Bad News For Lukashenko

01.07.2025, 11:47 charter97.org

Bad News For Lukashenko41.07.2025, 9:51 8,224 Russian money is running out.Russia's Gazprom has accumulated 60 billion cubic meters of gas and now does not know what to do with it. In an optimistic scenario, the Russian budget will lose 2.6 trillion rubles due to falling oil prices. Car production in May collapsed by 27 percent compared to May last year. The Russian economy is failing in whole sectors, so you can't even tell right away where it's worse, writes planbmedia.io.Liquid gasIt wasn't just Russia's pride and national treasure. "Gazprom was the weapon with which Russia was going to bring the West to its knees. It was assumed that Europe, dependent on Russian gas, would quickly freeze if Russian gas was gone. Europe did not freeze, but now Gazprom has nowhere to put its gas.The Reuters news agency writes that at the beginning of this year Gazprom had accumulated a reserve of 60 billion cubic meters of gas. This is more than three times more than all Belarus consumes in a year. So, even giving all the excess gas to Lukashenko for free is not a solution.Although, it is quite a sensible idea. At least, it is not worse than other ideas that the Russian authorities have. For example, the excess gas was supposed to be sold to China by building the Power of Siberia pipeline. It turned out that China does not need so much extra Russian gas. And even if China agrees, the revenues from gas sales will not recoup the costs of its transportation.In January, Putin said that he planned to sell 55 billion cubic meters of gas to Iran. The plan was questionable even then. Iran has enough gas of its own. And after all Russian aid to Iran in the recent war was limited to deep concerns, the idea finally moves into the realm of anti-science fiction.Another plan is to spend the extra gas to generate electricity for AI. Just like Lukashenko wants to spend extra electricity from the Belarusian nuclear power plant on mining cryptocurrencies.So now Russia's national treasure is pumping not only gas, but also money from the Russian budget. But there are too many people in need of budget money in Russia.The coal industry is breaking recordsOne of the options for using the extra gas is to support the coal industry with supplies of cheap electricity. To do this, however, new power plants would have to be built near the coal mines. That is, even more money would have to be spent. Perhaps giving money to coal miners would be easier. And even cheaper.And Russian coal miners need money. In the first quarter of this year, the losses of coal companies amounted to 80 billion Russian rubles. The industry was losing money at a rate of about a billion rubles a month. Now 62% of companies are unprofitable, with 30 companies under threat of bankruptcy.And all this is a direct consequence of the war. Having lost the European market due to sanctions, Russian coal miners could not compensate it with the Chinese one. Last year, supplies to China collapsed by 27% on the back of a 20% drop in world prices.And the coal industry in Russia is not just 300,000 people employed. It is also monocities, where the mine is the only source of local wealth. So if we choose who in Russia has the worst life, the coal industry has a chance to take the first place. But it is not certain yet.Who is the last? There is someone to compete with coal miners for the first places in the rating of the worst affected. In May, compared to May last year, Russia's food production fell by almost 3%. Wood production fell by 7%, furniture - by 14%.But the leader of the anti-rating was mechanical engineering. In it the production collapsed by 27%. And sales of new cars in Russia fell by 26% in the first quarter."We were very hopeful that first by the end of the first quarter of 2025, then by the middle of 2025, those accumulated by the end of last year runoffs, large-scale runoffs that are pressing on the market, they will, as they call it, dissolve, sell out," said AvtoVAZ CEO Maxim Sokolov.But it did not dissolve. Sokolov estimates that 500,000 extra cars are now piled up in Russian warehouses.Russian manufacturers traditionally blame Chinese competitors and high bank rates. But suddenly it turned out that Russian bankers are not doing so well either. As Sberbank CEO Herman Gref recently admitted, all forecasts were too optimistic compared to reality.Bloomberg writes that a number of bankers estimate that Russia will face a full-scale banking crisis within 12 months. Corporate and retail clients cannot pay on loans due to high interest rates. At the same time, official statistics do not reflect the real state of affairs. Banks simply postpone payments without transferring debts to the category of problem debts.Since 2022, the debts of companies have grown by 65%. The total debt amounted to 86 trillion Russian rubles as of June 1. Almost half of the amount comes to 78 of the largest Russian companies. Of those, one in six give up a third of their pretax profits to pay interest. And 8% of Russian companies do not earn even enough to pay interest.Take a swing at the sacredIt is commonly believed that against the general background only the Russian defense industry is doing well. While everything around it is going down, Russia's production of murder weapons is going up. But it seems that even there, the good times are coming to an end.The head of Rostec, Sergey Chemezov, wrote a column for RBC last week in which a long discourse on Russia's greatness led smoothly to the conclusion that Russia's defense industry should be given more money."Industry vitally needs long and cheap money to invest in the creation of new technologies and products."The head of Rostec is worried for good reason. At the forum in St. Petersburg, Putin boasted that the Russian economy will survive the war and immediately promised to start reducing spending on the war.So it will become more difficult for the Belarusian authorities to make money on the war in Ukraine. Russia has enough people of its own. And the money is running out.Oil is no longer the sameBecause Israel's war with Iran turned out to be a disappointment for the Russian authorities. Although, when it began Russian officials cheered up along with oil prices.But the joy was short-lived. After the truce was declared, the price returned to pre-war levels, and in some places fell even lower. Now Brent is trading at 68 dollars per barrel, while Russian oil is headed for fifty. While the pessimistic scenario of the Ministry of Finance assumed that it would cost 56.Based on this scenario, the Ministry of Finance has reduced expectations for oil and gas revenues to 2.6 trillion Russian rubles and increased the forecast of the budget deficit by the same amount. Now the forecast is Br3.8 trillion. At the same time, as of June 1, the real deficit was already 3.4 trillion.Additional revenues are not expected in Russia. To meet the forecasts, we need to spend much, much less. But the Russian authorities cannot spend less. So it remains to hope for pre-accumulated reserves. And in fact, there is not much of them left. War is expensive.The Price of WarThe Russian authorities have been preparing for an attack on Ukraine, and perhaps even a march on Europe, for many years. Among other things, so that the Russian economy could survive under sanctions and semi-autonomous navigation.It was for this purpose, and not because of concern for the welfare of the Russian people that the National Welfare Fund was created. At the beginning of the war it contained 150 billion dollars. This allowed the Russian economy not to collapse after the introduction of Western sanctions.But all good things come to an end, and war is expensive. Now there is about $40 billion of liquid assets left in the National Wealth Fund. Translated into Russian money, that's 3.3 trillion rubles. And this is already 100 billion less than the current deficit of the Russian budget.So Russia has no extra money left. There is still enough for the war, but not enough for one integration enthusiast.PATREONSupport the website Write your comment 4 You can support the website Charter97.orgMULTI-CURRENCY ACCOUNT FOR ASSISTANCE:Bank's name: Bank Millennium S.A.Address: ul. 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