From: Jason Jay Smart — The Kremlin just signaled a severe internal break by changing who represents its interests at the negotiating table. Regimes that feel secure send diplomats to project power, but governments facing a liquidity crisis send financial fixers to secure survival. This shift exposes the reality that high interest rates are choking the real economy and forcing the state into a permanent subsidy mode that burns through sovereign reserves at an unsustainable pace.
Quiet damage is piling up as every new subsidy forces a dangerous cut somewhere else in the federal budget. Regional governments are seeing their funding evaporate while critical procurement deals slip and security spending turns into a source of fierce internal competition. The elite patronage system that holds the power vertical together is failing to function as routine bribery and is becoming a high stakes bargaining session where loyalty has a rising price the state struggles to meet.
Moscow attempts to mask this solvency crisis with propaganda because narratives are cheaper than actual fiscal capacity. Television claims victory while the gap between the broadcast and the balance sheet widens every day. The regime is forced into a cycle of crisis spending where more bonuses and emergency fixes are required just to keep logistics moving, all while the pool of available war cash shrinks against inflation.
External predators like China and Iran have smelled this weakness and are changing their terms of trade. Beijing is tightening its pricing leverage because it knows Russian desperation creates a discount on every barrel of energy. Tehran is making trust conditional on immediate payment because the guarantees are gone. The money trail indicates the war ends not on the battlefield but at the specific moment the Kremlin can no longer afford the bill for its own survival.
Voice of Ukraine 