>

Who if they live in reality believes any of this Russian propaganda?
I usually believe what Reuters news reports, but they failed here in not checking the facts.
Hold your butthurt. That is normal for an economy that cannot buy anything due to sanctions. >

"Cannot buy anything???". You will be shocked to learn the amount of products from France , German,Poland and Netherlands on the Russian shelves. >

Maybe that’s because there are no sanctions on groceries? And that wasn‘t what the comment you replied to implied either. >

Actually I just saw a documentary about stores like reserve (polish bran) just going through a middle man like China and rebranding the name to RV but the clothes all have the tags with the actual name. >

Cute. $227 bln "account surplus" but almost $50 bln budget deficit overall. Turns out war is expensive, very expensive.
Not to mention that the month of December alone wiped out the entire year of gains because, as we know it, sanctions don't work. >

So is buying back paper money nobody on the planet actually wants. 
Based on the last months of 2022, their total foreign cash burn rate (energy revenues, war, currency manipulation together) was $13b/year, and their non-frozen non-gold runway was less than $100b tasting them through June. Gold giving them another 6 months. >

China and India and Iran and North Korea are trading in rub.  Probably others as well.   A few drops in the bucket compared to 2021. >

That’s already factored into the $13b/month burn rate (which has to accommodate a certain amount of ruble buybacks given the residual amount of demand for rubles generated by foreign buyers who need rubles to buy Russian oil). >

People seems not to understand that this is CURRENT ACCOUNT surplus, not BUDGET surplus. This is not a good thing, in fact, its the opposite. Russia cannot import crucial goods and their money is sitting unused, a sign of sanctions working >

Is this wealth they can spend internally on munitions for the war and reining in food prices?  Or is it dead weight?  I don't have a good handle on how this works. >

Theoritically, yes. There is a leftover money that can be used for domestic purchase. But practically, there is no guarantee that the spending will be useful (the fact that an import is done in the first place means that importing it is more cost effective) >

it can't be used for domestic purchase if its in dollars >

Sounds like some finance minister doesn't want to fall out of a window. >

People who rent out basement apartments in russia gotta be Rich by now🤣 >

What’s the credibility for the country keeps lying to the world >

It's only India.
China kept their total about the same but was buying more crude rather than refined, so still hurting Russia a bit. >

Oil is only one side of China's economic relationship with Russia.
Since the war exploded in 2022, China's Russian oil purchases have remained relatively flat, yet their trade deficit with Russia has soared. IOW, while China was buying similar amounts of Russian oil, they were selling Russia far less in goods. This piles up cash reserves on the Russian side of the ledger, contributing to the numbers reported by Reuters.
In theory, having more liquid assets should help Russia make war.  In practice, if sanctions prevent or slow Russia's ability to purchase needed war-making goods, the liquidity is of little practical value. >

Especially because liquidity is even less effective with sanctions due to the actual value they are getting for their money (for things they can manage to get their hands on, likely for a stiff premium) being significantly less than the value they would get for their money in normal times. >

Excellent news if one ignores the simple fact that the required price for their oil is $100/barrel, in order for them to not go into deficit, is about $50 higher than it is actually selling for. 
10 million barrels/day * -$50 = $500M deficit per day
$500M/day * 365 = $182B deficit per year, assuming that prices for Russia’s crude oil don’t fall any further (unlikely), and assuming that Russia’s military spending doesn’t increase their projected budget any further (absolutely impossible) >

So impact is two-fold : 1) deficit is increasing 2) employees of the enterprise that almost single-handedly pays for the Russian government likely won’t be able to even recoup its operating expenses 
A double whammy, as the satanist Americans say >

I mean it's entirely dependent on what the Chinese and Indians are willing to pay the Russians for oil. As far as I have seen they are still making a profit on those sales. Now if it was possible to put pressure on those two massive importers then the Russian petro-economy would be in serious pain. I think the Russians were preparing for this situation for around 8-10 years if you track their reserves and gold holdings over time. Can't see this ending anytime soon unfortunately. >

The Indians and Chinese are waiting for the next round of sanctions to hit, so that they can go back to the Russians and lowball them even further, because they know that the Russians really don't have anywhere to turn, and they have to sell that oil. >

Makes a lot of sense for them to get the best price possible. Looks like the longer term play will be debt-backed currencies vs commodity (gold,gas,oil) backed currencies. The unholy alliance would be Iran, China and Russia though that isn't iron clad as we speak. The point is I think there is a much larger game being played and the kinetic situation in Ukraine is only one aspect of it. >

I agree that there is the fight between the two types of currency you speak of, but in regards to the Russians, it’s not that they’re seeking to get the best price (which they are), but more so what anyone is willing to give them these days. As soon as the EU introduced the Russian oil price caps, India took advantage and bargained down the price for the oil they were selling, using the price caps as a bargaining chip, even though they weren’t directly affected by said price caps. Sure, Russia still has a market, but it’s very limited and they are beholden to their consumers, which is not a good place to be in, when your economy relies almost entirely on said industry. >

Yeah I wouldn't be debating any of those points really. Though I still think they are making a profit even with the caps on price. Interesting moves from the Saudi's today implying the potential to do swaps with the Chinese outside of the petro-dollar system. Countries are opportunistic and if they see a situation that will benefit them by buying cheap oil from pariah states they will do it. Best to not underestimate your enemy. >

Coming to a tax haven near you soon. >

Jesus, do people believe they can't spend it on anything? They're already spending it on Iranian weapons and all sort of Chinese stuff or even European stuff imported through Turkey. Russia is essentially neither winning nor losing, but pivoting to another mode. >

it's just the usual coping by some people.
anything mildly positive about russia has to be fake or ''explained away'' by making up reasons as to why it's actually bad. >

peeps malding. >

Money is useless when there's nothing to buy