Janis Kluge

@jakluge.de

Russia & Economics All views private German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP Berlin) Picture: Tamek Kowalski

Last week, I had the opportunity to discuss Russian recruitment and the budget in depth with Alex Gabuev on the Carnegie Politika Podcast. We covered everything from the quality of Russian data and current recruitment trends to military expenditure. Tune in! carnegieendowment.org/russia-euras...

Inside Putin’s War Recruitment Machine

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Janis Kluge, leader of the Eastern Europe and Eurasia research team at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, to discuss the Russian militar...

carnegieendowment.org

I analyzed dozens of reports from Russian municipalities and found a lot of fascinating insights about how Russian recruitment actually works. At the core, the recruitment machine is a multilayered system of quotas, going all the way from the Kremlin down to the smallest village.

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I analyzed dozens of reports from Russian municipalities and found a lot of fascinating insights about how Russian recruitment actually works. At the core, the recruitment machine is a multilayered system of quotas, going all the way from the Kremlin down to the smallest village.

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There seems to be data manipulation on Gdebenz for Moscow now. Since last night, there are some strange patterns in the data. The changes are a bit too swift to be real and also the frequency of reports has increased (I would expect it to decrease as the situation improves).

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There is still cash on the accounts of the Russian Finance Ministry, a few trillion rubles. They already placed a lot of bonds this year, and July will bring bigger oil revenues. When the accounts run low, they will have to issue bonds. Floaters are always possible to sell.

Ian Bond@cerianbond.bsky.social · 2w ago

So if the Finance Ministry stops issuing bonds, how does the government finance its deficit? Raid the National Wealth Fund (a bit bigger because of higher oil prices)? Cut spending (but non-military spending has already been slashed)? Raise taxes? John Healey's job in the UK is a lot easier!

A more detailed look at Russian gas stations: The situation seems to be improving, and partially as a result of that (and the availability of alternative gasoline apps) the data quality has deteriorated a bit. First the chart that shows the situation the best (in my view).

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In general, these charts rather make the situation look better than it is. I checked many of the "open without queue note" stations in detail, and there is often a catch. Not just volume limits (20-30 liters) or payment rules (company cards), but sometimes only diesel is available.

Janis Kluge@jakluge.de · 3w ago

Situation at Russian gas stations in the last 5 days and today: Moscow and St Petersburg are prioritized. It looks like the situation is improving, but I checked several cities in detail, and I think the increasing availability of fuel has a different reason: Higher prices.

Situation at Russian gas stations in the last 5 days and today: Moscow and St Petersburg are prioritized. It looks like the situation is improving, but I checked several cities in detail, and I think the increasing availability of fuel has a different reason: Higher prices.

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I was wondering why there are many gas stations without queues in Novosibirsk, and at the same time some with extremely long queues. The reason are extreme price differences, with gasoline ranging from 63 to 175 rubles per liter.

Janis Kluge@jakluge.de · 3w ago

The situation at Russian gas stations in the last 6 days. Each bar shows the known gas stations in the city dataset, incl. the share of them for which there is no data or low data confidence. If fewer drivers use gdebenz, the data becomes useless (Omsk).

The situation at Russian gas stations in the last 6 days. Each bar shows the known gas stations in the city dataset, incl. the share of them for which there is no data or low data confidence. If fewer drivers use gdebenz, the data becomes useless (Omsk).

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The length of queues at gas stations in different Russian cities: The situation has improved a lot in Omsk in recent days, and Moscow is supplied better than some of the cities around it. Source is gdebenz (data behaves normally, manipulation probably plays a small role if any).

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Neither Russian refineries nor the Russian military industry seem to be prepared for a war against an opponent with real long-range strike capabilities. Changing this will be very expensive and time-consuming for Moscow.

MAKS 26 👀🇺🇦@maks23.bsky.social · last mo.

🤩 The consequences of the destruction by Ukrainian-made FP-5 Flamingo missiles of a critically important enterprise of the Russian military-industrial complex - the Titan-Barricades plant in Volgograd, - Exilenova