...When Urals crude crossed below $50 in April 2025, the Kremlin didn’t just lose money. Rather it lost the mathematical possibility of sustaining its war."

Silencing Russian Artillery
The Russian Petrostate Collapse (3/3)
by Brian Iselin
t.co/UrBdnId9vc
3/3

This opening paragraph is killer:

"Russia’s military machine doesn’t run on patriotism. It runs on petrodollars. Look at this chart and understand what you’re seeing: the death spiral of an empire, measured in dollars per barrel.

2/3

Russia's OIL PROFIT INCOME is only 57% of planned levels at $55 a barrel vice $70

Putin's involuntary retirement over "sharing disputes" with the gangster oligarchs, likely with a 9mm resignation notice, is now on the horizon.

4/4 End

The Russo-Ukrainian War is now very bad for the gangster oligarchs businesses as it involved sharing oil income where a Russian State Budget was planned for the _PROFITS_ from $70 a barrel oil with costs at $35-$40 a barrel.

3/

These implications are issues about sharing with the gangster oligarchs forming Putin's regime, as Prigozhin's Wagner mercenary revolt underlined.

Russia's gangster oligarchs use violence to settle..."sharing disputes."

2/

This is consistent with the run down of both Russian transportation capital equipment and the aging out/conscription of skilled manual laborers required to fill break bulk train cars without mechanized logistics.

The West lost this skill set when forklifts arrived in the 1930's.

The Russian railway system still needs to feed the coal fired power plants that power the all electric railway lines, particularly the Trans-Siberian.

We are entering a period where the rundown of physical capital, particularly industrial and transportation, will start cascading economic collapses.

The Russian military has been diverting railway rolling stock into local storage inside Ukraine and near Kursk Oblast because there is no one at the top of the Railway system with the authority from Putin to take back the rail wagon cars.

These Russian jets are better than old Mig-17 and and Chinese license built Mig-19's the DPRK is flying right now.

I don't know if its days or weeks for these satellite photos documenting Russian railway collapse to appear, but the Clip below is happened for reasons pointing towards that outcome.

Watch the futures market & US congressional stock trades.😉

3/3

4th we see triage as the Russian rail system starts collapsing on a LARGE SCALE.

5th, Russian rail transport apocalypse

The Moscow Times article clip below points to Russia closing in on #4 [Clip H/T @prune602.bsky.social ]

2/

...is as follows:

1st trains on remote Russian rail lines derail.

2nd more Russian trains on lines closer to Moscow derail.

3rd the Russian repair trains derail on the way to open derailments.

Where are the Russians going to get the forklifts to use these warehouses?

Russia doesn't make forklifts and those that claim they do in Russia get them from China.

Important thing to point out, the Russian government has had the means to manipulate this exchange rate. They likely still have the means to manipulate it, and are ALLOWING it to devalue.

It's not one thing, it is everything. The Western ball bearing were the excuse for the Russian railway system to fire its entire maintenance department.

Finish firms were also hired out to do some of the Russian engine maintenance.

All of the above ended in April 2022.