Author | Lightnews

An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 3h

The reason I’m comparing it to 2020 is because what we should have seen is the russian economy boom due to massive investment from the government.

Which should give you a cushion so that even a huge drop from 2023 should still leave you above the crater that is 2020.

But no. It’s much much worse.

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 11h

So I’ve been trying to find hard data to back up the sales results I dug up, but it appears that we’re on track for sales about what they had in 2020, during COVID. Without accounting for inflation.

Looking at ROMIR, that’s over 100% cumulative by now.

So real sales may be 50% of 2020. Winning!

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 14h

It's probably better to focus on identifying where the most fragile situations are. Sitting around and waiting is a terrible way to win a war. You win by actively making the situation worse.

Neither you nor I are in any position to do so, but we may help the people who are find new opportunities.

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 15h

Correct me if I’m wrong, but 2024 was also a disastrous year for sales, yes? Which means this disaster is on top of last year’s disaster.

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 15h

If they fire enough people in a short enough period of time they may free up enough cash for a few minutes that they can hand to the government.

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 1d

NO.

Get over your voice. It sounds great.

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 1d

“We are no longer the russians who say ‘24kg.’ We are now the russians who say ‘inflation doesn’t exist! Please lower the key rate?’”

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 1d

I'm sorry, they list *farming* as a mostly profitable industry?

Did you see the post on telegram where russian dairy farmers were complaining that milk production went down, but rosstat decided to redo the numbers so it went 'up' instead?

An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 1d

It's always fun how they decide to change their minds after the fact.

Moscow sent congratulations when we first did it. Then they pretended we didn't...when they figured out they couldn't.

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 2d

Well, they're owned and operated by the Ministry of Finance. Siluanov is both Finance Minister and Chairman of the Board at Sberbank, but he is the Chairman because he is the Minister, not the other way around.

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 2d

Ah right. That makes sense. Sort of. Except for the part where "recycling fee" really doesn't make any sense. That has nothing to do with you, though.

An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 2d

The price shot up 4% in one month?

The month where gasoline started to really disappear?

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 2d

Can't wait to see what happens when the Ukrainians break into that system, too. If they can clear out the Chinese and North Korean infestations.

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 2d

As a beer drinker with several decades of experience, I will point out that I have never, in my entire life, gone "it's chilly outside, maybe I shouldn't drink beer."

But I guess it sounds better than the Name You Must Never Utter, Volde- oh wait, sorry, Inflation.

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 2d

I wonder what effect this may be having on customs duties.

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 3d

Oh I know. I’m expressing my disappointment that they didn’t because it would have been totally on brand.

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 3d

Which would then involve punishing those that brought charges against the government officials, allowing for beautiful beautiful double taxation: first on the fined official, then on the person who brought this to other officials' attention.

This is Soviet in its practical diabolicalness.

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 3d

Give it time.

Or maybe they'll declare it's fallout from a magnetic storm.

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 4d

How does this get factored into the constantly revising russian budget? They’ve amended it several times already, but how much do each of these amendments factor in the cost of a 30% drop in tax rate compared to Jan-Feb?

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 4d

"At one point" is the key issue here. If you have a huge number of refineries why waste your money maintaining facilities that are cost inefficient?

So whatever they might have had are long gone. If they want to rebuild all of this, good luck. The scale here is gargantuan, and it ain't cheap.

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 5d

Have to wonder if something happened they didn't want coming out, and needed a few hours to keep it that way.

Not really related, but if something untoward were to happen to either of Belarus' oil refineries the same way as russian-supplied refineries in Europe, how easy would it be to find out?

An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 5d

At the same time, they’ve also claimed that Kharkiv Odesa and Mykolaiv are “russian” cities filled with “russians.”

If they want to destroy russian cities so badly, let them start with Moscow and St Petersburg.

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 6d

It's fine. The sad part is my musical knowledge of anything on the radio ended with the 90s. Literally anything that hit a pop music chart after 2000 involves me asking my wife "wait, who is this? Have I heard this before?" And she just sadly shakes her head.

So their tagline works great.

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 6d

Chinese tech but there are political risks and it’s going to take time and effort.

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An Annoyed Ukrainian American @annoyeduke.bsky.social · 6d

That will take years to prepare. They didn’t really have the capability to build new factories to build new tanks, just refurbish stored ones. Now that they’re running out they can work on it, but most russian factories nowadays rely on Western tech for production lines. They could start over with

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