Comments by "Paul Aiello" (@paul1979uk2000) on "Can we Trust Russia's Economic Data?" video.

  1. In truth, we probably don't know how bad the Russian economy is doing, but it's likely doing worse than Putin wants us to think, after all, when a government has top to bottom control over a country, it's hard to take them serious on the truth on pretty much anything. Ultimately, what really matters is the impact it's having on the people, especially the lower and middle classes, and more in regions beside Moscow and St Petersburg, which I suspect are being hit much harder because Putin will want to protect his base, which are in the major cities like Moscow and St Petersburg. Putin has already shown he doesn't care much about the well-being of his own people, he's hardly going to care about the ones that are not in the major cities, but he will care about the ones that keep him in power, he needs to keep them onside, otherwise the people could turn on him. So basically, the impression I'm getting is that Russia is hurting more than Putin wants us to think, he's using whatever reserves he's got to prop up the economy in the cities that are strong supporters of Putin, that likely can only go on so long before the reserves run dry and that's when things really get desperate for Putin and when the light at the end of the tunnel for the Russian and Ukraine people starts to shine. In any case, I take economic data from authoritarian governments with a pinch of salt, so Russia, China, Turkey, there is no independence on that data, and when the government has an incentive in playing the numbers to appease the public, you know how that's going to go.
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