He also has control of the parliament & the regional governors. He will ensure the middle and upper class are as insulated as possible, but they will still feel the effects. As those effects are felt, so too will the rhetoric of "us vs them" and the "world are all nazis" increase.
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When food shortages and coal shortages and so electricity shortages and railways not running and fuel shortages and public sector not getting paid for months.. you can try control as much as you like but without money no-one will do shit.
Being unpaid is a ruzzian thing. Just do a Google search of "russian workers not paid for months".
You underestimate the ability of the muskovite and his serfs to suffer for the motherland.
ruzzia can lose, they just need to be defeated militarily not economically.
WW1 is the closest comparison and why the nearest thing to a total blockade of Russian trade is the best way to defeat them.
That and a massive sabotage campaign to keep disrupting their infrastructure
So... I wonder why the middle classes sent all their sons out of Russia when the conscription started at the beginning of all this?
Telling really isn't it...
Their problems are all interconnected so can't be solved by shifting revenue around.
War economy and control won't solve Workforce + Food
You may be correct if you can stop these parallel and grey market imports, but it's been 3 years now and it's only getting worse.
I remain unconvinced that economic collapse will occur in ruzzia. I remain convinced they must be defeated on the battlefield. Time is running out because if we set them towards a war-time economy, they can sustain that for decades.
The west should cut off medical and pharmaceutical supplies to ruzzia. Force them to the get out of Ukraine or die out because of disease.
If Putin doesn't win on the battlefield then Russia and it's future is done for.
RF will end.
So it is the russians that need military victory not the other way around.
War needs Workforce, Food, Energy, Transport & Money...
All of which are in a terminal spiral.
Unemployment won't be a problem while the war is on, the tsar can always nationalise banks and service businesses (as he is already doing).
ruzzians love suffering, they're sociopaths by nature.