Page 75 - RusRPTJul21

their total tax take or more.
“Given the total volume of debts are in the range of 2.4 trillion rubles ($32.76 billion). That could easily be covered with the various forms of reserves available to backstop credit or else converted or used as liquid assets,” Analyst Nick Birman-Trickett said in his weekly newsletter.
Russia has come a long way from the 90s where the set up used to be “Moscow and everywhere else” where the capital was doing well, but you didn't have to travel more than 100km from the city and life was miserable. These days about a third of Russia’s regions are prospering (almost all of the European part of the country) and another third are neutral.
The difficulty is the last third that are in a cluster around Lake Baikal or in the wastes of Far East where the harsh local climate means there are few opportunities to do anything other raw material extraction. The population that lives in these cities is as they can’t sell their apartments they are trapped and the local government is forced to support them while only a fraction of the population is needed to work in the local facilities.
75 RUSSIA Country Report July 2021 www.intellinews.com