Russia is not one entity
Today, I hypothesize that the generalized phrase “in Russia” is gradually becoming incorrect. The perception of Russia as an indivisible whole distorts the image.
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Outwardly, Russia (a giant spot on the map) looks like a monolithic colossus that has rallied around the king, faith and the common fate of the motherland. If you switch this picture to the “layers” mode, you can see that contradictions between regions accumulate inside.
War works as a catalyst. Therefore, all important processes and consequences must be prepared at the federal and regional levels. Then there are interesting plots. Roughly speaking, now there are several main groups of regions according to the criterion of “involvement in the war”:
- “capitals” – everything is more or less good there, they generate management decisions, set the agenda and control the media;
- raw material regions – supply money to pay for the war;
- regions with a developed military industry – supply weapons;
- those who are unlucky (no raw materials, no military industry and other critical infrastructure) – apart from “cannon fodder” they are not useful to the Kremlin.
Russians are drowning in loans
When you add mobilization to this picture, interesting trends are highlighted. The other day, the Russian propaganda media published a traditional credit rating of the population in the region. But it is built in such a way as to reveal the whole drama. Russian statistics are false through and through, but they reveal certain clues.
In Russia, this will probably be explained by the fact that people began to live better, and have more confidence in the future, so they began to take more loans. There have already been such explanations. Last year, the statistics of Russian borrowers servicing 3 or more loans increased to 28.6%. Compared to the end of 2021, the number of people with 5 or more loans has almost doubled – from 4.7% to 8.6%.
They explained this by the more active distribution of credit cards, only casually mentioning that the share of borrowers with “increased debt burden” is growing. That means people in bondage.
The latest rating showed that every economically active resident of Tyva now owes banks 149.4% of their annual salary. At the end of 2021, an economically active Tuvan owed 87.4% on average.
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In Kalmykia, which has traditionally been the leader in debt, it is now 133.9%. By the end of 2021, it was 100.1%. In Bashkortostan, the credit ratio increased from 80.1% at the end of 2021 to 84.8% at the beginning of 2024. In the Altai Republic (also one of the leaders in terms of relative losses) from 69.3% to 79%.
For some subjects of the federation, the debt figures (especially after data adjustments on the economic situation) do not look rosy. Several questions arise.
As we know from captured Russian soldiers and from open statements in the Russian media, one of the most important motivations for Russian mercenaries to go to war is to repay loans. At the same time, Russian figures show that someone somewhere is deceiving someone.
For example, Tyva leads by a large margin in terms of the relative number of confirmed casualties: for every 10,000 able-bodied men, the region lost at least 50 people, killed (actually more). That means the war for the Tuvans means more corpses and more debts.
It is the same in the Republic of Altai. Such dependence is not an isolated case, it is a trend. Many residents of the troubled Russian hinterland have taken out more loans with the expectation of high wages for mercenaries. They will theoretically be able to repay these loans:
- in case of the employee’s death and receipt of a one-time payment;
- in the event of a long war and the mercenary’s unique survivability;
- if the debts are written off (the government will cover).
Ending the war without a mechanism for forgiving debts and returning mercenaries to their homes is a sharp increase in bonded debtors, a social conflagration and rampant crime.
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New mobilization will be difficult for the Kremlin
In general, the war has deepened the inequality between the regions of Russia to such an extent that it is increasingly difficult to talk about the “situation in Russia” in general terms. Russia sells oil, the federal centre redistributes profits to regions with a developed military industry. Non-raw regions without industrial complexes are sliding into the pit.
As long as Moscow has the opportunity to throw them some money, the situation can be managed. But there is less money, and the attacks on the refinery contribute to this. At the same time, the regions with the military industry absorb the labour force, reducing the available mobilization resource. The structure of confirmed losses highlights that some regions can no longer supply either mercenaries or mobilized.
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There was material in the mass media about the Russian officer-transporter, where he referred to the words of several military commissars of Buryatia: the men have physically run out and there is no mob resource. Our numbers show that Buryatia, in the top five, for the number of confirmed losses in absolute numbers for a long time, slipped to 8th place. This indirectly indicates that the number of occupiers from Buryatia in the army is decreasing.
The number of Russian regions capable of waging war is inevitably decreasing. Some are no longer touched for social reasons, fearing protest sentiments (Caucasus). Some places are close to exhausting physical capabilities. A new wave of mass mobilization, if carried out, could sharply aggravate the situation in those regions of the federation, which are so far going through the war much more gently.
Technically, Russia can easily gather another 500,000 people. Especially if it actively involves Moscow, St. Petersburg, Moscow and Leningrad regions. But doing it practically and politically is not so easy, it is much more difficult than in 2022.
I think that the hysterical pressure on Ukraine regarding “negotiations” and nuclear ultimatums is connected with the accumulation of imbalances. That means, nothing will fall tomorrow, but the mechanics of how it can fall, in Russia itself, has moved from abstract categories to more concrete ones. Why is the Russian government taking measures?
Oleksiy Kopytko
24 канал
