Raam op Rusland, Oekraine, Belarus brengt een artikel over de economische gevolgen van de Oekrainse operatie in Koersk en Belgorod voor Rusland.
Om eerlijk te zijn heeft het artikel meerdere kanten. De
auteur rekt zijn oordeelkundigheid (economie) bij sommige aspecten behoorlijk op. Voorbeelden zijn de beschrijving over hoe de kerncentrale als drukmiddel kan worden gebruikt, en wat er met nu met de Russische overheid gebeurt. Vanuit zijn rol en positie lijkt hij desondanks een duidelijk beeld te hebben van de machinaties binnen het Russische overheidsapparaat. Het onderwerp, analyse van de impact van de Koers-Belgorod is denk ik te belangrijk om met deze informatie er geen start mee te maken. Andere bronnen die hierover iets vertellen zijn welkom, om ons beeld te verbeteren. Ik zie het onderstaande als een begin.
The economic aftermath of Ukrainian incursions in Kursk and Belgorod
Het is goed nog even stil te staan bij wat deze operatie nog gaat veroorzaken. Aan het woord een
Russische econoom, Vladislav Inozemtsev. Om te beginnen, hij is dus econoom en was tot voor kort van mening dat de militair bereikte resultaten in de oorlog met Oekraïne bepalend was:
In the course of the entire two and a half years of the full-scale war (except for the first couple of months), I have believed that its outcome would be determined solely by the military, and not by economic or financial sanctions imposed on the aggressor country.
Maar ja, wat weet een econoom over strategie en tactiek? Over die sancties zou hij nog wel een punt kunnen hebben, als we even negeren dat de Russische overheid continue goud lekt:
Simple arithmetic operations can show that neither revenues to the Russian budget, nor the incomes of Russian citizens, nor profits of Russian corporations suffered a decline over that time (we take the pre-war year of 2021 as a point of refence for this comparison). At the same time, European countries have incurred significant losses, which may reach even EUR 1 trillion if we consider the overpayments for energy, lost investments in Russia, lost profits etc. This is three times as much as the money allocated by Western countries to finance Ukraine (and no less than seven times as much as the money allocated to direct supplies of arms and ammunition to Kyiv).
Sinds kort is de man gaan twijfelen. Dit kwam niet door plotseling verkregen militair inzicht, maar door het volgende besef:
The most significant blow to the Russian economy did not come from the seizure of the Bank of Russia’s assets or the introduction of an oil price ceiling, but from the Ukrainian counter-offensive of late summer and early autumn 2022, which triggered ‘partial mobilisation’, with almost a million people fleeing from the country.
The same event provoked the still ongoing increase in payments to mobilised and contract soldiers, which, despite accelerating economic growth, created unprecedented imbalances in the labour market, propelled the inflation rate and caused many other negative effects. The invasion of Russian territory by the Ukrainian army may have much more dramatic consequences than an external observer might imagine.
Daarom moeten we dit besef doortrekken naar de huidige Oekrainse gebiedsverandering bij Kursk en Belgorod. De regio's vertegenwoordigen maar een klein percentage van Ruslands' gebied en bevolking:
Of course, in the context of Russia’s almost infinite territory, the Kursk and Belgorod regions may seem rather small: they account for only 0.3% of the country’s total area and 1.7% of its population.
Toch zijn de regio's om de volgende redenen economisch belangrijk. Op het volgende heeft Oekraïense aanval impact:
Directe economische impact
- the Kursk and Belgorod regions accounted for 25.6% of total Russian pork production and 15.2% of poultry production before the war, and they topped the list of attractive ‘low-risk’ investment destinations.
- the invasion by Ukrainian forces has also created serious problems in the transport sector.
- the refusal to perform transport services has led to a massive accumulation of idle wagons and abandoned trains
- As the Ukrainian army draws closer to the Kursk nuclear power plant (NPP), this poses an even more significant threat.
Deze directe impact hieronder in meer detail toegelicht.
Landbouwproductie
It is quite likely that if Ukrainian military units advance further, many pig and poultry farms could end up in the occupied zone (in the Belgorod region, about a half of them are located less than 30−40 kilometres from the border). The consequences for the Russian market are unlikely to be catastrophic, but under the prevailing policy of autarky, a 15−30% rise in meat prices in the central regions of Russia is almost guaranteed.
Transport
A large part of the Kursk and Belgorod regions are served by the Moscow Railway, which, due to the ‘federal-scale emergency’ has experienced disruptions following the closure of some stations and routes. According to sources in the industry, the refusal to perform transport services has led to a massive accumulation of idle wagons and abandoned trains — the scale has been so high that the Russian Railways have already imposed restrictions on transport, also through the territory of Bryansk and Smolensk regions, thus seriously affecting the shipments from Belarus to Russia (and, notably, these restrictions have been imposed ‘until further notice,’i.e. indefinitely for the time being).
Indeed, this is just the beginning of negative consequences for the logistics industry, since an increased pressure on the key transport routes connecting Moscow with the south via Voronezh will ensue as an indirect consequence. One way or another, it will take at least several months for the transport industry to adapt to the new reality.
Nucleair power
Russische afhankelijkheid van de kerncentrale:
Although major industry experts who recently visited the plant are talking about the expected timely completion of new power units, the situation does not look unproblematic. Even after the final decommissioning of the second power unit in January 2024, the Kursk NPP provides energy to 19 Russia’s regions, supplying 90% of the electricity consumed by the Kursk region, 76% by the Bryansk region and 70% by the Belgorod region.
Also, the Mikhailovsky mining and refining facility, the Novolipetsk steel company, most of the Moscow Railway tracks and other major industrial enterprises in the region also depend on the Kursk power plant.
Bezetting van de centrale is niet zo waarschijnlijk, het beschadigen van de hoogspanningsverbindingen wel:
it is quite possible that long-range artillery and short-range missiles could strike the plant’s high-voltage transmission grids from a distance of 20−25 kilometres, which could provoke a power collapse in the entire Central Region of Russia. The potential effect would be incomparable to the campaign heralded this spring about strikes on Russian oil processing plants.
Kosten Russische response
Hieronder zijn meerdere kosten te noemen:
Evacuation:
Although the evacuation figures in local authorities’ reports are probably overstated, the scale is unprecedented for modern Russia in any case, and this effort calls for significant expenditures: at least 1 billion roubles a day. Since the events have been officially qualified as a ’federal-scale emergency,’the main costs will be covered not from the local budgets, but from the federal pockets.
Kosten militaire inspanning:
the transfer of at least 20−40 thousand people with appropriate equipment to the attacked regions, as well as the rushed construction of defence lines and the required fortifications, the spending may reach at least 3 to 5 billion roubles per day (not counting monetary compensation for the killed and wounded). At present, the 50−60% of this amount is a more correct estimate of the real costs since there has been no massive withdrawal of the main forces from the Kharkiv direction and from the occupied territories of Ukraine.
Zou Rusland die gebieden ooit weer terugkrijgen/terugveroveren dan:
the future problem of internally displaced persons and the restoration of the territories currently occupied by the AFU (provided that the actions by the Russian military are successful) will be a concern for both federal and local authorities in the course of several years.
Maatschappelijke impact
Misschien zijn ondanks al deze economische factoren de maatschappelijke impact nog wel het grootst. Dit omdat die in belangrijke mate het draagvlak van het Russsiche bewind vertegenwoordigen.
Russische behoefte aan nieuwe manschappen groeit
Een optie zijn het gebruik van dienstplichtigen...
the military actions on the territory of Russia have raised many questions about the possibility of using conscripts and are likely to change the approach to this problem as a whole, bringing back the practice of using conscripts in a ’special military operation», including the main theatre of military operations in Donbass. If this happens, the tension in society is likely to rise. In fact, this has already been noted following the disappearance of conscripts in the area of Ukrainian incursion in the Kursk region, which the authorities have been trying to suppress diligently albeit harshly.
Of de afroep van een nieuwe mobilisatie:
Until recently, the authorities have responded to the declining rate of volunteer recruitment by increasing contractual payments, and probably did not intend to change their long-term goals. However, if Ukrainian forces become seriously entrenched on Russian territory, this approach may change, entailing the end of Putin’s system in its traditional format, where people remain passive in exchange for prosperity and geopolitical ‘achievements’. As the end of 2024 is nearing, Russian society is fairly disillusioned about the importance of victories in Ukraine, and highly fatigued with the ongoing war. This clearly represents an unfavourable background for mobilisation, a step that is already unpopular.
Beide oplossingen beconcurreren elkaar in impopulariteit.
Impact op het Russische bewind zelf
De druk op het Russische bewind neemt verder toe, en mischien nog belangrijker, het heeft geen adequate antwoorden (meer). Het doorschuiven van verantwoordelijkheden verhuld het probleem, maar lost haar oorzaken niet op.
Firstly, there has been a serious increase in tensions in and around the Kremlin, not observed in similar forms throughout the current war. The invasion, which has turned out to be the biggest failure of the Ministry of Defence and the General Staff, will lead to further purges at the highest echelons of the army.
Putin is beginning to create duplicate instruments and levers of governance — so far, however, only to repel the attack in the Kursk region.
This inability to solve obvious problems and ensure the defence of Russia’s own territory seems to be the most important outcome of the Ukrainian offensive today: the regime’s bureaucratic structures can only dump responsibility on each other and seek reasons to justify their inaction.
At present, no solution to the crisis is in sight. If the crisis leads to repression, even if not on a mass scale (there is talk about plans to instigate dozens, if not hundreds, of criminal cases against the top brass), this could be a difficult test for Putin’s regime, where it has been customary for officials to get away with almost anything.
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). Toch denk ik vanuit economisch oogpunt dat je beter oude mensen (mannen en vrouwen) die oud zijn dan kanonnenvoer dan jonge jochies in de bloei van hun leven. Al is het daar nu denk ik ook wel te laat voor.:strip_icc():strip_exif()/u/106218/wc-backbone.jpg?f=community)
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Als de russen dan nog het laatste stukje maatschappelijk nut eruit weten te melken, soit.
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