Commenting on the sharp rise in interest rates in Russia, Anastasia Nesvetailova, Professor of International Political Economy at City University London, says:<\/p>\n
“In the middle of last night, the Russian Central Bank made a desperate attempt to shore up support for the rouble, a move that is unlikely to save the currency or the economy beyond the very short term.<\/p>\n
When a crisis of this nature erupts, countries tend to seek external help. Putin\u2019s Russia has very few friends.<\/p>\n
Against this bleak background, there are three possible scenarios to resolve the current crisis. None of them is attractive, some are dangerous.<\/p>\n
Scenario One: Russia is saved by China and becomes a satellite of China. This merger starts a global realignment of powers and geopolitics.<\/p>\n
Scenario Two: Putin is ejected from power by domestic clan wars or popular uprising; Russia returns to the Western fold.<\/p>\n
Scenario Three: The Kremlin attempts to resolve the economic crisis by entering into another war conflict.
\nThe views of critical voices in Russia suggest that scenario two is already under way. Many believe that Putin is isolated and effectively only an arbiter, caught between powerful interest groups. Lately, many of his loyal friends and allies were either removed from power or in some cases, put under house arrest.<\/p>\nSome analysts believe there is a power struggle between a powerful siloviki clan (KGB\/Defence Ministry) and the first generation of Putin\u2019s own state oligarchs who now are affected by the sanctions. The financial sanctions on Putin have had the untended effect of strengthening\u00a0the position of the Russian Defence Ministry and the neo-conservative clan.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Commenting on the sharp rise in interest rates in Russia, Anastasia Nesvetailova, Professor of International Political Economy at City University London, says: “In the middle of last night, the Russian Central Bank made a desperate attempt to shore up support for the rouble, a move that is unlikely to save the currency or the economy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16329"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16334,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16329\/revisions\/16334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}