“Sanctions against Russia do not work“ – this is the first thesis. Its derivative is the claim that even if they work, they cause greater damage to European economies, including the Bulgarian one.
One of the characteristic features of the foreign policy of this Radev government towards Russia is its systematic detachment from reality. They have offices, embassies, access to partner information and analyses, but nothing is able to change the direction they have taken. Because prejudices prevent them from seeing and assessing what is happening. And at the end of this line, a clash with facts awaits them.
In “Alternative“ yesterday I began presenting data on the free fall of the Russian economy, especially in the sphere of public finances. Putin has not yet removed Elvira Nabiullina - the last significant figure who embodies the remnants of economic rationalism and market logic in government. But she too already seems forced to capitulate to political reality and come to terms with the fact that in
Russia is returning to a command economy, and the market economy is emigrating.
On the one hand, Nabiullina admits that the money supply and lending continue to grow at a dangerous pace, and on the other, she is reducing the key interest rate by the minimum possible step. It is clearly under pressure and the only thing that is still keeping it from jumping out the window is that it would be a huge scandal.
The real turning point, however, came with the changes to the Tax Code, through which the State Duma gave the Ministry of Finance practically unlimited freedom to increase spending and debt. From that moment on, the Russian financial system entered a free fall mode. The brakes were removed. Hyperinflation is not an abstraction, it is a real hypothesis - a matter of time. And this is because Russia is cut off from the global financial and capital market and has nowhere to credit its budget deficits.
Therefore, the first thesis - that sanctions do not work - is not simply wrong. It demonstrates ignorance of the real processes in the Russian economy. And the second thesis - that Europe is suffering the main damage - also hardly stands up to scrutiny with the facts. No European economy, including the Bulgarian one, is even close to the state that the Russian one is in today. If "cheap" Russian gas was a growth factor, then the Russian economy should have flourished, while the European one should have collapsed. Yes, but no. I don't see any fuel shortages at our gas stations. If there is any sorrow at all, it is not at these latitudes.
The problem is that the defenders of these Radev-Yotov theses never admit their own mistakes in assessing the risks and the cost of excessive dependence on Russia. Simply because they are not independent of the observed object. They have prejudices. The price of these deficits of policy and maturity, unfortunately, is not paid by them, but by all of us.
The "Belene" NPP project alone has already cost us nearly 2 billion euros in sunk costs. You can trace some of this money as it has been parked as the personal wealth of pro-Russian presidents, prime ministers, and ministers.
The unilateral suspension of gas supplies by “Gazprom“ brought direct and indirect damages of over 500 million euros. Around “Lukoil Neftokhim“ the accumulated unpaid taxes, lost profits, and economic effects related to the war in Ukraine exceed 3 billion euros.
The story is more than clear: every attempt to tie Bulgaria more closely to Russia ends in huge financial losses, institutional deformations, and strategic dependencies.
Because no one can manage the political risk of Putin's Russia. No one.
The combination of ideological pathos and ignorance rarely produces good decisions. In politics, it usually produces catastrophes - both in foreign and domestic policy.