2.16 It's The Economy, Stupid!
From The Eastern Border by Kristaps Andrejsons
March 18, 2026 · 47 min · Season 2 · Episode 17
About this episode
This episode analyzes the economic collapse of the Russian Federation and its impact on society, featuring a critical examination of the Kremlin's actions and a manifesto from a former Kremlin operative.
"It’s the economy, stupid." The Russian Federation is in full rigor mortis. In this massive, breaking-news episode of The Eastern Border, we conduct a full Gonzo autopsy on a collapsing empire. We track the Kremlin's 3.5 trillion ruble deficit, a record 1.1 trillion ruble physical cash bank run, and the rotting 70-year-old infrastructure keeping the military-industrial complex barely alive. But the rot goes much deeper than macro-economics. From freezing peasants being told to skip their morning coffee to afford heating bills, to state monopolies using OMON riot police to burn healthy Siberian cows, the Russian state is violently cannibalizing its own rural working class. And then, the dam finally breaks. We cover the unprecedented, real-time mutiny of top Kremlin attack dog Ilya Remeslo. The man who spent a decade hunting the opposition just published a massive manifesto calling Vladimir Putin an illegitimate 13-ruble thief and a war criminal, openly inviting Vladimir Solovyev to join a media coup. The system is suffering a catastrophic psychological collapse, and we have the full, unfiltered intercept. Support the bunker and keep the true Gonzo journalism flowing: Patreon…
People in this episode
Host: Kristaps Andrejsons
Topics covered
- Russian economy
- Kremlin
- collapse
- Gonzo journalism
- social issues
- political unrest
Keywords
- economy
- Kremlin
- deficit
- cash bank run
- infrastructure
- mutiny
- manifesto
- Putin
- cannibalizing
- working class
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Russian Federation, OMON
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