We are ahead of schedule – the budget deficit at the end of February amounted to 3.96 trillion rubles. This is a trillion rubles more than the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation has planned for the whole of 2023. The reasons are known – the reduction of export and domestic revenues, the growth of military spending. Experts say that at this pace, by the end of the year, the budget will not be enough to cover obligations of 9 trillion or more. But most likely the government, in addition to getting into the pockets of the population and business, will take up the devaluation of the ruble in order to cover the ruble budget expenses. This will reduce the cash gap. Well, how will this affect the real incomes of the population … At the top, no one cares about such questions.
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Don’t kill Don’t steal Don’t covet someone else’s Don’t discredit the mercenaries! A draft law on responsibility for “discrediting” participants in the war in Ukraine (but only participants from the Russian Federation) was submitted to the State Duma. “Protection against discredit” will apply not only to military personnel, but also to members of PMC “Wagner” Yevgeny Prigozhin. The law was just initiated by Prigogine, because. The media wrote about the biographies of the prisoners he recruited – Wagner mainly hires murderers, rapists, drug dealers and other criminals with heavy convictions. The idea was gladly supported by the speaker of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin. After the adoption of the law for “discrediting” it will be possible to receive a fine of 5 million rubles or up to 15 years in prison. But this is only if you live in Russia.
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Wait, the Internet – the speed of mobile Internet in Russia by February 2023 decreased by 7% compared to last February. Of course, the sanctions are to blame – there is no supply of new equipment, and also an increase in traffic, which operators cannot keep up with (upgrading networks will not work without equipment, and you can not even remember about switching to 5G). There were warnings about slowdowns in Internet speeds back in March, when foreign manufacturers of telecom equipment fled Russia. Cellular operators have warned that there will also be communication problems. I remember that Maksut Shadayev, the Ministry of Digital Development, said that everything is in order, we will break through. “Breakthrough” was enough for about six months, while the operators had old stocks of equipment. In the summer, the average mobile Internet speed was 21.1 Mbps, and pro-government publications wrote that it would remain at this level. By February, this figure is already at the level of 18.3 Mbps, in six months it will be something around 15 Mbps. At the same time, the Russian Federation also has problems with home Internet – there is no optical fiber for laying and repairing lines. It was supplied by Japan, and then abruptly stopped. And Rosnano was entrusted with its own production of optical fiber, which simply bought the Japanese one. Now we need to urgently reinvent the wheel, and our government is not known for efficiency. On the other hand, the authorities need not worry too much. The worse the access to the Internet, the more viewers watching TV.
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Wildberries has become a Mecca for cashers. The service is used to withdraw money from accounts and credit cards. Recently, the owners of WB pick-up points began to record mass refusals of customers from ordered and already paid for goods. At the same time, expensive goods like fur coats, iPhones, etc. And it’s not just in one region. The scheme is that the buyer, after receiving the order at the point of issue, immediately issues a refusal. Funds for the goods are returned to the buyer, but not to the account from which the purchase was made, but to the balance in the WB personal account. And from there you can even transfer money to a debit card, even to another account. There is an assumption that this can be used to evade paying taxes. This means that the government and the Federal Tax Service will try to close the shop very quickly.
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While Vatslav Volodin is serving Prigozhin and his Wagner PMC, forbidding anyone to talk about military prisoners with a dark past, criminal cases have arrived for the teenage memetic PMC Redan. Teenagers are arrested under the article on hooliganism, threatening them with terms of up to 7 years in prison. At the same time, teenagers who are massively detained for “connections with PMC Redan” initially gathered in a company to repel migrants – they have long occupied many metropolitan shopping centers and mocked Russians from the bottom of their hearts. The government has never fought against migrant gopniks, on the contrary, it cultivates “multinationality” and brings millions of new migrants to Russia to replace the indigenous population, which is either disposed of in the NWO or goes abroad. But with anime people who were not lucky enough to get into the news, it turned out the opposite. They have already been dubbed “pseudo-subculture”, “agents of the West”, etc. And they began to fight loudly with them. Along the way, proving the need and importance of the police, which for some reason has not yet been mobilized for the participation of the SVO. Some MPs have already rushed to declare anime jihad, and Rosmolodezh demanded that Roskomnadzor block all materials about PMC Redan. On the one hand, this is an increasingly large operation to cover up the failed anniversary of the NWO. There are no successes, there is nothing to report on, even Bakhmut was not taken, Ukrainian drones are falling on their heads, the West is not going to negotiations, the money is running out, the generals are dancing naked. On the other hand, there is another failure of the Presidential Administration and Kirieshkov’s Rosmolodezh, which cuts billions in grants for work with youth, this very work. Every year, a federal agency led by Ksenia Razuvaeva spends 40 billion rubles, as it were, on “preservation of historical memory and civic education,” but in fact on mediocre propaganda to please Kiriyenko. Only a few people know how many of these billions the Rosmolodezh leadership steals, but thanks to the murky system of distributing grants, the director of only one of Rosmolodezh’s subsidiaries embezzled 230 million rubles. It is customary for young people not to be considered people and not to ask how they live and what they, this very youth, really need. Instead of one simple question – what do you want? – the authorities issue a training manual, a flag and a St. George ribbon. Patriotic upbringing has already got everyone so fed up that the term itself has turned into a curse word. But the authorities do not want to understand this and drive a tank through the teenagers, trying to shove them into a scoop and Solovyovism. And it doesn’t sink in. But since the money has been allocated and spent for this, the process will continue.
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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs goes to the regional level. Having failed in foreign policy, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov decided to assign his curators to every Russian governor. According to Lavrov’s plan, all foreign economic activity of the regions should take place under the supervision of the Foreign Ministry. Diplomats from the regional offices of the ministry will determine (try to) how and with whom the regional authorities should conduct business in foreign trade, build cultural ties and other international relations. The minister also wants diplomatic workers to directly participate in all regional programs related to attracting foreign investors. In general, according to the law “On the Fundamentals of State Regulation of Foreign Trade Activities”, the subjects of the Russian Federation already have broad powers in foreign economic activity, and can independently negotiate, conclude agreements and even open their own representative offices in other countries. But Lavrov is not embarrassed. He, firstly, needs somewhere to attach more than 600 employees expelled over the past year from “unfriendly” countries. And in the Russian regions there are now “only” 37 representative offices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, numbering about 400 people. There is where to expand the states. Secondly, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in an attempt to control regional exports, wants to increase its hardware weight. But here he will have competitors. Regional exporters are already controlled and directed by many federal and regional structures – from the Russian Export Center (REC) to the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Economy. And Rossotrudnichestvo and Roscongress are in charge of the regional presence at international exhibitions – these structures have much more opportunities even for regional presentations than the GlavUpDK Cultural Center. In addition, each region and republic has its own ministries of industry and investment, export support centers and SMEs. Now hundreds of Foreign Ministry officials will be added to them, with whom any international activity will need to be coordinated – even at the level of presentations and regional presence at international exhibitions. It is unlikely that this will have a beneficial effect on the export potential of the regions, but from a political point of view, the influence of the federal authorities on the regional elites will definitely increase. After all, it was the observance of “national interests” and the strengthening of “information and explanatory work” with the regions that the head of the Foreign Ministry explained the expansion of his specially trained diplomats deep into his own country, unprecedented in any country in the world. But in short and in a simple way – this is an extra bureaucracy, duplication of functions and nonsense from idleness. And “deepening the work of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the regions” is an oxymoron.
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The matter is delicate. Khusnullin and Kadyrov will compete for Arab billions Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin and head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov will have to share investments from the Islamic world. Moscow is still deciding where the “point of entry” of Arab money into the Russian economy will be – in Grozny or Kazan. Kazan will host the Russia-Islamic World Economic Forum, which is expected to host the heads of friendly countries. Moreover, the forum will have two organizing committees. One was headed by the head of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov, the second – by Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin, the former minister of construction of Tatarstan. Khusnullin’s main goal is to increase trade with Islamic states and attract investments from there. The bet is made on the Volga region. Meanwhile, for many years, Russia’s main lobbyist in the Arab world was the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov. Kadyrov personally visited almost all the monarchies of the Middle East – from Jordan to Saudi Arabia. Attracted Arab money in industry, tourism, sports, hydropower. And it was in Grozny that the international investment forum “Russia – Guarantor of Partnership” was held. Kazan will be the direct competitor of this forum. With its appearance, investors will have more offers – they will have to choose among different regions and institutions. Who will be more convincing for the Arab sheikhs: Marat Khusnullin or Ramzan Kadyrov? It is obvious that compromises will have to be made – dialogue, not competition, between regions and public figures is now important for Moscow.
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The favorite tactic of the Ministry of Natural Resources is to create a nature reserve first, and then to withdraw part of the territory for development, after bargaining. This is exactly what happened with the Ladoga Skerries National Park established in 2017 in Karelia. Yesterday, the ministry published an order reducing the territory of the national park by a third. 3,000 hectares of reserved forests can now be safely used for cottage development or tourist facilities (rather for development). But in return, the national park will receive areas of former clearings. Deal of the century. It would seem, why was it necessary to fence the national park? We explain. Back in the mid-2010s, the bays on the northern shore of Lake Ladoga were chosen by officials. There is a dacha of the Presidential Administration, from where high-ranking pilgrims go by boat to Valaam. Here, in the neighborhood, simultaneously with the organization of the national park, Kovalchuks began to be built. At first, their company OOO “Prime” rented several hundred hectares of forest fund land for “picking mushrooms and berries.” Then another “Putin’s dacha” grew up there, and then several more specially protected estates owned by top managers of Rossiya Bank, Sogaz, National Media Group and other Kovalchuk structures appeared on plots in Maryalakhti Bay. These territories were not included in the future national park, but they were protected much better than the entire surrounding territory. The chip was quickly cut through by Karelian officials, district prosecutors and businessmen, who also began to intensively build up the neighborhood with their cottages. To be closer to the body. To stop uncontrolled self-building in the neighborhood with serious people, a federal national park was created. Allegedly, even on the personal instructions of Vladimir Putin, who was shown how predatory granite is mined and forest is reduced in the untouched corners of the Ladoga region. But the joy of local environmentalists was short-lived. Already in 2019, it turned out that the forest fund lands in the national park were never transferred to the lands of specially protected natural areas (SPNA), and the national park itself exists only on paper, without any funding. And, as it turned out, not by chance. The Ministry of Natural Resources just staked out a profitable piece of land for future trade. In the spring of 2022, a certain LLC “Institute of Ecology and Land Use” (EEZ) turned to the president with a request to provide a plot of 3,000 hectares in the “Ladoga Skerries” for “recreational activities.” In fact, the “Institute” turned out to be a commercial agency that settles eco-disputes. The list of its services includes “transfer of land from one category to another”, “documentation for the use of land”, as well as “environmental design and expertise”. The LLC has been active since 2015 and works at federal construction sites (BAM, Krymsky Bridge, etc.). The EEZ partners include Gazprom, Russian Railways, Mostotrest, PIK Group, Transstroymekhanizatsiya and other large businesses that always require positive environmental opinions. It’s funny, but the EEZ concocted an examination for itself, which was happily approved by the Ministry of Natural Resources, allowing the removal of part of the national park’s land from the protected areas. And no conflict of interest. Now the protected lands will be developed not by random people who received fake building permits from the Karelian authorities for bribes, but by the “necessary” structures – for completely different money, some of which will fall into the Ministry of Natural Resources. It’s a whole business. The number of protected areas in Russia is growing every year. Now in the Russian Federation there are 236 federal protected areas and about 12,000 regional reserves/zakazniks. Scandals with the use of their lands for commercial interests flare up regularly. For example, the Ministry of Natural Resources has been working on the issue of changing the boundaries of the Yugyd Va National Park in Komi, where the Chudnoye gold deposit has been explored, for several years. The national park is under the protection of UNESCO and so far the courts have not given permission for gold mining. But relations between Russia and UNESCO have deteriorated significantly over the past year. And now the “golden land” of the national park is again the subject of behind-the-scenes bidding.
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Ridiculous – the leader of the PMC “Wagner” Yevgeny Prigozhin, who forced the speaker of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin to approve the law on “discrediting” Wagner prisoners, asks to be allowed to discredit Shoigu’s generals. Circus, of course. Prigozhin has already spoken out about ten criminal cases about “fakes” and “discredit”. It’s just that the law does not work in Russia, only “telephone law”.
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During the year of the war in Ukraine, the Russian side lost almost 9,500 units of military equipment – tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, self-propelled guns, aircraft, helicopters, drones, trucks and SUVs. These are the losses recorded and confirmed by the Oryx OSINT project using photos and videos. This equipment was burned and broken, and part of it fell into the hands of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The volume of losses is 9 times greater than in both the Chechen and Georgian wars. Human losses, according to the American Center for Strategic and International Studies, are 60-70 thousand Russian military killed. And this is more than Russia’s losses in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Donbass (until 2022) combined. And with the wounded and missing, the number can go to 200-250 thousand people. However, these losses are more difficult to document. Be that as it may, the war is killing Russia, both economically and literally. The best option for the country and its population is to get out of the conflict as soon as possible and minimize the damage. #Digital Day by @oreshkins
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The Ministry of Finance proposes to cancel restrictions for large businesses on the withdrawal of foreign currency abroad. According to Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseev, this will help attract investors who are now allegedly afraid of existing barriers. Recall that now the transfer limit is $1 million per month. “We will never get a foreign investor if we limit his exit, no friendly countries will invest, despite the fact that, we believe, they could now fill a certain niche of outgoing unfriendly investors. To do this, we must guarantee them the absence of risk convertibility, as it is called in a broad sense, namely the absence of a restriction on exiting when they want to do so,” the official said. The sentence is not devoid of logic, but devoid of meaning. The main obstacle to investment in Russia is not the limitation that Moiseev speaks of. It is because of the “elephant”, which the government is afraid to talk about, that the limit on the withdrawal of funds was set. So you need to fix the root cause, not the side effects.
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The main thing of the day #how it was ☠️ Lost. Russia lost about 10,000 units of military equipment and more than 60,000 soldiers in the war with Ukraine. This is the biggest loss since WWII. And, most importantly, pointless. ???? Don’t discredit. A draft law on punishment for “discrediting” members of the SVO, including mercenaries from the Wagner PMC, was submitted to the State Duma. The law was lobbied by Prigozhin, who at the same time asks to be allowed to criticize and discredit the leadership of the Ministry of Defense. ???? Still not 37th (but close). In the Tula region, a daughter is taken away from a single father for her anti-war drawing at an art lesson. A criminal case was opened against the father, and the daughter was sent to an orphanage. “Ordinary fascism”? ✏️ Desanction. Former Russian businessman Oleg Tinkov asked the British authorities to lift sanctions from him, because. he renounced Russian citizenship and publicly condemned the “special operation”. Tinkov’s success will send a signal to other Russian businessmen. ???? Prices down. Deflation suddenly returned to Russia – in the last week of February, prices in the country fell by 0.2%, although they usually rise in winter. The reason lies in the low demand – the Russians simply do not have money. @oreshkins