Putin beordrar styrkor att gå in i Ukraina - INVASION NU (2022-02-24)

Wagnergruppens grundare Jevgenij Prigozjin uppger i sin kanal på Telegram att Kreml brutit kontakten med honom. Det rapporterar Newsweek med hänvisning till Moscow Times.

I klippet säger han att alla de särskilda telefonlinjer som funnits mellan Wagnertrupperna och regeringen i Kreml har kapats och att hans passerkort till myndighetsbyggnader ”där beslut fattas” har avaktiverats.

Yet the truth is, as they candidly admitted to us, the IMF Russia Desk economists have “basically zero visibility” into what is actually going on in the Russian economy.

[...]

Putin now refuses to disclose major economic indicators ranging from foreign trade data, monthly output data on oil and gas, capital inflows and outflows, financial statements of major companies, central bank monetary base data, foreign direct investment data, domestic value added by industry, and lending and loan origination data. Even Rosaviatsiya, Russia’s federal air transport agency, has stopped publishing data on air passenger volumes. Yet these are the major high-frequency flow statistics that go into the construction of an economy-wide GDP forecast for any nation–from the U.S. to China.

Thus, the IMF simply does not have the data needed to independently calculate Russia’s GDP by any accepted method–whether it’s by expenditures, production, or incomes. They are flying blind, with the Russian institutions offering zero visibility.