For the first time in modern Russian history, the Kremlin is firing employees at its own state bank.
This is definitely unprecedented.
We are talking about the State Developmental Bank, the institution that holds pension money for 38 million Russians.
And this is the single most protected employer in the entire country.
And guess what? This week, Putin just ordered it to lay off 15% of its workforce.
This means that something underneath the Russian economy is breaking so badly that the Kremlin can no longer hide it.
And the layoffs are only on the surface.
Russia is now losing more soldiers per day than it can recruit.
Putin’s aids are now proposing forced labor policy straight out of 1950s Soviet playbooks.
And of course, to make matters worse, and I don’t joke when I’m saying this, Russians just got the worst news possible.
Vodka prices in Russia are skyrocketing.
The one thing that has stayed cheap through every Russian crisis for the last 25 years is actually going out of control.
And although while this is happening, guess what Putin is doing? He’s not trying to solve the issues, but rather he’s hosting his own fake version of Davos in St.
Petersburg with Candace Owen, Andrew Tate, and his little brother.
This tells you everything you need to know about how the Russian economy is going because Putin is trying to throw a party with these world famous economists and Ukraine just ruined that party with a drone strike that hit the city while the forum was ongoing.
So, in this video, I want to walk you through what is actually happening inside the Russian economy, why Putin is reaching for policies most Western analysts predicted he would never use, and of course, how Ukraine just delivered the most perfectly timed humiliation strike of this entire war.
But before we get into this whole summit, this fake Davos party that Putin is throwing, let’s start with the math that explains why those layoffs were pretty inevitable.
You see, the Russian state is hemorrhaging money.
And the reason it’s hemorrhaging money is something that the Kremlin still refuses to say out loud.
Russia is losing more than a thousand soldiers per day.
And that number has been pretty consistent for the last few months.
And I’m not joking when I say this.
Now, pretty much everyone agrees that this is not sustainable.
Take a listen to this comment from Finnish President Alexander Stoops.
So, we’re in a situation whereby the Ukrainians are eliminating about 35,000 Russian soldiers per month.
The Russians are not able to recruit as many as they lose.
On top of that, Ukraine is launching more drones and missiles into Russia than vice versa.
And in the month of April was the first time when Ukraine acquired more territory back than Russia acquired.
Um if you want to put a final mathematics on it, uh the uh popularity of the war is now below 50% in Russia and that’s for two reasons.
Uh Ukraine is able to strike indeed to Moscow and St.
Petersburg.
Uh and secondly, the Russians had to close the internet, Telegram and WhatsApp.
So I think the tides are turning and Russia is Ukraine is on top.
Now to be clear that 1,000 figure includes killed and wounded.
That means some of those wounded soldiers will recover and return to the front lines.
But still, the math problem does not become easier because we have to look at the other side of the equation.
Russia is currently recruiting around 30,000 new soldiers every single month.
That means they’re actually losing more than they are recruiting.
And the worst part is that that gap, even though it’s small right now, it keeps growing month after month.
And this is exactly why the army is shrinking and Russia is losing ground on the front lines.
In fact, they have lost ground for the last two months consistently.
And it will start to make sense once we look at the recruitment figures.
In the first 3 months of 2026, Russian recruitment fell 20% yearonear compared to the first 3 months in the last year.
That decline is also accelerating.
That means the rate of recruitment is falling faster and faster every single month.
And the reason for this is pretty simple.
First of all, Russians are starting to figure out what actually happens when they sign a contract.
They know that Russian commanders are just running this so-called strategy called meatwave assaults, where they send wave after wave of Russian soldiers into fortified Ukrainian positions until enough of the soldiers die that finally one last wave succeeds.
The math is pretty simple.
The Russian commanders are hoping that if they send enough bodies, Ukrainians are going to run out of bullets or run out of drones.
But unfortunately, Ukraine is innovating at a faster rate than Russia can kill off its own citizens.
And that means the survival math for Russian soldiers who are signing this new contract, well, that’s not looking pretty.
In fact, take a look at this clip here.
We have a Russian soldier being extremely happy about the fact that he gets to go to the front lines and make so much money from bonuses.
And then we see the aftermath as to exactly how that frontline trip turned out for him.
Take a look.
Now, I really wanted to play Curbio Enthusiasm’s theme song right here, but I think you guys get the message.
And guess what? Russian soldiers, or more so the wouldbe Russian soldiers, are getting that message, too.
And this is exactly why they’re not signing up for this frontline assault that Russia is carrying out.
And this brings us to the second reason the recruitment numbers are collapsing.
The money that Russia has to offer needs to keep going up.
But unfortunately, Putin got no money.
You see, at the start of the war, to get a Russian man to take a one in three chance of dying, Kremlin used to wave a $20,000 signing bonus in his face.
That used to be life-changing money.
And on top of that, a lot of Russians would think that chances of them dying wasn’t that high.
So they would take the bonus since it’s so much money and they would weigh it against the chances of dying and they’d be like, “Hey, I’ll do this trade.
” Unfortunately, that $20,000 check is not working anymore because the ruble is weaker.
Inflation has eaten away in rural Russia.
And on top of that, Russians can see that the risk is much higher than they previously had thought.
And that’s why they want a bigger bonus to take on a risk like that.
Basic supply and demand.
Now, unfortunately, Putin doesn’t have enough money to keep raising the bonuses so he can keep getting more and more recruits.
Take a look at this report.
And this is coming from the Russian Finance Ministry.
Russia’s finance minister just admitted in a leaked letter that the 2026 budget overshot on this war by at least $28 billion.
That means they are spending more money than they had hoped they would spend on this war.
And that $28 billion is also the optimistic scenario, which means if the front lines keep going the way they’re going, that $28 billion loss doubles to $56 billion in just this year alone.
And to make matters worse, the ministry says that they expect the same thing to happen in 2027 and 2028 if this war continues.
Now, in all fairness, this was a letter that was first published in February.
So since then, the Iran war has pushed up the oil prices, which has cushioned Russia’s revenues slightly, but not as much as Russia would have hoped.
You see, there’s something else that the finance ministry probably could not have predicted back in February.
The worst damage to the Russian economy happening in the last few months isn’t actually coming from Western sanctions.
It’s actually coming from Ukraine and Ukrainian sanctions.
You see, Western sanctions take years to grind down an economy.
They work, but just in slow motion.
But Ukrainian sanctions work a lot faster.
A drone just crashes into a refinery.
And guess what? Those sanctions shut down the refinery right away.
Maybe for weeks, maybe for months, maybe even longer.
And every refinery that goes down means less refined oil that Russia can sell overseas.
That means less tax money for Putin.
And that means more domestic shortages, more cuts, and of course, less soldiers on the front lines.
That’s why in this letter, even though the finance minister didn’t know this would happen, he knew Russia is losing money.
So in this letter, he presents a solution.
He’s not someone who’s just complains like me.
He had a solution for Putin and the Russian cabinet.
And he said, “If you want to continue this war, you need to start cutting cost in other parts of the government.
” And guess what? That’s exactly what’s happening now, roughly a few months later.
This brings us to the state layoffs that we talked about at the start of the video.
As I said earlier, the state developmental bank is getting hit with 15% layoff.
That’s5.
Not as bad as 50, but still pretty bad considering this is a state bank.
Putin is funding the expenses.
This is the first visible proof that things aren’t exactly going as planned in this war.
And now Russia is starting to cut cost in places that they haven’t really done before.
In fact, this is something the CEO of this bank actually publicly admitted and I feel like that may have been a mistake.
So, I’m going to keep an eye on this CEO, see if he accidentally falls out of a window.
But here’s what he said.
He publicly came out when he announced this layoff.
He said that they’re doing this layoff because this is something that was ordered directly by the Kremlin.
And he also said next year they expect the layoffs to start hitting banks subsidiaries.
Right now, it’s just hitting the ma main bank, but next year is going to start affecting other companies that work underneath the bank.
Now, think about what that actually means because this is probably the most protected institution when it comes to firing people.
You know, this is a state bank.
It’s part of the Russian state.
And I’m sure Putin doesn’t want people who work for the government to start worrying about where they’re going to earn their paycheck from.
And this is exactly why it tells us how desperate the situation inside Russia is actually getting.
And on top of that, policies are usually a good way to tell what’s happening behind the scenes that the government doesn’t want to admit to publicly.
And this is not something that’s only, you know, credible in Russia.
You could apply the same logic to here in the United States or any other country.
It’s more important to look at what the government is doing rather than just listen to what they’re saying.
This is where I want to talk about another policy that people close to Putin are floating inside of Russia.
Take a look.
This proposal comes from a Putin aid.
So this guy is advising Putin directly on economic matters and he says any Russian student who receives a government scholarship must work for the government for free for a fixed period of time.
Basically a way of paying back the government for the scholarship.
And if you refuse, you do not just pay back the scholarship.
You actually have to pay back three times the scholarship amount plus a penalty on top of that for refusing.
Now, I’m not the best at math, but I would assume that the three times the scholarship amount is already a penalty.
But no, according to this guy, you have to pay a penalty on top of that.
Just think about how absurd that is.
In a normal country, the whole point of having government funded scholarship is that people who are educated, they can use that education to pay back the government or pay back the society over their lifetime with higher taxes.
That’s the entire point of public education.
But now Putin is saying, “No, we actually want the labor up front.
” Kind of like how Soviet Union used to do.
And on top of that, if you refuse to give us free labor, well, guess what? You’ll be punished for that economically speaking.
To me, this just seems like conscription with extra steps.
And it is the kind of policy you only reach for when you’re truly out of options.
So you would think that in a time like this, Putin would focus his energy and of course his time on fixing the issues that Russians are facing.
Well, he’s not exactly doing that, but he is throwing a party.
So in a way, he is like a Russians are.
This week, Putin is hosting the St.
Petersburg International Economic Forum.
This is supposed to be Russia’s answer to Davos.
The original Davos, which is the annual gathering of world leaders and economists in Switzerland, has not really invited Russia since 2022 since Putin launched his special military operation.
So Putin decided to build his own version.
Now, this is already embarrassing enough if you can’t get into a party you’re trying to throw another one just to compete with it.
But this situation gets even worse because instead of inviting worldclass economists like Davos does, Putin is inviting some people you may have heard of.
These are the elite thinkers of our society.
People like Candace Ovens, Andrew Tate, and of course his little brother.
I’m not joking.
This is actually happening.
If you follow any of these guys, and I don’t know why you would, you know, they are in Russia right now because this is such an important meeting that they have to go there and of course help out the Russian economy by advising on what Russia should be doing next.
Now, unfortunately, things aren’t exactly going to plan for Putin.
Even before this summit started, Russian war bloggers were already mad about what Putin was trying to do.
They were asking very obvious questions.
If the economy is struggling so badly, why are we throwing a party celebrating the economy? And why are we inviting these people who actually play no role at all as to how Russia is going to do in the future? Take a listen.
This is coming directly from a Russian war blogger.
You know, the fact that they’re attacking St.
Petersburg, it’s just a greeting to all those pricks at the speed.
Economy, forum, beauty, tra.
And let me tell you straight, being a sucker is your destiny.
They’re just going to keep testing it right up until the moment they probably kill us all sake.
What kind of economy are you even gathered there to talk about? We need reforms.
Damn it.
It’s over.
Time to change course.
Shut the borders.
And what can we actually do? Nothing.
We can only sell oil, gas, and timber.
That’s it.
What do the Chinese even give us? Fiber optic cable.
And even that’s garbage.
They’ve already taken over everything in Siberia.
Completeing disaster.
How long are we going to keep living like devils, huh? The people are getting poorer and poorer.
The economy is collapsing.
Heck are you yapping about over there.
We’ve had growth.
There’s nothing left to grow.
Everything’s shutting down.
Whatever’s left empty.
Go ahead, rent it.
That’s all that’s happened.
There’s your whole speed for youers.
Keep farting harder in Saint Petersburg.
Maybe it’ll blow the smoke away, you bastards.
Then of course on the night of June 2nd, so just a day ago, Russia launched one of the largest aerial assaults of this entire war.
Missiles and drones rain down on cities across Ukraine, including Keefe.
In fact, Kee was hit the hardest.
23 people killed, including two children, and 130 people injured across Ukraine.
Now, this is where I want to take a moment here to talk about Ukrainian issues because we spend a lot of time on this channel talking about Ukrainian wins.
But there are aspects or the fronts on this war where Ukraine is struggling.
One of them is ballistic missile defense.
Ukraine just doesn’t have Patriot batteries or Patriot missiles or Ukraine doesn’t have enough of them to stop all the ballistic missiles that Russia is firing on a very regular basis.
And that’s why they’ve been asking the United States a lot.
They have wrote a public letter to President Trump, to Pentagon, to Congress, to everyone.
But unfortunately, because of the Iran war, US itself has some supply issues with Patriot missiles and Patriot batteries.
And that’s creating a huge problem for Ukrainian civilians.
But luckily, Ukraine does have a way to answer back.
This is not 2022 anymore where Ukraine just has to, you know, suffer through Russian terrorist attacks.
They actually can respond back.
They have their own longrange drones.
They have their own ballistic missiles.
And on top of that, unlike Russia, they have a very precise sense of timing.
And Ukraine responded with something you may not expect.
While Putin was preparing to address foreign dignitaries at his fake party in St.
Petersburg, Ukraine struck that exact city.
But unlike Putin, Ukraine did not go after civilian targets.
They actually went after something that’s very visible and hurts Putin exactly where it’s going to hurt the most.
But that’s probably not a good sentence, but they went after Russian oil refineries.
They create a big boom and on top of that they shut down the refinery.
So Russia suffers for a long time.
Take a look at this attack that just took place few hours before I’m recording.
Now, that popping sound you hear in the background, well, that is Russian air defense trying and largely failing to intercept the strike.
These are supposed to be best air defenses that Russia has.
They’re positioned around the city precisely because this is Putin’s home city and is holding this big party in this main city.
But unfortunately, they could not do anything to stop Ukrainian drones.
In fact, Russian air defenses are now failing so consistently that private Russian businesses are reportedly arming themselves to shoot down these Ukrainian drills.
Now, that is a sentence I did not think I would ever say when this war started, but this is where Russia has got to.
Now, this is not me just overhyping some news.
This is something that is being covered in Russian media itself.
Take a look at this clip’s lead story.
Russian regions and big businesses are arming themselves to defend against attacks by Ukrainian drones.
A summary here of some of the problems Russia is facing.
An increasing number of Russian regions are having to respond to Ukrainian attacks and take independent measures to prevent them.
The new regions of Russia, that’s a reference to Russian occupied Ukrainian territory that Russia claims to have annexed, are facing local logistical difficulties due to attacks on the Novar Russia highway.
Fuel shortages are growing in Crimea.
Some regions are trying to resist attacks off their own back.
Departments for anti- drone defense and special volunteer detachments of reserveists are being created to protect energy facilities.
And big business has been promised it will be allowed to purchase large caliber weapons for self-defense.
The Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs proposes using electronic warfare systems and lasers and not only small arms to defend against attacks on industrial facilities.
Now, this video was filled with bad news for Russia, but I think the worst one has to be vodka prices going up.
So, I’ll be watching what Putin does next, especially relating to vodka prices.
My name is Sam and I’ll see you guys in the next
