Russian economy shows cracks: Barter deals and gold reserves tell surprising story

Recent moves by Russia show unexpected economic patterns. In early-fall 2024 they made a strange deal exchanging chickpeas for mandarins with Pakistan‚ while BRICS summit guests got told to bring cash because Visa and Mastercard dont work there anymore (since the Ukraine conflict started)

The money problems are getting more real: Russiaʼs membership fees to international groups are late‚ and they cant sell their bonds — about $6B worth got cancelled cause nobody wanted to buy them. Its like watching someone who says theyre doing fine but keeps taking money from their savings

The ruble lost 1/3 of its value in about two years‚ and prices keep going up. Companies cant find workers because of several things — lower population numbers war-related losses (which hit about 2% of working-age men) and smart people leaving the country. Vladimir Putinʼs government tries to fix this by giving out money‚ but that just makes inflation worse

The central bank pushed interest rates super-high: 21%. Sergei Chemezov who runs the state company Rostec says this might bankrupt many firms; still the government keeps giving cheap house loans at 8% to people (and pays banks the difference)

Here are the main budget issues:
* Military costs will be 40% of spending by 2025
* Social programs need $431B for next 6 years
* Gas company profits disappeared after losing EU markets
* National savings fund dropped to $54B (half of what it was)

The governmentʼs trying different things to get more money — higher taxes on rich people new fees for Chinese cars. But nothing really works and they keep using up their saved money. Expert from Ukraine‚ Kyrylo Budanov thinks Russia might need to end the war by 2025 when real money troubles hit

High interest rates are eating into profits so much that most Russian industrial firms could soon go bankrupt