Konstontin says that Russia ‘s second largest bank was billions of dollars in debt absent the central bank propping it up, but in typical Russian fashion hiding that the central bank was propping it up.
He states that this could be the 2025 beginning of the end of the Russian economic system if the non-favored small banks aren’t bailed out by the central bank in a similar fashion. Russia being Russia, the central bank owns most of this large private banks preferred stock. You can infer that the central bank would not bail out the hundreds of small banks because the only people who will get fucked will be Russian citizens, which is not a big concern of the state.
Something to keep an eye on anyway.
There was a comment that caught my eye. At the same time - Russia did not transfer 3.5 million euros to Latvia for pensions of Russian citizens for the first 3 month of 2025. Russian seniors are without money from Russia since February. See below
https://news.err.ee/1609668050/russia-leaves-4-000-russian-pensioners-in-estonia-without-their-pensions
When I tried to track that down, I ran across the above article that says the same thing is happening in Estonia. This tends to lend credence to the Latvia rumors (or the comment dude mixed up Latvia and Estonia, which is also possible)
in any event, this news could be support for the proposition that Russia is finally beginning to run out of cash. After all, if they fuck with former Russians, living in other countries that causes far less damage politically and domestically than fucking over Russian pensioners living in Russia. I could see some bureaucrat saying “if those assholes decided not to retire in Russia instead of a NATO country, fuck ‘em!” We have to remember that Russia’s economy is no bigger than Italy or California. Three years of a costly war should make them turbo fucked. Really, the only question is when the crows will come home to roost. 2025 would be nice.
Finally, all of that information (if true) is likely known to Ukraine, and would be a very persuasive reason for Ukraine to reject all offers to end the war - at least now that they are on the precipice of Russia imploding and giving them the most favorable terms - terms that would only be possible if Putin was overthrown and there was a disgraced scapegoat in Russia to blame that on and deflect why they had to accept favorable Ukrainian terms after all the Russian losses.
TL; DR
It’s happening GIF?