The Russian economy cannot handle the strain of the war, and they can’t keep the economy up by being at war.
Unfortunately, the collapse is very slow. Their national wealth fund is currently their bread basket, and that is maintained by their energy exports. With the price of oil being so high, they should be able to sustain their current economy for a couple years at least. There will be shortages, especially in areas where they were reliant on imports.
However, from what I’ve read, oil would have to drop to around $60 a barrel to spur an economic collapse swift and bad enough to make the war unsustainable. That or the EU and US would actually have to militaristically enforce the energy embargo.
Yes, and as soon as it gets cold oil the price of oil will rise once again. It’s not like countries are divesting from fossil fuels any time soon.
Russia isn’t a technologically deprived nation, and they have one of the largest oil producing and refining operations in the world. They may not be able to repair the damages with imported parts as they would have 5 years ago, but refining tech isn’t exactly a new science, or particularly complicated.
If you examine that chart for the year it seems bad, but if you just click on the scale of 5 years, it’s pretty much just average. The important thing to look at is exports, which have been rapidly increasing.
I think that’s a bit optimistic given that the West is hesitant to actually enforce the embargo, and are equally hesitant to divest from the fossil fuel sector.
We just don’t have the spine to actually give an ultimatum of “you can do business with the US, or you can do business with Russia” to countries like India or China. That would be putting the interest of the nation and democracy in general, before the interest of private profit.