1. Back on the 5th of March....there's a FSB employee (what used to be the old KGB) who writes up a total listing of problems in this war. Call it a whistle-blower document or just massive internal frustration....it's explosive. Focus has the best details of the 'chat'.
For example, he says: whatever was the original invasion plan....has been revised over and over.
For example, he says: they can't declare a full mobilization and use all Russian assets because the logistics program is already maxed-out.
For example, he says: the losses for the Russians (as of the 5th) are no longer accurate. It might be a thousand, 5,000, or even 10,000. It would appear that no one is really tracking this, or cares.
For example, he says: the war can last for about a hundred days....at which time, based on internal models....the nation is finished economically. (BS-factor here: '6', they'd just print more money and pretend it exists)
For example, he says: there's going to be some moment when advice comes to Putin to yank on the West chain for sanctions to be taken down, or face war with Russia.
For example, he says: there's this feeling that two sides are gathered up in Russia....pro-war and anti-war, and that one of them has to be taken down in the next week.....for the other to survive on. Why the next week? Unknown.
The whole thing being legit? Unknown.
2. Fitch, the financial rating agency, has spoken up to the bankruptcy brewing in Russia and says in a cryptic way.....it's to occur in the 'near future'. What does 'near future' mean? It's not clear. I suspect if you asked around most middle-class people....they'd like to have their Rubles exchanged for Euro, dollars, etc....with this no longer possible. This 'feeling' will linger and multiply over the coming weeks.
3. Early this AM, the US announced two Patriot missile batteries being sent to Poland.
4. BILD (the newspaper) says at least 1,000 Germans are now in the Ukraine, and part of the war-effort. BS-factor? I'd give it a '5'.....you can't be sure of any part of this story. The other story that 22,000 foreigners are in the Ukraine, and part of the effort? Same deal....maybe it's true....maybe it's half-true. Lot of BS going on.
5. Coca-Cola shutting down operations in Russia (announced at 10 PM last night). This follows the announcement by McDonalds that they'd shut down all operations yesterday.
6. I've spent a fair amount of time pondering over the story on Business Insider, with comments by Andrey Kozyrev, former vice-PM of Russia). So what he said was that out of the 1990s....corruption came to the Russian military complex, and attached itself to the military budget. The hint is that all that modernization that was supposed to occur over the past twenty-five years.....never occurred.
I sat and looked at the general military budget for Russia (what Wiki and others say).
Example, for the past 20 years, the budget has been around 1.3-percent of the GDP. Up to last year, the budget was in the range of $50-billion....currently, the budget is at $78-billion.
How this ranks against China? Well....the budget is one-quarter of what China spends.
If you were going to drain off funds for corruption? I pondered upon that idea. There are various ways that you could take 5-percent of the $50-billion ($2.5-billion) and 'gift' it to various people.
For example, you'd write a requirement that each military unit should deploy four times a year for a major exercise. At the same time, you'd write a piece of text that says only one-quarter of the unit would physically deploy to participate in this field exercise for two weeks. You'd save on travel cost, and divide the money up between field commanders and upper-level Kremlin 'players'. It would mean that a fair amount of exercise equipment just sits there....mostly unused, and the vast number of conscripts are never trained to the level expected.
For example, you'd write a requirement for 44,000 secure radios to be bought for tanks/APCs. The company to make the units? In Minsk.....not Russia....so there's likely to be no audits conducted. Commanders are told of a pallet arriving with 600 of the radios, but the reality is that only 300 radios are on the pallet, and the rest were never made. Officers sign off....getting some bribe, and no one worries because there's never going to be a war to require the radios.
For example, you'd write a requirement for 3,000 new tanks of x-series. With all the advances promised, it's a big deal. So as the Minsk plant, builds around half of them with the correct features...fully designed for the contract. But the rest? They come with cheap Chinese equipment, lesser-quality features, etc. Commanders get deliveries....sign off, and everyone in the Putin circle thinks the upgrade program was successful.
So if you leaked off 5-billion dollars a year....people would spend. Palace-type housing, mega-yachts, impressive hotels, etc.
One would ask....wouldn't the CIA notice mega projects going on, with no real flow of money that makes sense? You'd ask that but I doubt there there's more than three or four CIA PhD economic 'geeks', and they don't really analyze Oligarch folks and their money trail. The same guys wouldn't analyze tanks coming out of the Minsk factor to say half of them are substandard, or analyze the payroll charts to say that 25-percent of the manpower for the Army was fake.
Putin just being a 'stamp' of approval for all of these years, and never asking real questions about where the money was spent? Well....you eventually come to this reason why Putin was the 'golden' boy and pumped-up to this 'living legend' status. He became the 21st century Czar.....by default. One can laugh over this status, but you needed someone who wouldn't question corruption, and allow various scams to continue for two decades. So when he finally came to the day for use in this Ukraine mission....the whole thing has fallen apart.
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