Punishing Putin

This week we’re joined by Stephanie Baker, an award-winning investigative reporter from Bloomberg News, who’s out with a new book from the frontlines on the war on kleptocracy: Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia, the most sanctioned country in the world. 

Sanctions are a double-edged sword. While they’ve undeniably strained the Russian economy, causing hundreds of billions in losses, they aren’t a panacea. Some Western companies have found ways to stay in Russia or help it sidestep restrictions, raising serious questions about enforcement. 

Stephanie sheds light on the effectiveness of these sanctions: what’s working, what’s falling short, and how Russia is navigating the economic minefield. We’ll explore which countries are leading the charge for tougher measures, and how Russia is finding ways to benefit from—or at least mitigate—sanctions. We also discuss the role “Londongrad” being a playground of Russian oligarchs, and how recent efforts have tightened the screws on money laundering. We also look at how countries like India take advantage of sanction loopholes at Ukraine’s expense and what more can be done to hold nations accountable for helping Russia’s war machine.

The bottomline: “Sanctions aren’t working” is Kremlin disinformation. Russia is desperate to get rid of sanctions, because its longterm prospects to keep its genocidal war going, and its own country from imploding, are bleak. Tune in to get the full picture and understand how these economic tools are shaping the future of our world, including Russia and China’s war on the U.S. dollar. 

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Andrea Chalupa (00:11):

Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine. The film the Kremlin doesn't want you to see, so be sure to watch it. Mr. Jones is now a graphic novel called In the Shadow of Stalin, the story of Mr. Jones. Thank you to everyone who came out to our book launch party at the Ukrainian Institute of America last night, especially longtime Gaslit Nation listener Marlene, who stole the show with your comments that brought down the house and the audience q and a, summing up perfectly how we've all felt during this surreal time of collective trauma and gaslighting, and how communities like ours help make sense and get us through these times that we're in. Thank you so much, Marlene. You are a star. We all love you.

(01:04):

Honestly, my family, my parents were like, we want to hang out with Marlene again. Alright, and for those that missed the event, we're going to post a recording of the live taping of Gasoline Nation we did last night and look out for that soon here to help us better understand in what ways the Global Democratic Alliance is and isn't holding Putin accountable through sanctions. Is Stephanie Baker, an award-winning investigative reporter at Bloomberg News? She began her reporting career in Moscow during the 1990s in what I often refer to on the show as the car bomb nineties. Stephanie Baker, who herself witnessed a contract killing while living in Moscow in the nineties, is the author of the new book, punishing Putin Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia. Welcome to the show.

Stephanie Baker (01:52):

Thanks for having me.

Andrea Chalupa (01:54):

Alright, so Russia's invasion continues to be devastating. The situation there is bleak, and yet we're told that the sanctions against Russia are unprecedented, which they are obviously. So in what ways, let's just start with the positive news. In what ways are sanctions working?

Stephanie Baker (02:14):

Right, so this is a challenge I have faced. When I told people I was writing this book, the stock response I got was, well, sanctions aren't working, so why are we bothering? And the more I kept hearing that, the more I realized that actually this was a form of Putin propaganda. He wants everyone to think that the sanctions aren't working. He wants everyone to think that the Russian economy is just fine, but in reality the sanctions bother him deeply and they have cost Russia hundreds of billions of dollars by a number of metrics, whether it's capital flight money, fleeing Russia since the war, what the restrictions on Russian oil have cost Russia $80 billion by at least one account, possibly more the inflated price that they need to pay for semiconductors from China for its precision guided missiles. But obviously all these unprecedented measures have not stopped the war.

(03:14):

They really stepped up the sanctions effort after the full scale invasion in 2022. There are now something like almost 20,000 sanctions on individuals and companies across the sanctions coalition. So by that measure, Russia is the most sanctioned country in the world, and the problem from my reporting has been that they weren't able to get at the central moneymaker for Putin, which is Russian hydrocarbon revenues, Russian oil. So they tried to do this innovative policy of capping the price of Russian oil saying at the end of 2022 they passed this innovative policy that western services could not be provided to Russian oil tankers unless they showed that it was being sold for less than $60 a barrel. That worked for a few months. Then Russia assembled its shadow fleet of oil tankers to transport its oil outside of Western services with dodgy insurance. And as a result it ended up earning more money from Russian oil. The price cap really stopped working and something like 90% of Russian oil is now traded outside of Western services and India really stepped up. India went from importing something like 1% of Russian oil to 40%. Now a lot of people knew this would happen that India would take advantage of this opportunity to buy up discounted Russian oil, but no one imagined that they would step up like that, that there would be this massive global reshuffling. You do see oil prices coming down, but the US and Europe haven't enforced the policy aggressively enough.

Andrea Chalupa (05:01):

Why aren't they?

Stephanie Baker (05:02):

Well, I think there was concern even in 2022 before they adopted this policy, that it would cause gasoline prices in the US to spike particularly ahead of crucial midterm elections. Economies in Europe and the US were recovering from the pandemic and inflation was already running high. There was just a panic about Russian supplies as soon as the war, as soon as the full scale invasion started. So they were trying to tiptoe around this so that it didn't worsen the economies at home. And I think my read of it is that they only started to step up enforcement in October. They started sanctioning a bunch of these rusty oil tankers that Russia has been using, but they really could expand that much more aggressively and go after some of these tankers. And it's in their interest to do so because it's unclear what insurance really stands behind these vessels.

(06:02):

They're old, they really should be decommissioned. They're actually an environmental disaster waiting to happen. If one of them runs a ground and there's an oil spill, it's not entirely clear that the insurance backing up these Russian tankers, they're going to actually honor any claims which could leave European taxpayers holding the bill because a lot of these tankers leave the Baltic and go around Denmark around the UK and then down the coast to international waters. So they really could step up some of the actions against this shadow fleet and really step up enforcement of the price cap.

Andrea Chalupa (06:42):

Okay, so that sounds like some low hanging fruit or would it worsen the inflation crisis by driving up the cost of oil?

Stephanie Baker (06:49):

It could, and I think that's the concern. I think that's why they've been reluctant to go full hog by going really after this shadow fleet. I mean with the economic war, you see it's very similar to what you see with military aid to Ukraine with military aid. They're very worried about escalation, they're worried about Putin and his threats of using tactical nuclear weapons, and I think there's a similar kind of slow ramp up on the economic front that they didn't want to do anything that would backfire and boomerang in terms of worsening any economic situation at home or causing Russia to further weaponize its oil and energy supplies.

Andrea Chalupa (07:33):

Alright, so what about India? India is obviously betraying Ukraine by propping up Russia's war machine. What way could they punish India, sanction India? What discussions are happening around that, if any?

Stephanie Baker (07:49):

I think there have been a lot of back channel discussions with India trying to persuade them to India's trying to play this middle road of he visits Putin and then he visits Zelensky, trying not to pick a side and playing both sides. One of the biggest problems is that what India does is they take Russian oil, they refine it at Indian refineries and then they export it onto other markets in Europe. So you do actually have Russian oil, it's mixed with other oil and then exported back to Europe. There could be an effort to shut that down, but I think the main way of getting at that problem is to sanction some of these tankers because you do see India, if there's a sanctioned tanker, they won't accept it. They don't want to go there. The overarching issue with sanctions is that people don't want to be frozen out of the US dollar. The US dollar is the global reserve currency. It is how the world does business. And so that is the real power of US sanctions is to threaten secondary sanctions on anyone that does business, a sanctioned entity, whether it be Indian refineries, Chinese banks, and even that threat can cause that business to be shut down.

Andrea Chalupa (09:06):

So as long as the US dollar is the law of the land in the financial world, then that is, that forces some accountability here. But what effort is being made by China, by Russia and others to no longer make the US dollar the law of the land? What sort of war is being waged right now on the US dollar?

Stephanie Baker (09:28):

There's a lot of different things happening on different levels. You see Russia and China and Russia and India trying to come up with a payment system that bypasses the US dollar, but in reality that's quite difficult. There's even been talk of Russia and China setting up a barter regime using cryptocurrencies. Just recently, the threat from Washington against any financial institutions that do business with sanctioned Russian entities, particularly in the military industrial complex, has scared Chinese banks away from doing that business. And there's a shortage of Chinese WAN in Russia right now. So that is just the mere threat of that is having an effect as it is. I think it's been very hard for them to build up payment systems outside the US dollar. And you see evidence of still continuing demand for hard currency, either the US dollar or secondarily the Euro customs data shows that Russia has imported more than two, 3 billion worth of cash.

(10:31):

There was even this crazy report just a couple of weeks ago that Russia had imported something like $30 million of a hundred dollars bills from the Rwandan defense ministry. So cash is still king. No one wants to keep their money in Russian rubles because the ruble, there's just rampant inflation. Inflation is like 9% in Russia. No one wants to keep their money in Chinese Juan or Indian repeat because you can't really use it, right? No one wants those currencies. So there is pressure for them to find a system outside the US dollar, but in reality there's no real alternative to the US dollar because it is, there's always, whenever there's a crisis, there's a flight to safety. The safest place to hold your money is in US dollars because the US has open liquid capital markets. There's a rule of law and you can get your money out whenever you want to. And I think that's not going to change anytime soon

Andrea Chalupa (11:27):

As much as they're trying clearly.

Stephanie Baker (11:29):

Exactly, exactly.

Andrea Chalupa (11:31):

I want to go back to your point that the Kremlin really hates the Russian sanctions and that the fact, the statement that the sanctions aren't working is Kremlin disinformation. We saw a group of Russian opposition leaders that were just freed in a prisoner swap with Ukrainian prisoners of war. And those Russian opposition leaders when they held their first press conference, they infuriated a lot of Ukrainians by saying in their first statement of freedom that the sanctions against Russia need to be dropped and that they're hurting the average Russian. One of those Russian opposition leaders, I believe is Yulia Ian. He backtracked and said when he got farther away from Russia, he backtracked and said, actually no, we need to do what we can to stop the war. So I wanted to ask you about, it was very odd, is that somebody that understands Russia very well, the minds of these men having come out of essentially like a modern day gulag, whatever they say in my view, to hold with a grain of salt because they're under great duress, but what impact has these sanctions had on the average Russian? And from what you're hearing from your sources, how do you think we should take comments such as those from these recently freed prisoners?

Stephanie Baker (12:47):

So let's be clear, the Russians, I get asked this a lot. Oh, aren't the sanctions hurting Russians? Well, in reality, yes, the sanctions are contributing. It's not the only factor but are contributing to the high inflation rate. Inflation's like 9%. So for some goods it's even higher. But the fact of the matter is that Putin has put the economy on a war footing. He's showered the defense industry with money. He's been paying these enormous bonuses to soldiers to go fight in Ukraine, and that is fueling inflation. It's not just sanctions, and I think it's pretty clear that the Ukrainians are suffering far more than the Russians at this point. Let's just look at the destruction of the energy infrastructure and the very rough winter that Ukraine will face. And I was in Ukraine in June, and even then I was talking to people and friends who were saying, I got to rush home and cook dinner for my family because I've got a half an hour of electricity left.

(13:41):

So I think I just want to say that the Ukrainians are hurting far more in terms of loss of life, et cetera, and the constant air raids and missile attacks, which I experienced from a Russian point of view. I am somewhat sympathetic that the Western sanctions did not distinguish more effectively between anti-war ordinary Russians and those that are really propping up Putin's regime, that there were all these people trying to get out of Russia after the full scale invasion and were having real difficulties in part ironically because Visa and MasterCard stopped working on their cards. So it was very hard for them to live in the West. I know that there are different views on this that we should not be encouraging that sort of migration, that there could be Russian intelligence agents infiltrating through those roots. But I think that undermined support from ordinary Russians that it was seen as, oh, these sanctions are against me, but I have nothing to do with this war.

(14:42):

I'm against it. So in that sense, I think that at least in terms of the presentation of the sanctions, that the west could have done much more to send a message that the US and Europe are not against ordinary Russians, that they're against the Putin regime, but it was a sort of slam across the board effort. Very hard to do that. Let's face it, that's really, really hard to do, bureaucratically to try to distinguish who is really against the war and shouldn't get caught up in this. I think a lot of Russians did go back and think, oh, well I'm not welcome in Europe. And that ironically did make them fall in line more likely with Putin because he was pushing such a strong propaganda message that the West is against us, that this is not about Ukraine. This is really a proxy war with nato. And that kind of fed into that message.

Andrea Chalupa (15:37):

Do you think it would be effective? Well, I understand that this could also backfire, but are there any discussions of a visa ban across Europe and the US for Russians?

Stephanie Baker (15:48):

I think it is quite hard for the Russians to get visas and has been, I don't think it's easy. I think it was very difficult in the first year from what I gathered. I think some visas have been granted. I'm not so sure there are two minds on that. I think there needs to be, at least in the messaging, a greater emphasis that we're not against all Russians trying to encourage people to, for instance, avoid the mobilization. That's when a lot of the people were trying to get out. I was helping a Russian man of mobilization age try to get out of Russia so that he could live outside of Russia and didn't have to serve, and that was almost impossible. I couldn't get him out.

Andrea Chalupa (16:29):

Wow.

Stephanie Baker (16:30):

So I think that sort of thing is in our interest actually. Anything that you can do to undermine his ability to wage this war, whether it be through financial sanctions, through difficulty of recruiting, recruiting for the Russian military, I think is helpful.

Andrea Chalupa (16:46):

We have a question to chat from Alex. Do you foresee increased enforcement of sanctions against the shadow tankers after the election? If Trump wins, if Harris wins,

Stephanie Baker (16:57):

I think there could be stepped up enforcement after the election. I think there is some sensitivity, particularly around gasoline prices in the United States ahead of the election. Obviously cost of living has been a major issue in the campaign. I think if Harris wins, you're more likely to see that with Trump, it's very difficult. It's very, very difficult to see that he would pursue that policy. We have to go off of what Trump has said. Trump has said that he would end the war in a day, and at the same time, Zelensky just revealed a couple of days ago in an interview on CNN, that he'd had a call with Trump a couple of months ago and that Trump promised to be steadfast in support of Ukraine. My reporting for the book revealed that he was very skeptical sanctions against Russia during his first term and was always complaining, why are we hitting them with these sanctions?

(17:56):

We just hit them with these sanctions. Most of the sanctions that were rolled out under the Trump administration were done under pressure from Congress or his hawkish national security advisors. So while Trump may be all hot on sanctions against Iran, he was very skeptical of them on Russia that has a lot of Ukrainians and others worried that he might do a deal with Putin, freeze the conflict, the war on the current lines, and give Putin some sanctions relief because that's what he really wants. He wants a little bit of breathing room to regroup and re-arm. We've seen him do that before. The fact that Putin is having to turn to Iran and North Korea for missile shows that even though he's been able to keep the defense industry humming, he still needs to turn to this sort of alliance of autocrats for help.

Andrea Chalupa (18:47):

Let's talk about the Russian oligarchs. How have they been impacted by the sanctions and is it to a degree where it's like us losing a bag of luggage that we'll never see again on a flight? To what degree are they impacted? Are they inconvenienced by the sanctions or are they feeling serious pain from the sanctions?

Stephanie Baker (19:09):

Yeah, let's be clear. They've had billions, billions frozen in the west as a result of these sanctions. So they are feeling the pain. They've been shunted out of their traditional haunts, their London mansions, their villas in the south of France, and many of them are now spending time in Turkey and Dubai, which are the only places that they can really operate with any degree of freedom. So yes, they are very much feeling the pain, and at the same time, basically they have made a choice after being sanctioned in the west. They've all lined up more or less behind Putin as a way of trying to preserve the wealth that they do still have that's not frozen in Russia even. So I think many of them are worried about speaking out against the war because they're worried that their assets could be seized at any day and their assets could be seized even for something else, not just speaking out against the war.

(20:10):

What you've seen happen in Russia is Putin has doled out assets and business lines to key cronies to maintain political support and funding for the war, whether it's Ukrainian grain in occupied territories that is being sold by people, businesses that he needs support from, or it's the assets of western companies that have left. Were trying to leave those assets. Some of those assets were handed out to people close to Putin, and you see that it's in a way, a vast patronage system. It's changing the way the oligarchy operates in Russia. We all knew who the oligarchs were. There are new crop of oligarchs that are being created in a way by the handing out or created or enriched further through the kind of assets that have been taken over or opportunistically bought, and some of the oil trading that has happened as well. Oil and gold.

Andrea Chalupa (21:16):

So a lot of money's been moving around to pay for loyalty. The Kremlin is really paying attention to who's doing and saying what. So London grad awash with Russian oligarchic money and London was their playground, and now the UK has emerged both leading parties in the uk staunch supporters of Ukraine. What has London done to clean up its act?

Stephanie Baker (21:41):

Yeah, it's done a lot and you have to give them credit for what they've done because I spent years reporting on illicit money coming through London. Not that it's all done and dusted, they could still do more, but I think they've frozen about, I think the latest figure is something like 22 billion pounds worth of Russian assets in the uk. Unlike in the us, they don't have one. The history of sanctions, they didn't sanction a lot of these guys until 2022 when almost all of them fled back to Russia or left the uk. So they don't have a track record to catch them on sanctions of Asian, which is what the US has done. They've caught a lot of these oligarchs in the US on sanctions evasion because they were sanctioned in 2018 and the justice Department was able to go after those assets on the basis of sanctions ofs and money laundering to try to forfeit them for Ukraine, forfeit them, sell those assets for Ukraine. That's moved incredibly slow. You don't have that in London because they don't have a deep, long track record of sanctions, but they have frozen a lot of assets and where they have tried to go after oligarchs for sanctions of Asian, it's not worked out very well. They have not dotted the i's and crossed the T's and managed to go after them in the way that the FBI has been more successful at doing

Andrea Chalupa (23:04):

The DOJ launched kleptocracy capture, and that was exciting at first, but it doesn't seem like a whole lot has come out of that. What are your thoughts or what have you seen?

Stephanie Baker (23:16):

Oh, actually a lot has come out of that. I detail some of those actions in my book. If you read the book, you'll see that it's actually very hard to build these cases because of the way Russians hold their assets is often through fronts, through nominees, through layers of shell companies. These are not easy cases to build. And you see one of them, for instance, is dragged on in the courts in the US courts for far longer than anyone imagined, and it's over this sanctioned Russian super yacht Amadea, which they seized in Fiji and sailed San Diego, and it's been a knockdown drag out fight in the US courts, thousands of pages of legal documents. I was just trying to update myself on what was the latest today and i's just like hundreds of pages I was trying to skim through. So it shows that they're doing it, they should be doing it through court system. It's the rule of law, but this is not easy, and what they don't want to do is take a shot where they're going to lose.

Andrea Chalupa (24:17):

I know I was at a Halloween party in Brooklyn and I was chatting with a cowboy and he turned out to be a DOJ prosecutor and he had no idea who I was. So I got him good and drunk and got a lot of good info out of him. That's how secure America's national security is.

Stephanie Baker (24:33):

Fascinating.

Andrea Chalupa (24:34):

Yeah. So I want to just share the recent reporting on Elon Musk purchasing Twitter with the help of Russian oligarchs. He did it through their children. Are you familiar with that reporting? Did you see that come out?

Stephanie Baker (24:48):

I haven't. I've heard about it, but I frankly have not had a chance to brush up on the details of which exact oligarchs were children were involved.

Andrea Chalupa (24:59):

It's just my larger question of I just triple checked it while talking to you. It's one of those facts where you hear it, you're aware of it, and then it's just so absurd that you just check it again and again. But so there was a Russia connection with Elon Musk acquiring Twitter with a Russian linked money, and it just seems, I understand we live in a free market capitalist society, but given the influence that Twitter has and the power, Twitter has a lot of public officials are there, a lot of Americans rush to Twitter when there's an emergency, a hurricane, any natural disaster. It was our town square as a nation and Musk has purchased it and the European Union released a report saying that Twitter has become the largest platform for Russian misinformation in the world. And you sort of wonder what obligation do the feds have to step in and stop such a purchase like that if they see any sort of third party or any sort of connection that might raise red flags?

Stephanie Baker (26:01):

Oh yeah, I see. It's the son of Otre Aven. The unique thing that they've done is they've sanctioned a lot of family members. They've gone then they have before to, because they have so many of these guys have used their family to park assets as a way of avoiding sanctions. And some of them did it before the sanctions hit, which was enabled a lot of money to escape. But look, I agree with you that I think unfortunately, and I see it on Twitter, I just did a media appearance this morning and I suddenly had a storm of Russian thoughts and it is very worrisome. I don't believe vin's son was sanctioned, but I don't think there's a sanctions violation there. But I think the fact that it has been disclosed may put him in the firing line for being sanctioned. You don't want kids that are sort of non-adult kids to be targeted is what my general approach to this is. Anyone under the age of 18 should be sort of off limits, but the adult kids, if there is a demonstrated evidence of them being used to park assets, then I think that's fair game.

Andrea Chalupa (27:17):

Absolutely. And in terms of the champions for sanctions pushing back against disinformation that they're not working, which countries, which allies of Ukraine are demanding even greater sanctions, I need to know where to vacation.

Stephanie Baker (27:33):

So this is really interesting. I went to Brussels a few times for interviews and it's the Baltic states in Poland, no surprise there that are the ones that are the most hawkish on Russia. They are pushing for maximalist sanctions. They're always asking for much more. When they did the Russian oil price cap, they wanted it much lower. They dragged out those negotiations to the very end trying to get a lower price. And then you're up against the likes of Germany and to some degree France that are much more skeptical and worried about taking actions that would escalate the conflict with Russia. And of course the other obvious one is hung, and you see that right now Hungary is holding up right now because Victor Orban holds the presidency. He's holding up this proposal the early days of the war, right? First two days of the war, they froze Russia's central bank assets, a pot of $300 billion of money that Russia Central Bank had parked in Western financial institutions over the past two and a half years.

(28:42):

There's been discussions, can we seize the actual, can we just not freeze it? Can we actually take it and use it for Ukraine? The Baltics and Poland have been very strong saying we should seize the money. Germany and France have been very reluctant. The US was very reluctant initially. The US finally came around, but unfortunately there's not that much money, Russian money in the us. There's only about 5 billion. A lot of it is in Euroclear in Belgium. So they came up with this, the US Biden administration came up with this fix, a kind of financial plumbing fix where they could raise 50 billion for Ukraine backed by interest payments on these frozen Russian central bank assets, which because it's been paying huge amounts of interest, but the US wanted a guarantee if we're going to do a loan, we want to guarantee that these assets are going to be frozen for more than just six months because the EU has these sanctions policies that gets rolled over every six months.

(29:36):

So they wanted it to be at least 36 months run before we agree to any loan. And Orban has held that up and now they're trying to come up with this fix to get around that where they just do a loan and figure it out. But it does look like Orban is trying to delay this loan to Ukraine until after the US election, whether or not he's banking on Trump winning. I don't know. I wouldn't put Hungary and France and Germany in the same camp, but I think Hungary is far more aligned with Russia and a lot of these things and you've seen has slowed down or frustrated the sanctions effort at the EU level. Sanctions at the EU level need to be agreed unanimously. And so he has managed to hold up or water down various sanctions proposals in Europe.

Andrea Chalupa (30:25):

What leverage can be used against Hungary? Could they be voted out? Could they be denied funding?

Stephanie Baker (30:31):

Yeah, I mean they can't be kicked out of the eu. That would be a huge deal. I don't see that happening. But there could be, and there have been, I think privately threats of funding denied to them for this or that project. I think everyone's just waiting for Hungary's presidency to turn at the table to pass for other action to be taken. But it remains a really, really difficult problem for Europe because Orban is frustrating the economic war at each turn.

Andrea Chalupa (31:02):

Gosh, and how much more time does he have in that position?

Stephanie Baker (31:06):

I think it's the end of the year.

Andrea Chalupa (31:08):

I can't come soon enough. So what more can be done? So the war drags on Russia is determined, they've crossed this Rubicon, they're not going to go back. What can be done sanctions wise? How can the heat be turned up even further? What discussions are being had there?

Stephanie Baker (31:28):

I'm doing some reporting on this whole issue of how semiconductors are flowing into Russia via China. The other front in the economic war is something called export controls. These are trade restrictions and what they've done is they've tried to deny Russia access to Western technology by preventing a whole broad s swath of semiconductors from going to Russia. But the problem that's emerged is that China and Hong Kong in particular have stepped into the void there, acted as middlemen, transshipping, a lot of the technology, the chips that they need for their precision guided weaponry. And I think what they could do is sanction a Chinese bank as a, they don't need to sanction every Chinese bank, right? I think there've been a reluctance to step up tensions with China, but they could sanction a Chinese bank as a demonstration effect to scare everyone away from doing that business.

(32:25):

And I think that could have a real impact on Russia's defense industry. I think they could tighten the oil sanctions. They could make it much harder for Russia to export both oil and NG liquified natural gas, which one of the biggest economic impacts of this war has been that Putin's cash cow, the state controlled gas, joint gas prom is now, it used to be throwing off huge amounts of cash. It was very profitable. Europe was its biggest customer. Now gas prom is losing money, and the Nord stream pipeline, as we all know, was first it was shut down and then it was hit by this explosion that there's various speculation as to who was really behind it, but they don't have the capacity to reroute. That's like piped gas. They can't reroute all that to China so easily. There's a pipeline from Russia to China, but it doesn't have the capacity that could come anywhere near the trade that they had done with Europe.

(33:33):

Russia is trying to ramp up liquified natural gas, which it ships by ships by through vessels, so they could crack down further on some of these LNG vessels that are shipping LNG to China. We see them, we've been reporting on them, but this is hard. I think that's what my book really determined is that this is not easy and it takes time. I don't think the sanctions, there was a lot of hope early on in the war that the sanctions would really bring the Russian economy to its knees and force Putin to stop in his tracks. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. But you do see pressure from the sanctions beginning to build. I mean, the price of Russian oil has come down. Inflation is really high. Interest rates are like 18%, 19%. There's massive labor shortage, which is complicating Putin's efforts to staff defense factories and making it harder for him to recruit for the army.

(34:34):

So I do think pressure from the sanctions is finally beginning to build. The Russian economy is slated to slow down quite markedly towards the end of the year. They've had to stop up until now, he's been showering. Putin's been showering the population with benefits of one kind or another state subsidized mortgages. They had to stop doing that. It was too expensive that had contributed to a construction boom in Russia. So I do think that the pressure is starting to build, but the key is oil. It's just, it's always been the mainstay of the Russian economy going back decades. If you remember in the mid eighties, the price of oil started falling. That contributed to the weakening of the Soviet regime in the nineties. The price of oil compared to now is relatively low, and it ended up more or less bankrupting Russia. I mean, the Russia had economic problems in the nineties for a number of factors, but oil was definitely one of them. So I do think that oil really is the key to getting at Putin's ability to finance the war, and that's the thing that will really make him stop. I do think he wants breathing room. I do think the sanctions are beginning getting hurt and he sees it coming.

Andrea Chalupa (35:45):

The harder your book, it's an environmental call to action. The faster we can get to a post oil world, the safer will be from gas station dictatorships like Russia.

Stephanie Baker (35:55):

It's true. No, it's absolutely true. If we weren't so dependent on oil, then we wouldn't be in this bind really. We'd be able to respond to Russia's invasion in a much more vigorous manner. But look, I mean, Russia's future long term is pretty bleak, right? Economically, if the world is moving away from hydrocarbons, that's one of Russia's principle export revenue generators. It's being cut off from Western technology. It's losing the number of soldiers. The UK Defense Ministry just came out with its latest assessment that more than 600,000 Russians have been killed or wounded in Ukraine since full scale invasion. I mean, that is just a staggering loss.

Andrea Chalupa (36:48):

Our discussion continues, and you can get access to that by signing up at the truth level and higher on Patreon at patreon.com/gaslit. It's go time. We have a lot of events gearing up for the election. Join our new Monday political salons held over Zoom every Monday through the election at 4:00 PM Eastern. Join the discussion and help shape the show by sharing what's on your mind. Sign up by subscribing at the truth turn level or higher on patreon.com. Gaslit on September 10th. Join the Gast Nation Debate Watch Party in the Victory chat on Patreon. It's going to be a debate between democracy versus dictatorship, featuring a convicted felon who belongs in prison, not on a debate stage on September 16th at 7:00 PM Eastern. If you're in New York, join our in-person live taping at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York City. Celebrate the release of In the Shadow of Stalin, the graphic novel adaptation of my film, Mr. Jones, directed by the great Escha Holland Gaslit Nation.

(37:58):

Paton supporters get in free. So message us on Patreon to be added to the guest list, a wine and cheese and whatever else they serve there will be followed. So excited. I'll be joined by the journalist Terrell Starr to talk about his latest trip to Ukraine on September 17 at 12:00 PM Eastern. Join our virtual live taping with investigative journalist Stephanie Baker, author of Punishing Putin inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia. Her book has been highly praised by Bill Browder, the advocate behind the Magnitsky Act to combat Russian corruption. On September 18th at 4:00 PM Eastern. Join our virtual live taping with the one and only politics girl, Lee McGowan, author of A Return to Common Sense, how to Fix America Before We Really Blow It. On September 24 at 12:00 PM Eastern, join our virtual live taping with David Pepper, author of Saving Democracy. Join us as David discusses his new art project based on Project 2025.

(39:02):

That's all about resistance, art, all those events, becoming a member of our Victory Chat Bonus shows. All shows add free and more. Come with your subscription on patreon.com/gaslit Nation is produced by Andrea Chalupa. That's me. Our production manager is Nicholas Torres, and our associate producer is Carlin dle. If you like what we do, leave us a review on iTunes. It helps us reach more listeners and check out our Patreon. It keeps us going. For original music in Gast Nation is produced by David Whitehead, Martin Berg, Nick Barr, Damian Arga, and Carlin Daigle. Our logo design was donated to us by my friend Hamish m of the New York based Firm order. Thank you so much. Hamish Gast Nation would like to thank our supporters at the producer level on Patreon and Hire. Iceberg is Defiant, work For Better Prep for Trouble, Lily Wachowski. John Schoenthal, Ellen McGirk, Larry Gusan, D Scott Ann Bertino, David East, Joseph Mara, Jr. Mark, mark, John Berg, Kristen Custer, Kevin Gannon, sounder Colemans, Katie Ur, James D. Leonard, Leo Chalupa, Carol Goad, Marcus j Trent, Joe Darcy and Marshall. Dl. S Sinfield, Nicole Spear, Abby Road, janz, Altra Brasen, Sarah Gray, Diana Gallagher, Leah Campbell, Jared Lombardo, Abby Zavos and Tanya Chalupa. Thank you to everyone who supports the show. We could not make Gaslit Nation without you

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Andrea Chalupa