I want to try to encapsulate the magnitude of big picture problems Russia is having. So here is a list: 1. In the wake of a terrorist attack Putin is blaming Ukraine instead of ISIS. This means that they might not be taking steps to address the actual problem

2. Putin has now said that the attackers were radical islamists. Russian media has pointed to them being migrants and I’ve seen no efforts to cool tempers or prevent backlash to people who might be considered associated with the terrorists. Quite the opposite.

3. Many inside of Russia know that Putin was missing for 19 hours, previously joked about the warnings from the U.S. and that the argument that Ukraine was behind the attack is nonsense.

4. Migrants have never been in a good position in Russia but it has gotten significantly worse since the invasion as many are routinely rounded up and sent to fight in Ukraine.

This new waive of fear and hatred towards migrants, is not being discouraged by the government & propagandists, in fact quite the opposite. This could lead to innocent people being hurt and many migrants leaving either by choice or by force.

5. Russia has a demographic crisis and a MASSIVE labor shortage. This new wave of anti-migrant sentiment is happening at the beginning of spring planting. You can imagine how Russian agriculture will go if there’s no labor.

6. It appears another one of Putin’s wonder weapons was defeated by the Patriot system, which is another embarrassment to Putin as Russia’s military export business continues to collapse and Russia struggles to deliver on the contracts it does have.

7. The threat of secondary sanctions from the U.S. appears to have worked as many have stopped banking with Russia.

8. India continues to reduce the amount of oil it purchases from Russia, the combination of banking issues and issues with sanctions has made Russian an unattractive purchase (for now at least) and India is buying more from Saudi Arabia & the U.S.

9. Due to years of neglect, Russia infrastructure is collapsing. Hundreds of thousands of Russians were without heat this winter due to the degradation of these systems that are connected to MASSIVE apartment blocks.

This is probably just the beginning of this problem as the budget for 2024 to deal with essentially the same or worse when accounting for inflation as it was in 2023 and is planned to be DRASTICALLY cut 2025.

10. The key rate is 16% 11. Russia installed a new person to head the Russian navy. Days later during exercises the Russian navy accidentally hit a Russian trawler in the Baltic. Then communications and possibly more boats were struck in Crimea by Ukraine.

12. Russia is having to finance big ticket projects out of the National Welfare fund because no one else will invest in them

13. Russia is unable to stop Ukraine from hitting its oil refineries. Which could lead to a societal collapse. Propagandists yell on TV about why they’re not protecting them themselves and says they’re only paying taxes! Another Lukoil executive mysteriously dies

14a. Due to the issues with the Houthis Russia is shipping stuff by rail ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE COUNTRY to the Pacific and back again. Which is causing challenges for the railways.

14b. Due to several bad decisions years before, Russian railways are having trouble maintaining their fleet. Shortages of parts, issues with sanctions, and labor shortages are causing compounding problems and downtime for repairs continues to get worse.

14c. Because the refineries are being hit, Russia is relying on the Railways to transport even more products from operational products even further distances on an already congested system.

14d. There’s over 2,500 oil & gas filled tankers just sitting on the Northern Caucasian railroad because they can’t travel across the Crimean bridge, and some of them have been sitting there for 6 months

14e. Russia decided to violate the Weapons embargo on North Korea. The LARGEST port structure on Russia’s east coast (Pacific Ocean) participated. So the United States sanctioned it.

Now Russia’s biggest port with some of the most modern and efficient infrastructure will not be used by most legitimate major shipping companies. This will likely cause complications as they will have to switch to OTHER Pacific port that are less well equipped.

14f. Everyone in a while some people blow up the railway in the middle of Russia where there is a bottle neck 14g. There are a lot of places in Russia that are accessible for shipping BY TRAIN because the roads suck. There are NO ALTERNATIVES

15. Russia tried to make a commercial plane domestically, they keep pushing the deadline back and their current work in progress is WAY too heavy. And it’s really bad when a plane is too heavy.

16. Russias telecommunications infrastructure is falling apart. Russian telecom operators were searching for USED parts to try to keep in running as sanctions are kicking their butt.

There’s no 5G in the country and Russian companies finally had to admit that they CAN’T manufacture equipment domestically.

17. Russia isn’t buying medicine. There’s a shortage of vaccines, even basic childhood vaccines. The Russian Ministry of Health turn around and tells everyone they’re mistaken and Russia had (insert number) packages of (insert missing medication) so that will last months!

There have been measles outbreaks that the government has then blamed on migrants instead of the lack of vaccines. And the Russian Government cut 10% from the Russian Healthcare Budget for 2024 so they could fund the war

18. Russia’s demographics get worse as the Russian government hasn’t yet provided meaningful funding to promote the birth rate. Peskov decided to tell everyone that they should make it “fashionable” to have large families as if they will solve the problem.

19. Russia was reported to have a seed shortage. But what was more telling is that several countries refused to answer their calls when trying to procure seeds from them. International relations are not going well.

20. Putin has an ICC arrest warrant, so there’s a LOT of places he can’t travel. It’s been making BRICS meetings…awkward.

21. Russia’s space program isn’t going well. Not only did Luna-25 crash and burn, which was followed by India successfully landing on the moon, but much of the contracts they had also disappeared. Now Roscosmos is selling off real estate assets.

22. Soldiers that were pardoned as part of the prison program continue to anger the population as dangerous criminals are released and they are continuing to commit crimes.

In ADDITION it appears that if wounded soldiers manage to get their physical wounds treated, which is often a challenge itself, PTSD appears to be widespread and untreated. And even the soldiers that WEREN’T taken from the prisons are committing violent crimes in Russia.

23. Many people still aren’t getting paid. 24. Alcoholism is on the rise! 25. Inflation is out of control, even as the government manipulates the data to make it appear like it isn’t!

26. Russia’s efforts to create a “Sovereign Internet” led to a crash and during the massive internet outage people had issues with payments on the railways among other things.

27. Chinese experts wrote up document panning the Kinzhal missile, pointing out all the things we pointed out and that Putin was lying when he described its capabilities. I enjoyed the heck out of reading about it!

28. Businesses continue to pull out of Kaliningrad, many declaring they’re moving to mainland Russia. One wonders what the region will do if there’s no employment.

29. Russia is actively sabotaging its education system as it tries to instill its ideological narratives. Declaring many “foreign agents” and that people shouldn’t have books about them in libraries or reference them in their papers.

30. Remember all the dangerous people returning from the war? They’re also putting them in positions authority and installing them in schools. Putin is telling people that they should be the new elites. I’m sure that will go well!

31. Kadyrov endorsed collective punishment a few months ago saying: “if one of the relatives has done wrong and the criminal cannot be found, their brother, their father would be killed” Which seems like a disaster waiting to happen.

32. The entire country currently seems to be focused on whether Russia will legalized the death penalty. Of course Russia is already executing people, but that’s not “official” and many are very concerned about it.

33. Russia continues to scold and shame those who chose to leave Russia, when they desperately need them to return. The longer these people are gone, the less likely they are to ever return. And MANY of these people are highly skilled & educated.

Other countries are happily scooping these people up and suddenly countries like Uzbekistan have an instant IT industry simply by seizing the opportunity.

34. Kazakhstan has seized the opportunity to further separate itself from Russia. The president told Putin on stage to his face a SPIEF that he would recognize the Donbas regions as independent. The country has continued to remove Soviet and Russian symbolism.

It has pushed back against Russian propaganda, flat out banning several propagandists from the country. This widening gap between Russia and Kazakhstan is especially problematic because of things like the Baikonur Cosmodrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baikonur_Cosmodrome…

35. Relations with Armenia have completely deteriorated as the Russia’s CTSO has proven to be a complete failure. When Armenia called Russia for help, they left Armenia high and dry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Security_Treaty_Organization…

36. Russia never could get Belarus to fight on Ukraine. And as Russia for years looked down on Belarusian military, Russia had to turn to BELARUS to train some of mobilized soldiers.

37. They lost a submarine to Ukraine. A SUBMARINE! Sure it was in dry dock, but they still lost it.

38. NATO is now bigger than ever as Sweden and Finland have joined the alliance

39. Wagner is gone, everyone knows who killed Prigozhin.

40. Even if a Putin shows up, nobody is confident it’s THE Putin, leading Peskov to tell everyone that there aren’t any Putin doubles. And once Peskov denies something they’re even more confident it’s is true. All of this makes Putin look weak, just like his giant tables.

41. Russia had a pogrom in Dagestan. They looked in a planes engine to see if they could find any Jews. Solovyov seemed freaked out on air. He reminded everyone that he knew Apti really well!

42. Russia’s plan to “freeze Europe” failed and Russia has lost most of that revenue. Pipelines to send the natural gas to other locations don’t really exist and efforts to turn it to LNG have been…challenging

43. The Tucker Carlson Interview. What a disaster

44. Putin made a recent big announcement about how he was going to make a land railway route to Crimea. He completely failed to point out that ALL of that would be in range of Ukraine’s missiles, and Ukraine had already taken out a bridge crossing into Crimea. So….yeah

45. Before Russia invaded Ukraine RAND put out a document in like 2019 outlining how they could deal with Russia if they needed to using nonviolent means. It mostly involved getting Russia to overextend itself. Russia knew about this. THEY OVEREXTENDED THEMSELVES ANYWAY!

I’ll put it right here for anyone who actually reads this far as my gift to you! https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/RB10000/RB10014/RAND_RB10014.pdf…

46. Russia had to move a lot of its planes REALLY far away to avoid getting hit by the Ukrainians. They thought the St. Petersburg area would be far enough. Ukraine snuck cardboard drones into Russia and launched them from inside Russia destroying the planes.

Russia then moved a bunch up towards the Arctic

47. Russia keeps losing A-50s. Which is then leading the Russian military to make the bizarre declaration it was Russian Air Defense that shot them down not Ukraine. Even though Ukraine said they did it. What insane sort of logic is that? And to do it multiple times!?

48. Putin is determined to make Surovikin disappear. Even after he was missing for a long time from view and the briefly turning up in Algeria only to disappear again, the name Surovikin hasn’t gone away. Much of this was because of the defensive line Surovikin had built.

And every time someone referred to it, it was call the “Surovikin line” In a desperate attempt to get people to get people to STOP calling it the “Surovikin line” Shoigu declared that ACTUALLY the whole thing was PUTIN’S IDEA! Seriously, this happened!

49. No one is quite sure what Gerasimov’s job is at the moment. If Gerasimov has been demoted it’s a problem because it’s just another example of Putin breaking an agreement. The agreement is that as long as you are LOYAL, you get to keep your job.

Gerasimov has been loyal. So if Putin has demoted someone who is that close to him and has remained loyal - his power structure is now wobbly. People lose trust that loyalty will keep them safe and Putin has now brought someone closer to him that he may not trust.

50. The Russian military has lost a lot of leadership personnel. A lot of the Russian military works through what is similar to an apprentice program. They get sent to a unit to serve, that specific organization trains them. And I don’t mean as in a specialization.

Imagine if it was one towns McDonald’s franchise. Someone gets sent to a McDonald’s and the people there train them how to do the various jobs. Same thing. Now imagine if all the experienced people were dead or still fighting in Ukraine.

Ukraine has options to send people to train in MULTIPLE different countries. So not only are that maintaining the combat training, THEY’RE IMPROVING IT. Russia on the other hand had to ask Belarus for help, and they’ve lost a lot of Generals

51. They still haven’t solved the egg problem, domestic production continues to decline

52. Putin announced to the world that Russia had created a vaccine for cancer. No one believed him, and most people don’t even know he announced it.

53. Putin and Peskov complain about the shortage of scientists in Russia, but Russia also keeps throwing them in jail for things like treason, or they die under mysterious circumstances, like poison mushrooms. Or they die in pre-trial detention under mysterious circumstances!

54. No one is quite sure EXACTLY what happened to the Kompromat that we all feel confident that Prigozhin MUST have had. Nothing has surfaced that seems like it could be attributed to Prigozhin. If it exists, where is it?

55. The exit of many giant companies like Microsoft has lead to multiple issues as companies struggle to find alternatives. Currently, several Russian companies are looking at trying to invest in producing a domestic operating system. This doesn’t completely solve the problem

Because even if they make a domestic operating system, that doesn’t mean it will be compatible with some specialized softwares that are ONLY compatible with Microsoft. And some of these software are niche enough that Russia would not be able to allocate resources to fix it.

Also keep in mind that there is a severe labor shortage of skilled and experienced personnel in this field in Russia.

This also gives me an opportunity to share one of the things I find funniest. Because of this software problem, one the issues that Russia will have to deal with is THE LACK OF THE TIMES NEW ROMAN FONT https://www.forbes.ru/tekhnologii/494299-zakolocennye-okna-kakie-problemy-vyzovet-otkaz-microsoft-prodlevat-licenzii…

56. PACE declared that Putin was a dictator

57. Everyone knows that Putin poops in a suitcase while on trips. And a telegram channel convinced everyone that Putin accidentally fell down a flight of stairs and sh*t himself.

58. Maria Zakharova got banned from Bulgarian airspace forcing the Minister of Foreign Affairs Lavrov’s plane to be rerouted once they learned she was on board.

59. A little over a week ago the Russian Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy announced that if a conflict escalated between the U.S. & Russia, that the US had the ability to turn off ALL Russia’s western smartphones And just sort of left it at that

I mean, he sort of said that they should prepare for that. But considering all the propaganda that’s spread about how they’re already fighting NATO, this guy just sort of tosses this out there, and there’s NO reassurance to the public that it will be ok.

60. A fight has broken out in the Russian information space. - On one side is are the Russian military bloggers - On the others side, people in various leadership positions that don’t want certain information that looks bad to get out. They’ve turned to propagandists for help

In one incident people associated with Solovyov’s network dressed up some people in camo put them in what appeared to be BBQ hut filmed them and declared that they were actually the Russian 205th Brigade sending a message from Ukraine!

A popular Telegram channel was shut down and several Russian military bloggers have turned up dead, including one recently that reportedly committed suicide.

This sort of stuff illustrates how on multiple levels accurate information is not being relayed. How the heck are you supposed to lead an effective fighting force with this stuff going on? Meanwhile “unit cohesion” is not something I think they’ve even contemplated!

61. They’re executing their own soldiers

62. When Ukraine got HIMARS, Russia knew they got HIMARS. It was EXPLAINED how HIMARS works. That it uses GPS coordinates. Russia then put radar reflectors on everything , and then continued to waste time and energy installing them everywhere!

63. After years of using his power move of making others waiting for long times for Putin to show up, multiple heads of state have been returning the favor. The result is always a wonderfully awkward video of Putin just standing there…all alone…waiting.

64. There have multiple occasions now at international assemblies, where almost everyone got up and left when it was Russia’s turn to talk. They just WALKED OUT

65. Lavrov went to India, was on stage, spouted some nonsense, and everyone laughed at him.

66. Lavrov left the 2022 G20 meeting in Bali early because no one wanted to talk to him, or take a picture with him, or eat with him. So he ran away

67. In February, Lavrov went to Brazil for a G20 meeting of Foreign Ministers. He then planned to fly from Rio to Brasilia, to meet with Brazil’s President. But he couldn’t because due the risk of secondary sanctions, he couldn’t get his plane refueled!

They finally offered to give Lavrov a ride with Brazil’s Foreign Minister. He had to bum a ride!

68. Russian Nuclear Weapons 68a. When Biden visited Kyiv, Russia planned to test its Sarmat missile. The Sarmat missile test failed (we found out later) which yanked the script away from from the Russian Propaganda machine causing them to sort of stare dumbfounded at the video

That’s how this quote happened. There was a video of Putin’s motorcade racing through Moscow at night. I think it might have been because Putin had to suddenly rewrite his speech

68b. Russia has somewhat overplayed their nuclear threat hand in terms of scaring people overseas. And they know it. They still continue to use it like a security blanket, but it’s not as effective. They also know it doesn’t work at all for some generations.

68c Leonid Kalashnikov let it slip that they didn’t have anyone to test their nuclear weapons. Which to me, seems like a problem.

68d Margarita Simonyan talked about nuking Siberia and that nothing bad would happen. This led to massive backlash and Margarita desperately tried to walk this back.

Note: One propagandist suggested blowing up the North Pole!

68e. During one of the missile attacks on Ukraine, it was revealed that Russia had resorted to using one of the missiles that was ment to be used with a nuclear warhead, but perhaps due to a severe shortage of missiles/desperation, they used it with a conventional warhead.

68f. Ukraine took out a strategic nuclear bomber

68g. I’m going to put this here to point out the time a Russian propagandist tried to use the plot to from the 1978 film Superman and pretend it was something Russia could actually do.

It’s the same plan! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_(1978_film)…

68h. Russian propaganda has practically gone full death cult waiting on the nuclear war as if it’s “the rapture” (It’s gotten a lot worse lately) even though there’s been nothing that has given the U.S. a reason to change its nuclear posture.

69. The T-14 Armata, they finally just gave up on that

70. Putin’s 2023 Victory Day parade only had one tank in it, a T-34. And it was the ONLY tracked vehicle in the whole parade.

71. There was that time Russia showed footage of them blowing up farm equipment and telling everyone they were Leopard 2s

72. Based on my observations, Russia has a very effective unit that NO ONE can deny their fast action a skill. And no one ever talks about it What ever people are called in to paint over stuff by far is their most successful unit.

If there is a blue and yellow sign or something unflattering to Putin, they paint over that in no time at all! Russia takes over town, sure they destroyed everything, committed war crimes, and there’s no food or water, but by golly, the town sign isn’t blue & yellow anymore!

73. Trying to get a corporate sponsor for a nuclear heavy missile cruiser

74. Red lines for Russia appear to be a joke

75. Borders for Russia appear to be a joke as the Russian Legion has no problems crossing them

76. Domestic Russian propaganda viewership is down even as the Russian government pumps more funds into them. Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson just barely beat out at a show about psychics

77. The Kremlin tried make a lots of drama over the “almost naked party” to try to push their “traditional values” agenda and distract from other shortcomings. It looks ridiculous considering the other issues Russia is having.

78. If you’re not familiar, look into the statistics of HIV in Russia. It’s bad.

79. Russia’s satellite imagery is bad. Ukraine had a giant tarp printed with an image of the previously destroyed hanger on it, then placed it over the top of the NEW hangar. The Russians couldn’t tell the difference & concluded the planes must be hidden underground somewhere.

80. I’m not 100% sure if Russian has been able to defend their border against Norwegian Reindeer, but they’ve been expressly forbidden to cross it. Russian lichen is apparently delicious and they probably do what they want.

81. Russia has probably permanently burnt a ton of bridges with the international business community. I find it highly unlikely that any well run business would choose to invest in Russia now. I have written several threads on this but I will try to give a brief overview.

Putin issued a decree that allows him to seized foreign assets in Russia. He has used this decree several times, but perhaps most notably with Danone & Carlsberg brewing. Carlsberg brewing even appears to be losing control of branding. This is a nightmare for business.

If you are a foreign business and you meant to leave Russia you have to go through a process and a board. It can take 6 months a more. The companies assets HAVE TO BE SOLD FOR AT LEAST A 50% DISCOUNT.

Then the company is the required to pay a percentage of the company’s value directly to the Federal government. I’ve seen the values vary, as far as I’ve seen THE BEST a foreign company can expect when leaving Russia is 45% of the assets value.

The Russian government’s rationale here was: : If I make it incredibly painful to leave then they won’t leave! While this may work on some, the end result is that everyone hates you and the companies that stay are not going to risk anything more than they already have.

82. Russia has pretty much run out of ways to artificially prop up the ruble. Right now they’re forcing companies to sell the foreign exchange earnings and buy rubles. The dollar exchange rate keeps creeping up.

83. The Russian Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance disagree all the time. The Central Bank usually has the wiser decision, but Putin usually goes with the Ministry of Finance’s idea. Possibly because their idea was Putin idea.

84. People like me exist to annoy the Russian propagandists

Document when they have committed crimes

Or give irrefutable proof that they lied in the UN Security Counsel.

I try to keep it light though.

85. Russia has now entered into disinformation war with ISIS. I still don’t quite think they grasp the nature of that fight. I also wonder if the propagandists understand the new risks they are possibly acquiring.

86. A bunch of people in Russia died from bad cider and Putin is talking about having less business inspections.

87. The MASSIVE Wildberries warehouse burnt down and then the government told everyone that they didn’t know it was there. : They didn’t fill out their paperwork

88. The Wagner Rebellion! No one ever physically stopped them. They were on their way to Moscow and CHOSE to turn back! Again Putin was absent. THEY LOST 7 PLANES!

89. Russia had to cancel their plans to build a nuclear-powered icebreaker because Russia bombed the plant that was supposed to supply large parts of the hull.

90. This exists to “protect” the Crimean bridge.

91. The Black Sea Fleet headquarters had some involuntary skylights installed

92. Russia was not in Kherson forever.

93. Russia was kicked out of CERN

94. Ukraine & Moldova synchronized themselves to the European power grid, disconnecting themselves from Belarus & Russia

95. The Baltics plan to synchronize to the European power grid in less than a year, disconnect from Russia and Belarus. When it does this, it will leave Kaliningrad on its own with no outside connection.

Kaliningrad will have to rely on itself for all of its power generation and power grid stability.

96. The Russian Central Bank has pulled the licenses of the 3 banks since the beginning of the year. They are: - QIWI - Hephaestus - Strela

97. The FSB told everyone that this was a suspect in the killing of Darya Dugina

98. Dugin suggested that fornicators should be burned alive. And this was after his daughter died

99. Russia named a street after Daria Dugin - who died in a car bombing - in OCCUPIED Melitopol. There have been a lot of car bombings in Melitopol since then.

100. You can tell how much people at certain publications in Russia hate Margarita Simonyan or Maria Zakharova based on how bad of a picture they post of them next to an article. Here’s a recent one I saw:

101. Russian propagandists once threatened the United States with kites because they were jealous of China’s balloons.

102. Russians dug in the contaminated soil around Chernobyl and reportedly ate fish from the reactor pond

103. Russia can’t seem to stop itself from striking Belgorod!

104. Russia had to fire a propagandist for saying this about Maria Zakharova

105. Mercedes-Benz and BMW declared that they were disconnecting Russian dealerships from their online manufacturers software systems. These are systems that can quickly diagnose a problem. Russia would just have to diagnose on their own. Solovyov had a fit.

106. Russian diplomats have been expelled from multiple countries. Even though some diplomats remain, their numbers have been drastically reduced.

107. A drone once booped the flagpole of the Kremlin. Russian propagandists declared it was an assassination attempt on Putin who wasn’t there. They also decided they needed to nuke the White House!

This was it:

108. Sergey Mardan suffered from chair malfunctions

109. Solovyov keeps getting his mic cut

110. Russian propaganda is having a lot of technical difficulties

111. People write in to Solovyov in hopes of getting some useful information. Like the weather on other parts of country.

112. The weather report for Moscow isn’t really that helpful

113: Lukashenko’s map

114: That one time the weather guy got a giant map

115: When Solovyov complained about someone’s dancing & felt this was necessary

116: Because if the issues of banking with India, Russia decided to come up with a Banana scheme!

117: Dmitry Medvedev, what a mess

118: Russians go to Sri Lanka, set up “whites only” policy, and then they’re surprised when Sri Lanka kicks them out What did they think was going to happen?

119: All the racism on Russian TV!

120: The time Ukraine bought ALL the racing drone parts from China, so there was none left for Russia

121: When Ukraine bought tank parts from corrupt Russians thereby reducing the number of tanks Russia has available without a shot fired.

122: The Russian military couldn’t properly feed its soldiers

123: That time 1.5 MILLION Russian uniforms were “missing” (if they ever existed at all)

124: Residents of Khabarovsk Krai asked Putin to protect them from tigers. Putin didn’t help, and then a wild tiger killed a guy.

125: A bear in Yakutia killed 2 mobilized soldiers and wounded 3 more.

126: A lot of Russia still isn’t gasified and doesn’t have running water or indoor toilets.

I should go to sleep! Maybe I’ll add more if people are still interested