Putin has just made two huge mistakes — and his timing couldn’t be worse

Pretty funny really. Mistake number two was doing exactly the same as Trump.

Putin has just made two huge mistakes — and his timing couldn’t be worse

Michael Carpenter wrote:

The Kremlin’s first mistake came in early March, when it reacted to falling oil prices by rejecting Saudi entreaties to cut production. The Russian decision to push for an oil glut proved to be singularly mistimed.

Quote :

The Kremlin’s second big mistake was to allow its propaganda machine to project an aura of invincibility even as the covid-19 tsunami was spreading across Russia. The Kremlin closed part, but not all, of its 2,600-mile border with China on Jan. 31, leading to a false sense of security that was compounded by willful ignorance.

Trump banned some incoming travellers from China, too little because, he didn't ban all travellers or those from Europe, too late because the virus was already spreading in the US.

Quote :

Testing throughout February and most of March was handled by a single lab in Siberia, meaning that most covid-19 cases across Russia’s 11 time zones were being wrongly classified as pneumonia, bronchitis, flu, etc. It didn’t help that authorities criminalized the spread of “false information” or that they arrested a prominent doctor for challenging official statistics as she tried to deliver masks to an impoverished rural hospital.

Now, as social media users are sharing videos of ambulances lined up for miles waiting to deposit patients in overcrowded Moscow hospitals, it’s no longer possible to claim that all is under control.

So Putin didn't plan for testing either.

If you read Rachel Maddow's book, Putin really has only one source of income to keep Russia afloat and thus himself in power: oil.

He is thus forced by circumstances to play chicken with the Saudi royal family, and defy their order to reduce production to keep prices above the cost of production during this Trump depression.

Their response?  Since they have cash reserves in the hundreds of trillions, they simply let the price float.  It dropped to NEGATIVE numbers, meaning there aren't enough storage facilities to store all the excess oil in the marketplace, so producers are finding themselves having to PAY brokers & wholesalers to take it off their hands.

Russia cannot sustain very long under such pressure.  Without any other source of income, the country will go bankrupt in a matter of months.

Everyone knows it.  Putin knows it.  Under such pressure, his only option is to put on a show of strength, a charade, a vain attempt to show leadership.  Pretending to have won against the COVID-19 virus is one aspect.

Attacking neighbors might be another he'll try.