Russian oil revenue still goes up when prices rise.
The best thing that can be done vis a vis Ukraine is to stay out and mind your own business.
See also: Europe whose industry has been ravaged by the higher energy costs they inflicted on themselves.
I don't think Russia will do much besides desperately try to accelerate its campaign, which is good since it means the war will stop sooner and the fate of Europe can be decided with less of a gun to its head, and Russia can get start noticing that they have defeated themselves and brought NATO right to their borders.
Russia had NATO on the borders for years. Norway. That wasn’t an issue. It was Ukraine as a NATO member that was a problem.
Now they’ll get a NATO on their borders with mostly empty arsenals. And without the money to replace it. (For example: Entire countries, such as Netherlands or Denmark doesn’t even have artillery any more since they sent it to Ukraine to get blown up. The same can be said about tanks and air defenses in many cases.
Ukraine (what will be left of it) will be a bankrupt, and depopulated place that won’t be a threat.
That would probably count as a solid W for many Russians.
This is far to autistically detailed so here’s a TLDR: It’s too late to change the outcome of the war, and trying to somehow double down on the investment our elites have made on the outcome of the war will only hurt regular folks and non-Russian economies.
