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IPSE'S AUTHORS LAST 24h
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IPSEs IN THE LAST 24H
  • Jimmy Rushton
    Jimmy Rushton “Shoigu's replacement with a (relatively experienced and apparently competent) economist [Andrei Belousov] pretty clearly signals Putin believes victory in Ukraine will come via outproducing (and outlasting) Ukraine and her Western allies. He's preparing for many more years of war.” 4 hours ago
  • Konstantin Sonin
    Konstantin Sonin “Things are not going according to Putin's plan, but he will endlessly rotate the same small group of loyalists. Putin has always feared to bring new people to the positions of authority - even in the best of times, they must have been nobodies with no own perspectives. Toward the end of his rule, even more so.” 4 hours ago
  • Mark Galeotti
    Mark Galeotti “With an economist taking over the Defence Ministry, and the old minister taking up a policy and advisory role, the technocrats are in the ascendant. The goal though is not peace, but a more efficient war. As Putin digs in for the long term, with the 'special military operation' now being the central organising principle of his regime, he knows he needs technocrats to keep his war machine going.” 5 hours ago
  • Jeff Hawn
    Jeff Hawn “This indicates that the Kremlin is not seeking an exit from Ukraine, but once to extend their ability to endure the conflict as long as possible. Russia is very limited [on] how much they can increase scale, due to economic deficiencies. However, they can maintain a certain level of attritional warfare. And are likely hoping to do that longer than Ukraine can.” 5 hours ago
  • Dmitry Peskov
    Dmitry Peskov “Today, the winner on the battlefield is the one who is more open to innovation, more open to implementation as quickly as possible. It is natural that at the current stage the president [Vladimir Putin] decided that the Ministry of Defence should be headed by a civilian [Andrei Belousov].” 5 hours ago
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POLITICS  ECONOMY  CURRENT EVENTS

04 Feb 2022

“Hitting Russia's oil industry directly is impossible in an age when no country has the spare production capacity to replace it. And there are refineries among NATO's Central European members - Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic - which can only be supplied by Russian pipelines. The SWIFT idea was quickly dropped because they realised that targeting SWIFT in a blanket way would mean, for instance, German utilities would have no way to pay for Russian natural gas, and that gets to be unthinkable. Russia has a permission factor in that is clearly 'too big to sanction' like Iran. What I think we have to be concerned about is that Russia has sufficient financial reserves that the scenario where Russia 'trolls' Europe and causes severe energy problems in Europe, which in turn makes it impossible to stay on message with regard to a western response.”

Greg Priddy
Greg Priddy
   Analyst, Political Analyst, Consultant
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Independent oil consultant and former chief energy analyst at Eurasia Group
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  • 04 February 2022
  • 04 February 2022
  • Russia
  • Not Specified
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