In a country full of oil, people cannot get gasoline and diesel at gas stations. SAD. Petrol vanishes in handful of Russian regions following historically high prices https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/08/22/7416591/
It's basically extortion to make Putin and his cronies rich. Exclusive-Moscow demands bigger discounts from foreign companies exiting Russia-sources https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-moscow-demands-bigger-discounts-071351444.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall MOSCOW (Reuters) - Some foreign companies trying to exit Russia are facing a big jump in costs as Moscow is demanding bigger discounts on the price tags of assets they want to sell, three people with knowledge of the matter said. Russia has steadily tightened exit requirements since Western companies started leaving soon after Moscow began what it calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine in February 2022. Executives say navigating the rules is becoming harder. Foreign companies have already been hit by losses of more than $80 billion from their Russian operations due to writedowns and lost revenue, based on an analysis by Reuters of company filings and statements. Dutch brewer Heineken said on Friday it had completed its exit from Russia by selling its operations there to Russia's Arnest Group for a symbolic one euro. Moscow has also gradually imposed additional exit hurdles. The threat of nationalisation also looms, particularly following the July seizure of Danish brewer Carlsberg's and French yoghurt maker Danone's Russian assets. Companies still in the process of negotiating exits include telecoms group Veon, Nasdaq-listed tech group Yandex and Italian lender Intesa. Moscow already demands a 50% discount on all foreign deals after consultants selected by the Russian government have valued the business. Russia also requires a contribution to the Russian budget of at least 10% of the price. But three people familiar with the exit process for foreign companies said that some deals are facing demands for additional discounts before the government gives a green light. The sources requested anonymity because the information is confidential. The Russian finance ministry said it does not force final sales prices to be cut, but it may adjust valuations during the sales process. "The price may change only in a case when the commission points out the incorrect valuation of a foreign business' market value," it said in a written response to Reuters' questions. The economy ministry and central bank also appraise businesses and may also make a "correction" to a price, it said. A government commission that monitors foreign investment has to approve deals involving companies from so-called "unfriendly" countries - those that have imposed sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine. Banks and energy companies also require President Vladimir Putin's personal approval to sell. A financial market source working with companies seeking to leave Russia said the commission was sending some deals back, saying the valuation should be 20-30% lower. It is an "unpredictable black box", this person said. Another person, who works on M&A transactions and with foreign companies, said deals exceeding $100 million were at particular risk of being denied. This source said the latest change to prices is holding back sales and forcing companies to consider alternatives. 'UNFAVOURABLE TERMS' Foreign companies concluded around 200 Russian asset sales between March 2022 and March 2023, the Russian central bank has reported, with about 20% worth more than $100 million. In its biannual financial stability review, the central bank said foreign companies under pressure to leave Russia were doing so on "unfavourable" terms. "Last year's exodus of foreigners is continuing, although there are slightly fewer deals," said Suren Gortsunyan, a partner and co-founder of law firm Rybalkin, Gortsunyan, Dyakin and Partners (RGD), which has advised on eight successful deals and plans to file for approvals in another five to six. "Regulatory constraints that have been building steadily make it harder to exit," Gortsunyan said. The corporate exodus is a huge windfall for Russian entrepreneurs, as well as Western companies' rivals and former business partners, said Alexey Kupriyanov, director of Aspring Capital, which has advised on dozens of deals, including the expected sale of Veon's Vimpelcom to local management for $2.1 billion. RED FLAGS The Russian finance ministry said the government commission approves about 90% of deals and meets at least twice a week on average to review the latest proposals. "It can take up to six months for the deal to be prepared by the relevant agency," the ministry said. Potential red flags would include a potential buyer's lack of experience in the required field, transactions involving intermediary buyers or questions about the valuation of assets, it said. After the valuation, the finance ministry passes the deal on to the commission, on which representatives of the central bank and several government ministries sit, Nato Tskhakaya, RGD's head of regulatory practice, said. But the decision is ultimately taken out of sellers' hands. Neither the buyer or the seller is present to hear the commission's deliberations, the finance ministry said. ($1 = 93.2500 roubles)
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-...m-Gazprom-Neft-Sees-Profit-Plummeting-43.html Russian Oil Firm Gazprom Neft Sees Profit Plummeting 43%
It's child labor time in Russia. Putin instructed to use children's labour to cope with 'staff starvation' in economy - mass media The Russian economy is facing a labour shortage. https://en.socportal.info/en/news/p...pravitsya-s-kadrovym-golodom-v-ekonomike-smi/ Russian President Vladimir Putin has instructed to lift restrictions on the labour of minors in order to cope with the shortage of workers in the economy, which the authorities estimate at hundreds of thousands of people. This is reported by pro-Kremlin media. We are talking about 14-year-old teenagers and factories and plants. According to Putin's idea, they should be allowed to be hired for "temporary work", and the organisations that will hire them are promised certain benefits. In addition, the hiring of citizens under the age of 18 should be simplified," Putin's instructions say. According to media reports, citing data from the Gaidar Institute, the staff shortage at Russian factories and plants has reached a record high since 1996. The problems with personnel sharply intensified after mobilisation, as a result of which 300,000 people went to the front, and up to a million more left the country. The mass recruitment of volunteers and contract workers, the number of which has exceeded 200 thousand people since the beginning of 2023, has become a new blow," the journalists point out. According to experts, Russia has exhausted its human resources because of the war it has started, and in the near future the country will be short of specialists in various industries.
not long and those kids will be sent to the frontline like in germany 1945 the end is near ... for "russia"
Hmmmm, it appears using the tactic introduced by Russia against Ukrainians, cluster bombing is effective.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Coal/Ru...d-Grapples-With-Fallout-From-Ukraine-War.html Russia’s Mining Heartland Grapples With Fallout From Ukraine War By RFE/RL staff - Aug 28, 2023, 3:00 PM CDT More than 18 months into its invasion of Ukraine, Russia is facing high military casualties that are particularly affecting impoverished, remote areas like Kemerovo, known as the Kuzbass. Locals are dealing with declining wages, obsolete mines, and health issues due to pollution, alongside the losses of fathers, sons, and brothers in the war. Residents express skepticism about the war and corruption at local levels, drawing parallels to the poor-quality construction that followed the 2014 Sochi Olympics. In the heart of the Russia’s coal-mining Kemerovo region, residents struggle with the harsh economic realities of declining wages, obsolete mine facilities, and chronic medical conditions that come from life below, and above ground. Many are retired coal miners like Vladimir Miroshenko, 71, who recalls the halcyon days of the 1970s, when Prokopyevsk became a sister city with Horlivka, in the heart of Ukraine’s Donbas coal-mining region. Miroshenko also recalls his service in the Soviet Army in the early 1980s, during the decade-long invasion of Afghanistan. “We trained for a month and a half and then were sent to man the howitzers. I won't even tell you what happened there. When I came home, I just started drinking,” said Miroshenko, whose last name has been changed at his request. “Now what’s going on in Ukraine -- the oligarchs; they were getting fat and they’re just getting fatter,” he said. “It’s the same thing that happened in Afghanistan. And for what? What’s the point? It’s not clear.” “I heard here that 50,000 people have already returned from [Ukraine] with disabilities,” he told RFE/RL’s Siberia.Realities. “Why did they go? For the money, mostly. You yourself understand that now no one will go to war for Stalin, nor for Putin. More than 18 months into its invasion of Ukraine, Russia is grappling with the mounting toll from what has become the largest land war in Europe since World War II. Anonymous U.S. officials have put Russia’s military casualties at close to 120,000 killed and up to 180,000 injured. And the toll is hitting impoverished, remote, shrinking regions of Russia even harder. Like in Kemerovo, widely known as the Kuzbass, where economic opportunities are fewer and the allure of war wages in Ukraine and compensation for the dead draw capable young and less-young men, further draining the region of able workers -- and fathers, brothers, sons, and husbands. At least 46 men from Prokopoyevsk, a city of around 170,000 people, have died since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, according to an unofficial tally compiled by Siberia.Realities. Many are buried in a special section of a cemetery in Vysoky, a village southwest of Prokopyevsk. According to Tatyana Yefremova, who sells flowers and funeral bouquets at the cemetery, the fresher graves include two riot police officers who died on February 25, 2022, just three days after the invasion was launched. In the plots where new casualties of the war in Ukraine are buried, the graves are so close together that the wreaths appeared to be intertwined and entangled. They include Ilya Piryazev, 45, who grew up and went to school in Prokopyevsk and who went on to serve as a conscript during the First Chechen War in the 1990s, then during Russia’s intervention in Syria in the 2010s, and also in Libya. According to his daughter Polina, a month after deploying to Ukraine in April 2022, he was killed in the southern Zaporizhzhya region. In recent years, Polina said, she and her mother had had little contact with Piryazev; her parents divorced in the 2000s. “We didn't even know he was in the war. We only found out when he died,” she said. “He went to Ukraine on his own,” Polina said. “He didn’t need money, unlike many. It was just patriotism, the conviction that the country must be defended. He never spoke about the war, didn’t say why he constantly returned there. ”Not far from Piryazev’s grave is that of Andrei Yartsev, 22, who died on November 22, 2022, somewhere in the Luhansk region while serving as a marine infantryman attached to the Pacific Fleet. Yarstev had served as a contract volunteer soldier for several years before enrolling in the law department at Novosibirsk State University. He was in his third year last fall when the Kremlin ordered a partial mobilization to bolster troop strength in Ukraine; Yartsev volunteered to fight, according to an acquaintance, who gave his name as Andrei. “Apparently, he was smitten with this whole romantic army ideal: like, brother for brother, and so on,” Andrei said. “Seems to me that he had no idea what was really going on there, in Ukraine. It's too bad for the kid; he spent only a few weeks at the front.” 'We Don't Have Any Other Options' At the mining technical school in Prokopyevsk, where engineers and other mine personnel are trained, officials put up a memorial plaque for dead graduates on May 5, 2023. The names included Yevgeny Kobzarev, a 37-year-old riot police officer who died on the second day of the invasion. On the social media site formerly known as VKontakte, someone published a page about the memorial plaque for the dead alumni. “Soon enough there won’t be enough walls,” one anonymous poster wrote. “When you look at the death toll, it’s a little creepy,” another graduate told Siberia.Realities. “But if they call me, I’ll go too, but where should I go? I don’t have any kids yet, though strangely enough, many go there [to fight] because of their children: to make some money for an apartment or for education. We don’t have any other options.” Then there’s the case of Ilya Krumin, 21, who served as a driver and mechanic for a tank unit. He stayed in the military after completing his mandatory conscription service. An orphan, Krumin died about a month after the invasion. “What choice did he have besides the army?” said one of his friends, who gave his name only as Aleksei. “As an orphan, there’s no one to take care of you, you have to live somehow. So this is the most obvious choice. Yes, and these kinds of soldiers are beneficial to the army: you don’t have to pay compensation later to relatives.” 'We're Dropping Like Flies Around Here' Like many towns in the Kuzbass, Prokopyevsk has seen better days. Residents complain regularly about the state of city services, including the main local hospital where equipment frequently doesn’t work. Years of heavy industrial emissions, including coal ash and other toxic chemicals, has polluted wide swaths of the region, and left chronic health problems for many. “We're dropping like flies around here. Some in the mines, some in the war,” said Vitaly Smorodin, a 55-year-old retired miner and lifelong resident who now works as a municipal security guard. “And the rest of them: from [the environment]. Every other person has [cancer].” City officials are also happier to trumpet the sister-city relationship between Prokopyevsk and Horlivka, which is now mostly under Russian control in Ukraine, than they are to publicize the exact number of locals who have been killed or wounded in the war. For residents jaded by endemic corruption on the local level, the cynical view is that the sister-city relationship will just be another way to steal municipal funds. Vil Ravilov, who works as a photographer, pointed to the example of Mariupol, the Ukrainian Sea of Azov port that was all but obliterated during a Russian siege soon after the invasion began. Russian officials are now hurriedly building new apartment housing, and other structures in the city, but reports of shoddy construction abound. Ravilov drew a parallel to what happened after the 2014 Sochi Olympics, when some of the public infrastructure built for the event was marred by bad-quality construction. “What is happening in Ukraine is a huge tragedy, what else can I say?” Ravilov said. “I doubt that the houses that are being built in Mariupol or any other [Russian-controlled] territories are made with high quality. Most likely, everything is stolen, all this infrastructure is waiting for the same fate as the buildings after the Olympics, when asphalt paths were washed away after the rains.” “Everything is done for the sake of appearances,” he said. By RFE/RL
EU officials say sanctions against Russia have had 'hard tangible effects,' and that the country's future is bleak https://finance.yahoo.com/news/eu-officials-sanctions-against-russia-004116094.html
Russia earns less from oil and spends more on war. So far, sanctions are working like a slow poison https://apnews.com/article/russia-economy-ukraine-war-ac83e7a74d9e426cb18c5168c5929d38?