Transcription
Russia is now burning through $827 million every single day for a war that Vladimir Putin believes he cannot lose. However, the ultimate threat for Vladimir Putin's regime is not coming from those front lines. Rather, it is coming from the very men who keep him in power.
New reporting shows that Russia, its most powerful insiders, are quietly jumping ship. Massive fortunes. They are now vanishing abroad, far from the clutches of a desperate Kremlin. The powerful elites, they all see the writing on the wall. The regime is out of time. And as the cash dries up, the state is turning on its own. But it's not just elite wealth that's trying to make a break. Oh, we see things like deputy ministers, intelligence operatives, rogue private armies that are all seeking to cut ties right now. And when the money and arm protection begin to flee, it's only a matter of time until the regime itself falls. Vladimir Putin's closest allies are no longer seeking to save him. They're too busy trying to save themselves while they are already preparing for a Russia without Putin.
My name is Dr. Jason SMK Post, special correspondent and national security adviser. Vladimir Putin is forcing Russia's richest people, the most powerful people, to take their money out of the country. He's doing everything he can to encourage them. And that's through his actions. Now, incredibly enough, Bloomberg has found that the multitude of billionaires have already started to take their money to the country, to ship it over to things like the Gulf States. They're they're doing their best to buy assets, to put their money into Gulf funds, to buy foreign property, to buy gold, to buy cryptocurrencies, to do everything except keep their money in rubles or keep their money inside of Russia. But Putin, he desperately needs them to do just the opposite. However, he is accelerating this flight of assets, this flight of money, through what he has chosen to do in Russia, which is to seize the fortunes that he had once protected.
Now, remember, Vladimir Putin is running a criminal enterprise. He's the Don of the mafia. The reason that people are allegent to him is not because of love of Vladimir Putin, nor love of Russia. It's because he would give them contracts and in exchange, they were loyal to him. But there's less money. He can't afford to do that. And the authorities, lacking money, they're seizing the money from those former allies. In fact, authorities seized $19 billion during 2025. That's eight times more than in 2024. In fact, one in 10 of Russia's billionaires has seen their assets seized or they've had forced sales. But each one of these actions to seize assets, it just encourages everybody else to get their money out of the country. Every departing fortune. It also cuts Vladimir Putin's ability to have influence or power over the elites. If you don't need a contract from the government, if you're free from that, why do you care? What can he do to you? He can't cut you off. If your money's in the country, he can't seize it. At that point, you are free. But as long as you're in Russia, as long as you depend on contracts from the state, you are just a slave of Vladimir Putin.
But those who are smarter, the elites are trying to get their money out. They understand how this is going to end. They understand that in the end of the day, Vladimir Putin is not loyal to anybody but himself. And he will make sure he gets every last kopeck out of them to assure his regime can survive for just one more day.
Now, as everything is going wrong in Russia, there's just one incredible thing that so many people believe that things are going well in Russia. There is no data to support that argument whatsoever. Help us get the world the truth of what's really happening in Russia. Today, Vladimir Putin is not winning. Vladimir Putin is hanging on by a thread, and it's time that we support Ukraine. This channel's existed for less than 15 months. Help us to reach 300,000 subscribers. We really appreciate it. Make sure you subscribe right now. Like this video. Make sure that you also hype this video. Leave your comments below. Share with others and consider becoming a channel member today.
But there's a reason that's not going to work out very well. Russia's deficits are already out of control. In fact, the first half of this year, the deficits, they were incredibly enough, over $75 billion. Now, that's 51% above what was the target for the entire year. That seems like a lot because it is. To give you an idea though, Russia's liquid assets, they're not going to be able to cover these huge deficits that Russia is running. And Russia, it's taken out a lot of loans to pay for its current deficits. Now, the next loan payments, they have to make them by July 22nd, 2026. Over the course of this year, it's close to $12 billion that they'll have to pay. But what happens if they don't pay? What happens if the Russian government just says, "Sorry, we can't make our payments on time." Well, there's only a few different options. One is that they simply choose to hyperinflate their currency, to print more money to pay those debts. But we know what the secondary effect of that will be for all of Russia. And the other option is to default. But if you default, your country goes into freefall. And that's an option that Putin should worry about probably the most because ultimately the one faction who has stayed loyal to him so far is the military and the intelligence service as a whole. But why is that? Why have they remained loyal? It's because he pays them. But the day that Vladimir Putin does not pay them, the day that there's no more money, why would they stay there? Keep in mind, Russian soldiers today, thanks to Putin, are being offered to have $140,000 worth of debt written off. If the government will step in for you like that, of course, it'll buy some loyalty. But the minute that the government says, "We can't afford to pay you anymore." Why remain loyal?
The Russian government in the years to come, it only has more debt to pay off. In fact, in 2027, it's about $17.1 billion. In 2028, it's $21.6 billion. We can expect those numbers will increase this year. Government debt, it's risen 68% during the course of the war. Annual interest cost, they've nearly tripled. Today, the government, incredibly, to service its debts, it's consuming 9.1% of all federal spending. That's absolutely extraordinary. But the government, it needs to find money. And though it has been trying to seize it from the elites, it's doing other things to find money. It has tried to sell bonds, but so far that's not worked out very well. In fact, the last four bond auctions that the Russian government had, it's sort of entertaining to watch. In one of them, the most successful of them, the government was only able to raise 10% of their goal. In another one, well, they said that the investors, they wanted too much interest. They said it was unreasonable. But the investors, they understood there's a huge risk loaning to the Russian government and they wanted more money. The Russian government, they couldn't come to an agreement with them. But in the other two, there were no offers whatsoever to buy the Russian bonds.
So what do you do with that when your government is not able to raise money in a way that governments normally do? Well, we've already seen them cut things like infrastructure, healthcare, regional support, infrastructure. But even with these cuts, it will not make the system better. Overall, we do see the regions of Russia suffering. In fact, today the regions of Russia are in a dire state. We've seen across the country as one region after another is saying that they will have to cut more and more of their services to make give their citizens less of basic things like education or healthcare. 74 of Russia's 89 regions, they're already running deficits this year. That's a historic high for Russia. But to get more money, the government is also trying to shake down the major businesses. But corporate profits in Russia, they're down 25% this year. The most incredible thing though is as we see the corporate profits falling, we see the tax police are becoming more active. But today, the tax authorities, they've increased the amount of bankruptcies in Russia. Quite literally tax-driven bankruptcies, they've increased 3.5 times. Tax authorities, they they are the ones that now initiate 23% of all corporate bankruptcies. It's pretty extraordinary. So, what are the tax authorities there for but to help you out?
But there's something else that we see and I think it's also a very good indication of how the real situation is on the ground. You might think that it's just an exaggeration that the elites will try to flee, that they will just turn against Putin when things turn south. But look what we see where Pavel Prigozhin is. Pavel Prigozhin is the son of the Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. Now he today is in Africa. He's in the illegal gold mining business and he's selling gold internationally. But along with him, there's about 500 former Wagner fighters. Those men, some of them are supposed to be in the Russian military, but it seems they've just deserted. They've been ordered to come back to Russia. The Russian government has tried to force them back. Has tried to force them to give over their mining business. $18 million a year is something the Russian government would like to have. The answer of young Prigozhin was to tell them to get lost. He didn't care and there was nothing they could do about it. And in that he is right. Today the Russian government doesn't have the capacity really to coerce people. And if you're outside of the system, if you're like one of these elites that takes your money out of the country, tries your assets out of the country, what can the Russian government do to you in practical terms? Especially when you've got 500 soldiers with you. But those soldiers are also good representation of what the rest of the Russian military is like. The day that somebody offers more money is the day that their time in the Russian military comes to a rapid conclusion.
But Rostec, we've seen today that it's having significant problems. Its net profits, well, they fall about 42%. They used to bring in about $7 billion a year for the government. But now, who wants Russian military technology? Not only is it sanctioned, but we've seen how ineffective it is. Could you really want Russian air defense? But the Russian air defense is another good example. We see that the Russian government today is spending incredible sums of money on air defense. Spending on air defense in Moscow. And according to recent analysis, there's now more than 100 units of air defense in Moscow. Around Vladimir Putin's home in Valdai, there remains about 27 units. So once again, let's compare a city of close to 20 million people versus Vladimir Putin's summer home, which he has not visited in over a year. Look how much air defense each one gets. And shows you Vladimir Putin's priorities. His priority is protecting himself. He's actually sent more air defense just recently around the buildings where his daughter works in Moscow. That's going to be highly protected. But the rest of Russia, it is not. Look at the oil refiners in Russia. They are not protected. Look at the submarines in Russia. They are not protected. That's incredible, isn't it? It's incredible that you would not protect things like the industry and go, oil, and gas that provides a base for your national economy. But he chooses not to sacrifice things like the air defense there because he prefers to have it covering for him first and foremost.
But all this is leading to a bigger problem, the bigger disaster that is on the verge. And that is that today as people are fleeing, even people that are close to Putin like the Rotenberg brothers, then you can probably assume that there's no loyalty left. We are truly reaching the end of the road. News reports indicate that the Rotenbergs were the ones who did judo with him when he was young. Well, they've made billions of dollars during his dictatorship, winning tons of state contracts. But story after story has come out talking about how they've not paid their workers, how tens of thousands of workers are owed their salaries, and they're not getting paid. Even those who are working in military contracting. So, if your military contractors are not even getting paid, it's probably safe bet nobody else is going to get paid. But because of that, the Rotenbergs realize things are about to go south and appears that they have left the country and they've tried to take a lot of their wealth with them. These are the people who have Putin has known since childhood. That's how sure they are about the future.
So when we look at this, we try to analyze what comes next. How does it play out from here? I think it's very reasonable to understand the situation as being this. Those still close to Putin, those who still have his ear, they're trying to eke out every last dime that they can, understanding this could be their very last contract. And so they're doing their most. They get every last penny out of it. But there's a secondary consequence for that. If you realize there's not going to be more contracts, you've reached the end of the road, then why even do the work that you're paid to do? If you know you're going to flee, just pocket it all. And that seems to be something else that is occurring. If you're making military goods that are disposable, that'll go off, be destroyed, who really cares what the quality is if nobody's ever going to find out. That will not help the Russian military in any way in what its current situation, a situation where Ukraine's innovation, its high technology is helping to get ahead. Where today Russia is failing to get ahead on the battlefield and Ukraine is repelling the Russians. There's something you can help with by check out the first pin comment below. You'll see a PayPal link. We've raised close to a million for the Russian soldiers already. Help us make sure they come home alive. Thank you.
But Vladimir Putin now at this exact moment is facing a critical crisis. One that we've seen repeat time and again in political science, time and again when a dictatorship is becoming insolvent. When a dictatorship is becoming unable to stand its own two legs, when you see the elites start to flee, that's a sign that it really is about to reach the great kaboom. For Vladimir Putin, it's not a question of if, it's just a question of when. Check out this video to see what exactly is about to happen. As always, thank you for supporting Ukraine.