Walls are closing in around Putin … Oligarchs turn against the war

Today, the biggest news is coming from the Kremlin itself

Here, Putin’s political rivals from both sides of the spectrum are turning against him, and turning against his war in Ukraine. Costing the oligarchs their fortune, and costing the left their social security, Putin’s empire is being brought down on top of him from all sides.

Recently, the leader of Russia’s communist party openly came out against the war in Ukraine, stating that Russia will ultimately face defeat if its current political course remains unchanged, and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine continues. Speaking at a press conference, he said that if the course does not change and this exhausting war continues, everyone will lose. His reasoning is clear: since the war began, the number of Russian billionaires has increased by fifty percent, accumulating a collective seven hundred billion dollars while domestic food prices have suffered. Even the official Kremlin statistics show that prices for basic vegetables have risen up to forty percent. He even publicly criticized corruption in the recent Duma elections, stating that voting saw widespread irregularities, along with the straight-up removal of monitoring officials in several regions.

Returning to the war, he spoke out against the fact that half of the Russian state budget is lost in the invasion, and that Putin’s aggression is burning every second ruble while the Russian people themselves suffer the cost and neglect. While Putin’s war is costing Russia an average of six-hundred-eighty million dollars per day, the state is cutting back heavily on healthcare, education, and welfare. While these three pillars of social security have been deteriorating for years before the war began, the diverting of funds away from them has accelerated their collapse. To name an example, Russia has lost half of its schools since the year two-thousand. The communist leader concluded his statements by saying that as the war continues, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

However on the other side of the spectrum, Russian oligarchs and business owners do not seem in favor of continuing the war either, as they are increasingly seeing the repercussions of the failing war in Ukraine. While Russian oligarchs are being forced to take care of their own air defense to protect against Ukrainian strikes, the Kremlin is seizing a massive amount of their assets to fund Putin’s war effort. Since the start of the war, Russian authorities have seized up to ninety billion dollars worth of oligarchs’ assets on grounds of corruption and national security. These are then directly sold or repurposed to feed the war machine that is quickly running out of gas. Many of these oligarchs now openly admit that they’re funneling their money away into accounts and development funds outside of Russia’s borders, to keep the money out of the Kremlin’s reach.

In addition to the sanctions and Ukrainian strikes, the lack of new investments into the Russian economy itself is causing the Russian economy to stagnate, growing only at a fraction of the pace compared to the rest of the world. Official state statistics say that the Russian economy is growing at a rate of only one percent, compared to the three to four percent worldwide average. It is important to note how the majority of this growth is due to the state’s investments into the war effort, through weapon manufacturing and high signing bonuses; however this growth remains within the economic sectors of the military industry or small businesses on a local level alone.

Overall, Putin’s political rivals on both side of the spectrum are turning against him and turning against his war. He has made an enemy out of both, cutting social security and state programs, while seizing economic assets from his richest elite. Putin is desperately trying to balance between the two, working hard to prevent either from fully rising up against him. Through repression of both he is currently able to stay in power for now, but as the oligarchs and Russian society’s criticism of him and the war increase, he is nearing a tipping point. It’s important to understand that a collapse of Putin’s regime will be sudden, and after a long series of looming warning signs that we are seeing now, with the Kremlin holding it off and pretending everything is fine, until very quickly it isn’t.