Author: Liu Zhanxiong
In just a few days, the situation in Ukraine has been completely turned upside down.
A few years ago, when the luhansk and Donetsk regions were just engaged in separatist movements, Putin was still twisting and turning, with an ambiguous attitude, but secretly giving money to guns, but only doing nothing.
Now, Putin is no longer pretending, there is a showdown, and he first officially announced on February 21 that the two regions of Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine are independent countries.
On February 24, yesterday, Putin publicly announced his decision to launch a special military operation in the Donbass region. Subsequently, the Russian armed forces began to launch missile attacks on several Ukrainian cities, and the Ukrainian president declared the entire territory of the country into wartime.
This was followed by all sorts of news, what the Ukrainian National Guard Command had been destroyed, what the capital Kiev had been completely occupied by the Russians... It's hard to tell if it's true or false. The only certainty is that at this point, the Russo-Ukrainian War is in full swing!
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Ordinary people all know that it is money that fights wars, which is the so-called "one cannon, two thousand golds."
But russia, which launched the war this time, has a worse economy, and the data is more convincing than anything: authoritative information shows that Russia's gdp of 1.7 trillion US dollars in 2021 is no longer as good as China's Guangdong Province.
South Korea has left Russia behind and entered the club of developed countries, and it is estimated that in three or four years, Vietnam may catch up with Russia. In recent years, Vietnam has liberalized trade, embraced the global market, and the economy has grown by leaps and bounds like a rocket.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Yeltsin was busy with "palace struggles", market-oriented reforms stagnated, and Russia failed to cut off the appendicitis of state-owned enterprises and leave the root of the disease until now.
In the 1990s, several bigwigs in Eastern European countries were on the defensive in their economic transitions. Slovakia's Mechar, Romania's Iliescu, Ukraine's Kuchma and Belarus's Stanislav Shuskevich still retain state-owned enterprises and severely restrict foreign investment.
In Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and other countries where the reform is thorough, the politics are relatively clear, the privatization process is open and transparent, and after a short period of reform pain, the people of these countries have successively lived a happy and good life.
Putin's personal ability is mainly reflected in diplomatic and military affairs, but he is very layman in economic affairs, that is, this person is not good at making money and cannot lead the people to make a fortune.
Moreover, Putin has no particular ideological preferences.
To say that Putin has any fascination with the Soviet planned economy is completely impossible to talk about, on the other hand, he has little interest in European and American capitalism. His policy toward the business community was pragmatic, fighting disobedient oligarchs and propping up oligarchs he trusted.
Emperor Puddy was able to occupy Russia's highest throne for twenty years, half thanks to the price of oil. Russia is rich in mineral resources, and some of them sell resources and sell oil and gas to the West to maintain political stability.
The Germans relied on natural gas from the east for heating. In the past two days, China's major cities have cooled down, walking on the streets to freeze to death, as the saying goes, the cold in the north of China is a physical attack, and the cold in the south is a magic attack.
In terms of natural climate, Berlin is two or three degrees warmer than Beijing, and in this way, they rely on Russian gas. If Putin gives a fierce hand and cuts off the supply of gas, the Germans cannot resist the frost, the picture is too beautiful to see.
One of the main reasons why the Soviet Union could not play in the first place was the problem of oil prices. In 1985, Saudi Arabia sold a large amount of crude oil to the international market, resulting in a sharp decline in crude oil prices.
For every barrel of crude oil that falls by a dollar, Moscow suffers losses of $500 million to $1 billion. So, how much did oil prices fall that year? From the 1970s to 1989, the price of crude oil in international markets fell from a peak of $110 a barrel to $19 a barrel.
Miserable, worse than the Chinese stock market.
When Yeltsin took over the Soviet mess, oil prices were still sluggish, and in the 1990s Russia was struggling with unemployment and inflation, in large part because oil was not profitable.
After he resigned and handed over power to Putin, the price of oil rose sharply in the long-term low, and in the first decade of the 21st century, the price of crude oil rose to $140 per barrel, ensuring the living standards of ordinary Russians and the emerging middle class, and stabilizing society.
Is Putin the Great's ability to make money (i.e., the ability to build the economy) better than others? Not necessarily, he was just lucky, The Emperor of Europe physique, and ate the oil dividend.
Everything is fate, half a point is not up to man.
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The Putin regime has been able to build up for two decades by relying on the oil and mineral family foundation, and really has mines at home. Russia has engaged in some border friction in Georgia, pro-Russian and anti-American Assad regime in Syria, and now it is fighting against Ukraine.
To say, what are the interests of Luhansk and Donetsk that deserve Putin's big fight? There really isn't, these two places are not rich, not fat.
The problem is that Putin lacks legitimacy. Comprehensive Westernization and economic development, he lacks this relevant experience accumulation and ability reserves; it is absolutely impossible to regress to the Soviet model, and Putin can only grasp the patriotic ideology and not let go, through the external show of muscle, to win the will of the people.
In previous years, after the successful intervention in Crimea, Putin's approval rating jumped from 50% to more than 80%.
Putin's political debut, the 2000 War in Chechnya, Moscow is reasonable, safeguarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Chechnya is a republic of Russia, in November 1991 Chechnya unilaterally declared independence from Russia, in the war, the Russian army fought very hard, but finally won, the civil opposition solidarity with the official, not to make trouble.
There was a super-rich man named Gusinsky, who was almost the only one who disagreed, who sent reporters to the front lines of the war in Chechnya to collect black materials and, when he returned to Moscow, broadcast it on television. Unexpectedly, the Russian people did not buy it and boycotted Gusinsky.
It may be that Putin tasted the sweetness and launched the war machine many times in the future to create an image of an iron-fisted strongman and gain the support of various factions on the left, center and right.
Needless to say, the nationalist far right, whenever there is a war, they are certainly applauded and encouraged. In the early years, the far right in Moscow included Vladimir Zhirinovsky's "Russian Liberal Democratic Party" (which, though bearing the name of liberal democracy, was actually an xenophobic anti-democratic far-right organization), the "Russian National Unity Party" headed by Alexander Barkasov, the "Russian People's National Party" headed by Alexander Ivanov, and the "National Republican Party" headed by Nikolai Lysenko.
Zhirinovsky, who ranked first among them, advocated that the Russians were the best people on the earth, and that they were high-ranking officials and had become vice-president of the Duma. The other day, he got the covid-19 vaccine, and the eighth dose... Eight stitches. This far-right nationalist probably really thinks he is a good higher race, and his physique is as strange as his brain circuitry.
The most amusing thing is that Zhirinovsky has been vaccinated so much, but he is still infected, and his lungs are seriously damaged.
Look at the pro-European liberals, who were quite active at the beginning, and made some love and peace tones. Crimea's referendum campaign was a watershed moment, and Crimea's break from Ukraine was the Putin regime's most successful foreign venture.
After that, this faction did not dare to emerge, and as soon as it advocated a policy of foreign moderation, it would be scolded by the common people as a "traitor", "foreign agent", and "fifth column". Now, Russian liberals are low-key.
There is still the Russian Communist Party, an old left-wing organization, a pension club composed of old men and women who remember the Soviet Union. Adhere to the economic ideas of the left such as the planned economy and the welfare state, but are not left in any other way except the economy.
The Putin government's hawkish military campaign against the outside world, in most cases, the leader of the Russian Communist Party, Zyuganov, gave the green light and said that it could be passed. In this geopolitical conflict between Luhansk and Donetsk, Zyuganov is also in the same boat with Putin.
The Russian Communist Party, which was supposed to be flying the banner of internationalism, is now talking a lot about Russia's national interests, and in terms of religion, the Russian Communist Party is no longer head-on with Christianity. The Orthodox Church has undergone a revival, the people of the whole country have great respect for the Church, and if atheism is still being peddled, it will hurt the feelings of the Russian people.
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All the factions on the left, center, and right are grasping the banner of patriotism, and whoever talks about moderation and rationality is waiting to be rushed by the patriotic young generals. Thus, Russia, on the road of great power chauvinism, rushed forward and never returned.
So, what step will the next situation in Ukraine evolve, and how far is Putin prepared to go this time?
Some people have predicted that if this continues, the Third World War will come, and I don't think so.
As mentioned earlier, Russian economists cannot afford to support it, and secondly, the country's population is seriously aging.
Some netizens in China like to play the "Russians, fighting people" meme, let's look at the surface.
According to the data, there are currently about 14.7 million teenagers aged 10-19 in Russia; more than 17.3 million young people aged 20-29, 24.4 million people aged 30-39, and 20.3 million people aged 40-49; 19.8 million fast retirees aged 50-59; and more than 32 million people over 60 years old, accounting for 21.8% of the total population.
If you think about it, if one-fifth of Hitler's Germany was an old man and a woman, could World War II be fought?
The interrelationship between population and national strength can be said: in a country, the period of population rise is not necessarily the period of national strength rise, but in ancient times, no regime in the period of population decline has been in the period of national strength.
Two years ago, Putin proposed a bill to delay retirement. Starting in 2019, the retirement age will gradually increase from 60 to 65 for men and from 55 to 63 for women.
The social security deficit is serious, and the fighting nations have no money to retire. After the bill was introduced, the voice of civil opposition rose higher and louder, and 3 million people signed a petition against delayed retirement.
The opposition also came out just in time to brush off the sense of existence, and the Russian Communist Party and the far right took to the streets together to organize rallies.
After a thunderstorm over pensions in July, Putin's approval rating slipped to a decade low, according to official pollsters.
Russia has opened its doors to immigrant workers from former Soviet unions. According to the statistics of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, the total number of Uzbek labor migrants to Russia in 2018 reached more than 2 million. There are about 1 million labor migrants to Russia in Tajikistan, about 350,000 in Kyrgyzstan and about 120,000 in Kazakhstan.
At present, the construction sites in Moscow and St. Petersburg are a yellow-skinned Central Asian face, and foreign labor migrants account for more than 1/3 of the construction workers and 10.1% of the industrial production workers. Relying on cheap foreign labor, the Russian economy barely survived.
Don't look at the war putin launched against Ukraine today, but his gamble, Russia's national strength may not be able to afford to consume energy.
How long an aging, dull Russia can sustain its great power glory deserves a question mark.