The dark at the end of Russia's tunnel
Putin and Nabiullina are in trouble — we must not take their propaganda at face value
After Foreign Policy ran my new article about Russia’s Central Bank chief Elvira Nabiullina, a friend passed on an alleged insider document outlining why Russia’s economy didn’t contract as quickly as we thought it might — and why it will contract anyway.
I’m not going to quote the document directly since I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to read it (heh heh), but I will say this:
1) When Western economists make predictions about the Russian economy today, they make them while assuming that the Russian government will play by the rules.
2) You guys remember the 2008 crisis? And how bad loans were kind of covering up a huge issue that led up to it? Well, something similar is happening in Russia right now, only it has a chance of being much, much worse.
While all of that was going on, friends and I were discussing how on earth the Russians could absorb so many needless casualties in Ukraine and still keep trying. It’s an issue that even tripped up the Ukrainians, who know Russians better than Americans do. Simply put, a typical invader who suffers that much losses would’ve turned back by now — but Russia is not doing that.
I realized that the question of Russian losses is actually comparable to the question of the Russian economy. Much like in point 1), you simply can’t apply pragmatic and humanist to the Russian government. You can’t judge the Kremlin and its lapdogs by your own standards. That’s how you end up getting blindsided.
Plenty of other governments would’ve been internally shaken by this much carnage. The Kremlin is not. Not yet. And when it is shaken, it won’t be out of a sense of shame or pity for the people it sent to their deaths — it will be due to an outside threat, peasants with pitchforks, or some other kind of reckoning.
When it comes, people like Elvira Nabiullina will inevitably play innocent, but they should not be allowed to do so.
The best play I ever wrote in Russian was called “Louisiana” and was inspired by the sinking of the cruise ship Bulgaria, where many small children and women died. A year before Russia first attacked Ukraine in 2014, a Russian director once asked me to summarize the play’s message in one sentence, and I, being put on the spot, replied, “It’s a play about how the Russian elites are telling their people to lie down and die, die already, die for their prestige.”
Last year, that same director, who had to flee Russia, wrote to tell me that my work had been prophetic.
This week, one of my favorite Ukrainian writers, my friend Marysia Nikitiuk, wrote, “This will end, they will definitely break, but it’s a pity that they will break against us.”
In other words, the best people in Ukraine are currently dying while Russia sends its worst.
I’ve had so many people lately, strangers and not, telling me that Ukraine should give up. People have even accused me of not caring about what happens to Ukrainians — my kin, my friends. People who will never know the extent to which this war has destroyed my world, bashed it like an unwanted toy, left me forever scattered. No one, in the end, will know the truth of this war for me and mine, which is fine, not everything is meant to be spoken out loud, least of all written down, and I say that as a career writer.
What I can say, what I can write down is this: No. Fuck no. Fuck no Ukraine can’t give up, and neither can we give up on Ukraine, because the dark at the end of Russia’s tunnel is getting closer.
I’m not saying this as only a writer and a measurer of the threads of fate. I’m saying this as an analyst. And yes, I have miscalculated before — not a thing you’re supposed to admit in DC, but there it is. Like many normal people, I underestimated the Russians’ willingness to inflict horrific, needless pain on their own people. I know better now.
If reading this fills you with an urge to help — especially if you are a free subscriber — please consider that Herring, my friend and one of the heroes of last year’s amazing dispatch from the front lines by Luke Mogelson, is still out there, fighting.
He has not stopped, because he’s brave and good.
If you want to help him and his boys out with batteries and gear this holiday season, my PayPal is nvantonova@gmail.com, CashApp $NataliaAntonova, Venmo Natalia-Antonova-1.
Yes, I provide receipts each time I transfer money, just send me your e-mail address.
Thank you for subscribing. Happy holidays to you all.