Always useful to check past predictions from the author, e.g.
So, what would happen to those 6 million barrels a day if the West stopped buying? Russian officials have threatened to send it “elsewhere,” while the media have focused on stories of stepped-up sales to China and India. But this threat of a redirection to Asia is a paper tiger. - Apr 26, 2022
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/04/26/sanction-r...
Once sanctions are fully in place, Russia’s total crude and product exports (seaborne + land) could fall by as much as 3.3 to 3.9 million barrels a day from a baseline of 7.5 million barrels a day - Oct 19, 2022
https://navigatingrussia.substack.com/p/putins-looming-tanke...
Lots of convincing details and analysis about how oil would be stranded in Russia or forced to sell to the west at a deep discount due to the "price cap" strategy. So what are Russian oil exports looking like 2 years later?
Russia continues as a dominant oil exporter in 2023 despite global sanctions, maintaining a yearly export volume of around 7.5 million barrels per day (mb/d), as per analysis by the International Energy Agency.
With EU/UK/US markets turning away, Russia has pivoted towards India, China, Türkiye, and countries in the Middle East, retaining its position as the world’s second largest oil exporter behind the US in 2023.
https://qery.no/russian-oil-exports-pivots-towards-the-east/
According to the [IEA], Russian ... exports have remarkably steady around 7.5 million barrels per day (although there has been a big shift away from supplying the EU directly)
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/how-make-price-cap-russian-oi...
Why compare to 2023 data? there's 2024 data readily available. https://energyandcleanair.org/december-2024-monthly-analysis...
1.) there's no need to focus on barrels per day; fuel export revenue per day is more important. and from the link, we can see that it was around 1B EUR per day in 2022, and now it's around 600M EUR per day in Dec. 2024. Not great, but as we will see, it's mainly propped up by China.
2.) top 4 buyers of Russia fossil fuels in December 2024 are China, Turkey, India, and EU. China being top buyer is not surprising, given they are allied in the war - China is cutting off drones to Ukraine while supplying more to Russia.
3.) fossil fuel shipment departures from Russia has steadily declined from 80% in Jan 2022, to less than 20% in December 2024.
> fossil fuel shipment departures from Russia has steadily declined from 80% in Jan 2022, to less than 20% in December 2024
What does No. 3 mean?
It means official Russian shipment of oil has decreased, but what takes its place is the growth of ‘shadow’ tankers. And that reduces G7+ shipping industry’s leverage over Russia. It's in the article linked above. Most of the shadow tankers have helped Russia's oil trade stay alive https://apnews.com/article/russia-sanctions-shadow-fleet-oil..., mainly due to Chinese entities. But recently EU has put more sanctions on China for that https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-adopts-new-russia-sa...
The co-mingling of Russian and Chinese naval forces is also very evident recently, with the recent cutting of European underwater cable. Are Russia and China conducting undersea sabotage? | DW News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ObgVV-HJtI
What does “shadow tankers” even mean? These aren’t insured by the monopolies in the City of London so they’re “ghost” or “shadow” tankers?
Doesn’t make their oil carrying capacity any lesser.
> Doesn’t make their oil carrying capacity any lesser
They’re derelicts fond of puking up their contents [1]. More practically, dark crude sells at a 20 to 30% discount. (Granted, I know the Indian numbers more confidently than the Chinese refiners’.)
[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-shadow-fleet-tanker-o...
When a lot of the oil trade between Russia and China/India and others is done in mutual currencies, revenue predictions are unlikely to be accurate.
From your first link: "However, Russian oil export revenue saw a $4.2 billion decline due to G7 price caps and a fall in global oil prices."
To be fair, China’s oil demand tempered [1] and the IEA projected massive coming surpluses [2] in that time.
[1] https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/chinas-slowing-oil-dem...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/oil-demand-set-peak-...
At what price are they exporting it right now, remind me?
There is a theme here - these predictions don't account for the existence of Asia. Chinese military planners have probably noticed that after it is done with Russia the US will be focusing on China. It is very favourable to them to fight the US in a proxy war rather than with Chinese troops. The resources the US is using to try to coerce Russia are probably the same that it will use against China, so if the US fails in Russia it may be exhausted of the ability to resist China.
If I were China's (one of the world's largest creditors, I might note) leadership then there is a pretty good chance I would backstop Russia's debt in this case just to see how badly it hurts the US. Bonus points that then there is financial leverage over a resources superpower who's resources are needed for China's industry.
> if the US fails in Russia it may be exhausted of the ability to resist China
Russia exposed the West’s military unpreparedness. We’re correcting to the tune of trillions of collective dollars of defence investment.
> then there is financial leverage over a resources superpower who's resources are needed for China's industry
China already practically has this. That said, yes—the article’s analysis fails to account for a likely Chinese bail-out of the Russian banking system.
The US started this war ~$30 trillion in debt, with the worlds largest military budget by a big margin. Colour me sceptical that billions more dollars will help. The US tried that, it didn't work out. Last I saw, the interest on the debt was higher than its military spending; from the peanut gallery it looks more like more spending will get them a classic over-extension and collapse.
The US wants to live in a backwards world where massive debtors can sustain wars indefinitely but creditors will get exhausted. It'd be great for them if that works, but I'd tag that sort of thinking as a big contributing factor in Trump returning to the White House. They don't seem to have the juice to pull a war with Russia off.
Not sure how any of this is relevant to what we were just discussing.
> US wants to live in a backwards world where massive debtors can sustain wars indefinitely but creditors will get exhausted
Weird side street to get lost in while discussing Russia getting financially bailed out by China.
>They don't seem to have the juice to pull a war with Russia off.
My brother in Christ, Russia can’t even pull off a war with its much smaller neighbor who is using NATO’s scraps and hand-me-downs.
I have a tough time seeing it. That requires me to believe that NATO is unhappy about Russia invading Ukraine, capable of turning Russia back and actively choosing not to. But willing to make a mortal enemy of the Russian military by getting a lot of Russians killed. And actively spinning up new military capability because, while obviously they aren't in a hard spot, they need to move to a better place ASAP.
I have a much easier time believing that NATO has given Ukraine all the support it can and it wasn't enough to halt the Russian advance. The Russians are clearly paying a terrible price, but NATO doesn't believe it can charge any more than that.
Russia captured barely more than 4000 sq km of territory in all of 2024. Seems like Ukraine is doing quite well halting the Russian advance and making them pay a terrible price.
What is your preferred out outcome for the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
Why are you testing loyalties? What roenxi does is the same speculation that is done daily by the U.S. state department and the CIA. It is tiresome in 2025.
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if it wasn’t for the russians you’d be writing this comment in german
I live in the US. And the US gave the Soviet Union a TON of military hardware to fight the Germans.
Vehicles: 400,000 vehicles, including jeeps and trucks
Aircraft: 14,000 aircraft
Tanks: 13,000 tanks
Tractors: 8,000 tractors
Other supplies: 4.5 million tons of food, 2.7 million tons of petroleum products, millions of blankets, uniforms, and boots, and 107,000 tons of cotton
Other items: Guns, ammunition, explosives, copper, steel, aluminum, medicine, field radios, radar tools, and a Ford Company tire factory
Total value: $11.3 billion in goods and services from 1941 through 1945, which is equivalent to $180 billion in 2016 dollars
Very unlikely, for the simple reason that the US built the bomb. If Nazi Germany had not capitulated in May '45, it would have had one or several of its cities leveled by some nukes. The outcome of the war would have been the same, with the possible exception that Eastern Europe would not have fallen under Soviet influence.
Yeah. 1930s Poland and Ukraine would like to Thank Joesph for the humanitarian-driven altruism. Molotov–Ribbentrop really set Adolph straight. /s
Well I suppose the ideal state would be that people conclude war is expensive and brutal then we enter a sort of global pacifist state. But if you want me to get myself in to trouble I'm happy to oblige because someone has to keep saying it:
1) Ukraine shouldn't have been stationing CIA bases and taking military aid from the US before the war. It was stupid strategy and eventually got them invaded.
2) They should have surrendered on day 1. That would have gotten them a bad deal but not so many people dying.
3) They should still surrender on day 1,050. That'd get them a much worse deal and they've suffered who knows how many 100,000s of casualties for nothing. But it'd at least be over.
4) If we extrapolate from the poor quality of the Ukrainian leadership's decisions so far the worst case is the other side of the coin flip on things like:
> The U.S. intelligence pointed to a 50% chance that Putin would use tactical nukes...
~ https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-putin-biden-nu...
and there are a lot of deaths. I mean, hopefully Bob Woodward is a known liar because that is not a can of worms to open over questions like whether Moscow controls Kyiv. Many of us have lived in a world where Moscow controled Kyiv, it isn't that wildly new. While terrible it just isn't that big an issue. We've coped with the US invading multiple random countries in the Middle East, and while it is icky and unpleasant it is not as bad as the tactical nuke taboo breaking or something like the million casualties we're seeing in the Ukraine war from the West's policy of escalation.
Russia should have surrendered on day 1 of the kursk invasion. Dont you agree?
> They should have surrendered on day 1. That would have gotten them a bad deal but not so many people dying.
No, many more would have died. Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea put up little resistance in 2014 and that didn't save them. Their male population was forcibly conscripted to fight against Ukraine and has been decimated. Russia hit three bird with one stone: a) physically got rid of Ukrainians, Tatars and other people loyal to Ukraine, b) reduced the number of Russian citizens dying in the war to keep internal dissent down, c) stole the property of deceased conscripts and gave their homes to resettlers from Russia to further russify the occupied territories.
And this is only one of many crimes unleashed against the civilian population on occupied territories.
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" Ukraine shouldn't have been stationing CIA bases and taking military aid from the US before the war. "
Citation please. This sounds exactly like the lies Putin says to justify the invasion.
"They should have surrendered on day 1."
So if your country is invaded you would surrender "day one"?
"If we extrapolate from the poor quality of the Ukrainian leadership's decisions so far "
What decisions would those be? Zelensky has done a very good job in a very difficult situation.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/23/ukraine-cia-...
Or refer to Trump Impeachment 1, the fuss at the time involved sending military aid to Ukraine.
> So if your country is invaded you would surrender "day one"?
Yes. If a bloody loss is inevitable that is explicitly what I'm saying. If we were invaded by the likes of New Zealand, Papua New Guinea then I'd probably be OK with fighting. But we were going to be the site of a proxy war the smart thing to do is fold immediately and ask the majors to go elsewhere. Australia wouldn't survive a China-US proxy war if it has reached the point of an actual invasion, we'd be better off surrendering and making do. Although I'd be pointing that out after having attempted to flee the country for obvious reasons.
The link you provide was AFTER Russia invaded Ukraine. You can't use the actions of a country to defend against and invasion to JUSTIFY the invasion. Well, Russia does, but it doesn't actually make sense to do so.
Ukrainians understand better than anyone just how much you DO NOT want to be under the thumb of Putin. I don't blame them for fighting back.
And this isn't, or at least did not start out as a "Russia-US proxy war". Ukraine is a sovereign country that sensibly wanted to forge strong ties to Europe and the West. For selfish and egotistical reasons Putin hated that idea and his puppet was going to ignore this desire so Ukrainians kicked him out.
You can't justify the war with actions taken before the war either, the technical term for that is "unjustifiable".
But what the Ukrainian politicians then did wasn't sensible. They've been broken. They have some of the poorest political leadership we've seen out of any country so far in the 21st century. They've managed to transition their country from comfortable and improving to a smouldering wreck. At every turn they've managed to find an option that leaves them unambiguously worse off than they were before. It is a case study in diplomatic failure and what not to do when threatened by a larger, more militarily competent neighbour.
" They've managed to transition their country from comfortable and improving to a smouldering wreck."
No that was Russia. What you are doing is blaming a women for being punched in the face because she fought back against a rapist.
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Predictions failed to take into account Bidens cowardice. Not only he didnt deliver lon range weapons in time, but intervened on behalf of russia when Ukraine build their own drones able to reach far away refineries. Even sanctions omitted main russian oil trading banks and shadow fleet until last week.
If you read the WSJ article Biden hasn't been running things since at least 2021. The fault for the Ukraine war is almost entirely Jake Sullivans.
The American foreign policy establishment abandoned trumps deterrence policy which stopped putin invading in 2018.
I actually think the current approach was a deliberate strategy.
Rather than help Ukraine quickly win the war they prefer to slow bleed Russia to help their aims in Syria, Iran, Taiwan etc.
Blunt russian power yes. It doesn't work though, such weakness has only emboldened the Chinese who have started building landing barges to invade taiwan.
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2025/01/china-suddenly-...
And economically strangle the EU, which is now additionally danger of being crushed between whatever is bargained between Trump and Putin.
At this stage it is impossible to say whether Syria and possibly Greenland are part of a bargain to end the Ukraine war (You get the four provinces, we get Syria and take Greenland from the EU, probably by political influence via NGOs and a sort of color revolution that leads to the "independence" of Greenland).
Color revolutions only exist in the paranoid mind of dictators.
Interestingly, Wikipedia is run by dictators:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution
But thanks for updating us on the latest forbidden term. I wonder how many words we will have left next year.
As a dictator it's much easier to believe the CIA is trying to overthrow you instead of acknowledging that your economic mismanagement has made you unpopular. Surrounding yourself with yes men keeps you out of touch with popular sentiment.
Nah. It's explained by the regular stupidity. The Western governments had to show that they are doing something.
No, worse. They trusted their experts and they trusted what the Ukrainians reported. They smelled blood and giddily thought they had the opportunity to humiliate Russia—without getting their hands too dirty. Culminating in the resounding failure of the 2023 Kontr.
By fall 2023 they knew the score. But they couldn’t get out then and they still can’t.
'Kontr' sounds like an untranslated word no doubt taken verbatim from some low budget propaganda.
Could you share a link to the article, please?
This directly conflicts with numerous firsthand accounts of the Biden administration, as reported by journalist Bob Woodward in his most recent book War. In his reporting, Biden is hands on and directly involved with foreign policy. In one account, Jake Sullivan's own wife listened in on a daily briefing call with the President and came away from it saying she wished the world could "see this version of the president," because he was so sharp and focused.
Regarding Ukraine, Biden was the one who made the decision not to get the US directly involved in the war. Sullivan even had to play devil's advocate in Biden's decision, because he and the CIA chief thought it was a horrible idea to announce to the world that we were committing to zero troops on the ground. One of Biden's biggest beliefs is that "great powers don't bluff," though, so it was important for Biden to clearly communicate the limits of US engagement in the conflict.
He wanted the Ukrainians to know (according to the reporting in the book) that the US would supply and support them, but the cavalry would not be charging over the hill to save the day. If some horrible event happened in Ukraine, he knew that his generals, the media, and the public would look to him and say "well, don't you think now is the time we should get American boots on the ground? Why aren't you acting?"
Delusional.
The Biden administration slow rolled delivering tanks/jets/ATACMS for years. For ATACMS in Russia they delayed over two years. The options were never just doing nothing or put boots on the ground.
Why are the only accounts that support this Trump strong Biden weak narrative are multiple throwaways with no sources.
I have linked sources in this thread.
Edit: I made the mistake of replying to a "throwaway" that isn't saying something that is secret or potentially harmful to a real person. A fully anonymous account just saying stuff can just argue incorrectly forever and then make a new account no matter any amount of fact checking
It's not delusional, and I agree that it wasn't a binary choice of do nothing (which the Biden admin didn't choose anyway) or boots on the ground. There was a litany of actions Biden's administration took after Russia invaded, all with the goal of arming Ukraine, training Ukrainians to fight the Russians, and convincing Europe at large that Russia was a problem for the whole continent.
Should they have given them more arms, and faster? Maybe, but we have the benefit of hindsight. The Biden admin was constantly worried about Russia's threats of nuclear weapons, which the intelligence agencies were reporting as credible.
This is all detailed in Woodward's book.
You think you, anonymous HN rando, know better than Bob Woodward, an award-winning and massively impactful investigative journalist...? Talk about delusional!
We all saw the debate. If some journalist is willing to lie and delude themselves about Bidens cognitive ability it doesn't change the reality.
Russia didn't invade until Trump left office because Trump was doing his best to weaken or destroy NATO.
Putin didn't invade in 2018 because trump threatened to nuke Moscow if he did.
https://kyivindependent.com/trump-suggested-he-would-have-bo...
He also talked about this conversation with Putin in the Joe Rogan interview.
If Trump had weakened NATO it would have made an invasion more likely, not less.
Putin didn't invade in 2018-19 because he was still preparing. There are indications that the invasion was planned for 2020, but obviously COVID happened.
Trumpy tantrums did nothing.
It took a month to prepare. The original plan was to invade in 2018 but Trump said no. Then covid happened and it got delayed again. Then the Chinese asked that Putin wait until the Beijing Olympics were over. This is how it became February 2022.
Further the Biden Afghan withdrawal convinced Putin that Biden wouldn't react.
Bullshit. 2018 was the year when the FIFA World Cup was held in Russia. Putin obviously didn't want to sabotage them.
Trumpy tantrums did nothing, I repeat. Neither is he going to do anything useful once he gets back into the office. Putin will play him off like a sucker he is.
I was waiting for some sensible explanation of Russia's "economic miracle" and this sounds at least somewhat satisfactory. Let's hope the theory is true and the debt crisis comes soon enough.
There is the cost on Ukraine and EU too. Let's hope Russian economy collapse before Ukraine's support.
The EU spending has brought a lot of benefits though.
Massive investment in domestic defence production, improved border and maritime security, disconnection of the reliance on Russia for oil/gas etc. All of which will be useful given the likely souring of the EU/US relationship over the coming years.
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Better for whom, Putler and his paid bots?
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> tell me more about 20%
They said they “don’t think USA is dealing with 20%+ interest rates like Russia is,” emphasis mine.
(Russian mortgage rates are around 30% for general population and 3 to 6% for “IT workers, families with young children and buyers in Russia's far east” eligible for state-subsidised mortgages, which comprise “70% of all mortgage loans” [1].)
> 85square apartment costs around 100k$, it's not a problem
That’s 7x average salary [2]. The equivalent in America is $440k [3]. That’s $1,300/sq ft, comparable to New York City [4].
[1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/imminent-russian-rate...
[2] https://www.timechamp.io/blogs/the-average-salary-in-russia-...
[3] https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/AWI.html
[4] https://www.silive.com/data/2024/12/nyc-has-most-expensive-h...
Russian banks also rarely offer 30 year mortgages, only 10-year to the average person, exactly because of shit like that happens every 20 years like clockwork (from TFA):
> In late 2024, the Kremlin became increasingly aware that its off-budget funding scheme is unleashing potentially disruptive systemic financial risks, such as prohibitively high interest rates, liquidity and reserve problems at banks, and a severely compromised monetary transmission mechanism.
Those liquidity and reserve problems always end the same way: the majority of regular people lose their deposits. My grandfather didn’t get his first bank account until 2020 and that was only to easily receive money from family in other countries, not to store his existing money.
It's not limited to deposits. Most money reforms were designed to screw up people keeping their saving at home as well. Also there is inflation, when both deposits and "existing money" get diluted while the printer goes brrr.
And investing/keeping money in assets is not exactly widespread there in general population.
> $100k in Russia in cash
> its not a problem
Look, mom, I’m trolling!
“Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.”
Thanks. Got a bit emotional there.
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> the US national debt grew rapidly when it made the mistake of directly invading countries instead of just financing partners
What does this refer to? We invaded Canada in 1812 [1] and Mexico in 1846 [2]. We’ve been “directly invading countries” for longer than we’ve been on fiat.
Debt:GDP spiked in WWII and then began a more-gradual increase from the 1980s [3]. Our debt has more-diverse causes than military spending.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812#Invasions_of_Upp...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War
[3] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/natio...
In WWII, we had rationing of materials, buying war bonds, and other sorts of very intentional things. During the Bush WMD hunt, we gave tax cuts. Not even close to being the same.
> Not even close to being the same
Correct. And yet, the fiscal impact is still almost insignificant compared to civilian spending.
Not really sure how the fiscal impact was insignificant when it drastically increased the national debt which was significantly purchased by foreign interests.
> how the fiscal impact was insignificant when it drastically increased the national debt
Because other things were far more drastic. The 8 pp the Afghanistan & Iraq wars raised American debt:GDP is simply swamped by the other factors.
The wars added to our debt with nothing to show for it. But it’s incorrect to say it’s even remotely the cause of our indebtedness—we were more than capable of absorbing an 8 pp hit to our debt profile.
> which was significantly purchased by foreign interests
For a superpower, this is the safest form of debt. It can be defaulted on without trashing the banking system.
Surely you're old enough to remember March of 2003? Shock and awe? The invasion of Afghanistan occurred in 2001.
Complete the thought: how much debt did the Iraq and Afghanistan wars add compared to other policy actions?
Debt:GDP went from 55% in 2001 to 63% in 2007; by 2012 it was 100% [1]. (2016 [105%] to 2020 [126%], in case you think it’s partisan.)
We blow the bill in peacetime. Despite a massive military budget.
[1] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/natio...
> Notable recent events triggering large spikes in the debt include the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, the 2008 Great Recession, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Here are the major costs according to your source. Some things would have a reasonable chance to raise or maintain the US' book value, and some were delusional expenditures unless war pigs make good piggy banks.
> the U.S.’ book value
This is a nonsense metric for international finance.
> some were delusional expenditures
Moving the goalposts [1]: Nobody suggested the wars weren’t delusional; you claimed they’re the cause of America’s debt. That is wrong.
We could have gone on over half a dozen Afghanistan & Iraq wars for the 2008 Great Recession and Trump tax cuts alone. The cause of our deficits is not “directly invading countries.”
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1984 babyyyy