07/26/2026
The gold and foreign exchange reserves of the aggressor country Russia are rapidly decreasing, unable to withstand the colossal costs of the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine. At the same time, dictator Vladimir Putin himself, on the contrary, is even more determined. Now he has no intention of discussing the withdrawal of occupation troops from the Sumy and Kharkiv regions and is waiting for a “victory” in Donbas.
This paradox is explained by several reasons. First of all, Putin still has not realized the full scale of the catastrophe in the Russian economy. He is still convinced that he can win at the expense of a large number of people and weapons, in particular nuclear ones. His crazy dream is to make Russia as great as the Union was. The only way to stop him in this madness is to deprive him of power or eliminate him.
This opinion was expressed in an exclusive interview with OBOZ.UA by Olga Kurnosova, a Russian opposition figure recognized as a “foreign agent” in Russia.
– The situation with Russia’s gold and foreign exchange reserves seems to be very complicated. As of July 1, they had decreased to the minimum level since February 2020 and amounted to 2,283 tons. At the same time, it became known that in the first half of this year alone, about 44 tons of gold were sold for more than $5.6 billion. In your opinion, is this a serious problem?
– First of all, Russia has a simply catastrophic budget situation, so the problems with reserves are just a reflection of the general problem with a colossal budget deficit. In order to somehow stabilize the situation, the Russian authorities are trying to use, in particular, gold and foreign exchange reserves, including the central bank. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in this; the situation is absolutely catastrophic.
– Is this catastrophe directly related to the war against Ukraine or are there other reasons?
– In general, everything in Russia today is connected with the war. Even the tax increase, which, in turn, is stifling business, is also connected with the lack of money for the war. I don’t even have an adjective to describe the scale of military spending.
– And against the backdrop of these major economic problems, Putin is increasing his demands in the war – Bloomberg sources write about this. In particular, he allegedly no longer intends to return the occupied territories of Ukraine in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions, which has been repeatedly stated before. He seeks to seize the entire Donetsk region and declares that negotiations can resume only after achieving this goal. Sources associate this change in rhetoric with the fact that the “spirit of Anchorage” has finally disappeared. In your opinion, why is such an interesting phenomenon happening?
– Because Putin absolutely does not want to stop the war, we have talked about this with you many times. For him, personal goals are much more important than the well-being of Russians and the lives of Russians; he absolutely does not care about them. As for the fact that the economy is rolling into the abyss, he believes that the gold and foreign exchange reserves have not yet been completely exhausted. In addition, he has the illusion that it is precisely high military spending that is the engine of the economy.
The fact is that during his entire reign he has never been in a critical economic situation, so he simply does not imagine the depth of the crisis that has now hit Russia, he simply does not understand that he does not even have the managerial staff capable of leading the country in this situation. Therefore, in my opinion, he simply does not realize the scale of the catastrophe.
And the fact that he doesn’t want to negotiate – yes, he has always been like that. We keep saying that it will be possible to talk about full-scale peace and security in Europe only after Putin is no longer the president of Russia. It is impossible to agree on anything with Putin. This was my initial position, and it has not changed for me.
– What does he see as the basis for such confidence that he will be able to win in Ukraine?
– It’s just that Russia has more people, more weapons, and nuclear weapons. So he thinks that if he keeps threatening and destroying everything and everyone, eventually everyone will get scared and stop.
Notice how happy the Russian state media was when they thought a new “cardboard Maidan” had begun in Ukraine when Fedorov resigned. Putin is always counting on a revolution in Ukraine and Zelensky losing power. He believes he will be able to promote some leader of the country who will be easier to govern from Moscow.
– I just wanted to talk to you about the Kremlin’s reaction to this Maidan. But, as we see, it actually showed that the people in Ukraine have a very big influence on the government in the country, that Zelensky is by no means a dictator.
– Of course, but the war itself, the very planning of the war from the very beginning, from February 2022, showed that Putin absolutely does not understand the processes taking place in Ukraine. I will tell you something else. At different periods of time, I had certain contacts with officials of various levels, and I can definitely tell you, as a witness, that Russian officials had no idea about the real situation in Ukraine. They had a very distorted idea of the processes taking place in Ukraine all the time.
– VTsIOM recorded another drop in Putin’s rating. According to the survey, 65% approve and 23.4% do not support Putin’s activities as president. These are the lowest figures since 2021. Do you allow that, purely theoretically, in this situation the “Maidan virus”, which the Kremlin is so afraid of, could reach Moscow, all of Russia?
– Of course, we cannot trust absolute numbers, but it is undeniable that even those who supported Putin at the beginning of the full-scale invasion have stopped supporting him – this is a medical fact. Even a small study of social networks and certain contacts shows that this is exactly the case.
Another thing is that today in Russia there is a full-scale dictatorship, in which Maidan, in principle, cannot take place. Therefore, what the Kremlin is doing now, increasing the level of aggression and hatred in society, may lead not so much to some velvet revolution, but to the harshest revolution with burning estates on Rublyovka. This time, of course, it will not be pitchforks, but machine guns, grenades, etc. The probability of such a harsh scenario is increasing.
The only alternative to the harsh scenario is a conditional coup, if the FSB, FSO, part of Putin’s entourage together with the FSB and FSO, or someone else manages to isolate Putin from his presidential buttons, declare that he cannot perform the duties of the president due to health conditions, which, in general, is absolutely true, since, as it seems to me, he has long gone crazy. In that case, the situation will begin to change somewhat more gently.
– Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that Putin will not stop until the West returns to a clear policy regarding Ukraine’s membership in NATO. He is convinced that our country should become a member of the Alliance. If such a decision is approved, could it provoke Putin to do some absolutely crazy actions?
– I believe that nothing depends on this, because this is a formal story: Putin has been trying to put forward this all the time, but in reality he wants something completely different.
He wants his position to be the same as Stalin’s position after World War II. He wants Russia to become the same great power as the Soviet Union, which is impossible in principle, because the political situation is completely different. But, given that Russia today has all the nuclear potential of the Soviet Union, he wants to use this as a basis to pretend to be the leader of a great power. And this is his main desire.
In this case, NATO is just an excuse, not the cause of what is happening. The fact is that the Russian-Ukrainian war has already shown that Russia is a paper tiger, and that the resources that all of Western Europe feared during the Soviet Union are simply not there now. And in a ground campaign, Russia cannot be the same as the Soviet Union was. And in this sense, everyone has already seen it.
Therefore, in my opinion, it is much more important for Putin to understand that, in principle, the West is capable of making a political decision to eliminate him or remove him from power if he does not stop fighting. It seems to me that this is the only thing that can stop Putin, and nothing else.
“Therefore, in my opinion, he simply does not realize the scale of the catastrophe.”
I fully agree. The vampire runt is being fed bullshit by his various gofers and there is no way for him to know any better because he lives in a bubble. Mafia land is not finished yet, but Ukraine is moving the shithole in that direction. With every major strike on its energy and production facilities, the final catastrophe comes closer.
Something that affects him personally, directly, like the WB drop shippers, needs to be done, to send a message. He shat his pants and feld when Prigozhin marched on Moscow, fucker needs an adrenaline spiking wake up call.