The Economic War in Ukraine a Year On - The energy war, politics & production

Over the last year, the Ukraine war has played out both on the battlefields of Ukraine, and on global markets where energy warfare, sanctions, and industrial mobilisation efforts went head to head. Russia wanted to freeze Europe, while the Western allies sought to strangle the Russian economy with sanctions.

A year on - I want to look at how successful these competing economic campaigns have been. Setting the stage to look at battlefield developments, attrition, and force regeneration in the near future.

Patreon:

Caveats/Corrections:
As always - unless very explicitly otherwise stated everything said should be considered to have a 'reportedly' or 'seemingly' tag attached.

I also note that my comments on survey, financial, and other data are intended to be illustrative, not exhaustive.

Sources/Reading:

LNG around the world:

IPSOS polling:

Europe gas prices hit low:

EU Gas storage:

LNG Terminal 3 in Germany

Seymour Hersh's article on Nord Stream

Hersh on Russia Today:

Russia switching oil tax calculations:

Russia planning one-off contributions:

Russia plan for foreign owned assets

Sonnenfeld on Russian economy estimates:

Russia produced economic figures :

Carnegie Endowment on Deficit:

Jamestown Foundation on RU DIB

Borisov on labour shortages:

Shadow fleet:

Oil Sanctions:

Defence Production:

Timestamps:
00:00:00 — Opening Words
00:02:18 — WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT?
00:02:49 — FREEZING EUROPE
00:03:48 — The Euro Response
00:05:59 — Climate & Culmination
00:07:20 — Cost To The Eurozone
00:09:46 — EU: Are Citizens’ Lives Heading The Right Direction? (graph)
00:11:21 — The External Costs
00:13:17 — Evaluation
00:14:02 — Side Note On Nord Stream Claims
00:17:45 — BREAKING UP UA's SUPPORT
00:20:37 — Support levels
00:21:43 — US Public Opinion
00:24:10 — More Global Opinion?
00:27:23 — Evaluation
00:27:51 — THE ECONOMIC WAR (ON RUSSIA)
00:29:02 — Energy Markets & Exports
00:34:10 — Follow On Sanctions And Induced Competition
00:35:43 — The Dispute Over Stats
00:37:23 — The Picture From Russia
00:39:01 — The Russian Budget
00:43:26 — Evaluation
00:44:26 — THE STRATEGIC BOMBING CAMPAIGN
00:46:57 — Economic Impacts
00:48:46 — The GBAD Problem
00:50:57 — THE PRODUCTION RACE - UKRAINE
00:53:25 — Strategic Imperative
00:56:28 — THRE PRODUCTION RACE - THE WEST
01:03:23 — THE PRODUCTION RACE - RUSSIA
01:06:25 — Defence Spending Is Surprisingly Low
01:08:17 — The Impact Of Sanctions & Inflation
01:14:52 — CONCLUSIONS
01:15:43 — CHANNEL UPDATE

[PerunAU]

After much consideration I decided to split the 1 year update into two components, economic/political and military (including issues like attrition) with the latter coming either next week or the week after. Looking at it, I just had too much to say about the winter fighting, attrition, and force regeneration efforts to give it only half a video. I know people who voted in the poll were looking forward to that material, and I hope you understand the decision. All the best to everyone and thanks for your support as always.

[MarcRavingMad]

Perun: "The whole thing is Sanctions Busting 101 and really could make for a decent movie. At least if the entire film-going public suddenly had a thing for creative lawyering and watching slow-moving at-sea oil transfers."

Perun's audience: "Make this movie. Now."

[scw]

"But I'm sure knocking 25% of the Ukrainian population off Steam for 12 hours was absolutely worth the expenditure of multimillion dollar hypersonic weapons." Perun 2023 🔥

[Transblucency]

"To be clear, I do not know who destroyed the Nord Stream Pipeline".

Exactly what I'd expect someone who destroyed the Nord Stream Pipeline to say.

[odinsrensen]

Actually, I once spoke to a Russian here on a YT comment section about General Winter, and he said it was a saying in Russia that: "If General Mud and General Snow had been privates, they'd have been executed for treason."

[CaspianReportDE]

I can't believe that I'm sitting here on a sunday refreshing your channel every few minutes because I'm waiting for an hour-long powerpoint presentation. Your content is amazing and you deserve all the attention it gets!

[manuelschneider]

"under ordinary circumstances German Bureaucracy can be pretty slow and plodding" As a German, I can't agree with this enough

[jakeku]

I'm just going to say it. I like slides. Graphics and animation are wonderful and have their place, but for me, slides and a voice over are easier to follow. I can listen to Perun's well written scripting while puttering around and glance up at the slides on any point I want more info on. The format is very much part of the appeal. Thank you for the outstanding content, Perun. Already looking forward to next week.

[Archangelm]

"The implication that, as an American journalist, what he writes is probably going to be in line with America's policy view."
That made me spit soda all across my desk and monitor from laughing so hard. Well done, Perun.

[robertm.]

This guy can make economics and supply issues sound a lot cooler than they should. And I'm all for it

[edwardkennedy]

As of now, the situation in the Ukrainian energy sector is stable. Frankly, I feared the worst, especially in winter, but our repair and rescue services showed heroism not inferior to that which the army shows at the front. Even after the most massive shelling, heat in large cities disappeared for no more than a day. Of course, there are some cities that got it much worse than others (Kharkov, Kherson, Nikolaev and Odessa, for example), but even there the situation never became critical enough to carry out an evacuation. By the way, the West also helped a lot in this, although nobody talk much about it. Knowing that our families are in relative comfort helps to boost morale of those of us who are now on the battlefield, and it brings results. I could write a lot more, but this is probably the only thing I would like to share. There is simply no need to add anything when the author has done it himself. As always, I raise a glass of tea for Perun's health)

[hkchan]

Market research veteran and Ex-Ipsos employee here, India (and China) had the same issue where plenty of respondents are "speeders" and "straight liners" who will answer quickly just to finish the survey and get the reward, so unless a very strict rejection rules of bad respondents are observed, I'd take any survey from those 2 countries as an interesting observation only instead of as gospel

[ClownVonDavid]

As a Singaporean, being a tiny country, the idea of being threatened by a nearby larger nation probably led to that 25% support for doing whatever it takes for Ukraine who's living our worst nightmare right now. After Japan invaded in the past it was Indonesia that attacked, then Malaysia constantly threatening our water, now China looms.

[rerror]

I live in Germany and without Russian gas my flat is so cold I literally have ice forming in my freezer.

[Rob_FF]

42:15 Pushes long term investor confidence out a 17th floor window. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Love Perun's humor

[StaticImage]

One thing that blew my mind was earlier today, I was looking at guitars online. I saw one I liked and when I clicked on the listing to check it out some more, I looked at where the guitar was located, and it was in Ukraine. It turns out that this guitar shop is operating as normal. I think that says something. It's not just a guitar shop. It's a non-essential business operating on a normal time schedule, engaging in international trade, buying and selling instruments both locally and internationally, and if you didn't look at where this guitar was coming from, you wouldn't know anything was going on behind the scenes.

Despite their best efforts, Russia can't even stop people from buying and selling guitars. The people of Ukraine push ahead in spite of it all.

[deetoher]

Yay, Perun discussing survey methodology and issues surrounding phrasing of questions!
Be still my beating statistician's heart.

[nikopursiainen]

Regarding Finnish elections, I would say that war in Ukraine has little to no effect on it. Every party that has any weight hatsoever supports Ukraine and is willing to keep supporting Ukraine with weapons. That won't change. These elections are pretty much about how to deal with the economic problems that we are facing.

[menkaragamble]

13 minutes in and I feel like a running theme in this war is that people and societies can be so much more resilient than we expect them to be. It been seen in the staying power of Ukraine in the face of invasion, in Russia's financial sector, and now in Europe's energy sector.

[Stlaind]

As an American, if one party makes supporting an issue part of their platform then a huge chunk of the other party will decide that they vehemently hate that position. I'm pretty sure this would happen if either party made agreeing that the sky is blue part of their platform.