Pyotr Kurzin
@PKurzin • 61,865 subscribers
Host of @theglobalgambit podcast on Strategy of Geopolitics, Economics and War (1M). Exp @worldbank, @CrisisGroup, @UN | MA @SAISHopkins. Radically Central
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🇷🇺🪙 Putin has now sold 71% of Russia's gold reserves. When those are gone, there is nothing left to fund his war. Russia's GDP growth for 2026 is projected at 0.4%. Half of all civilian industrial sectors are now in decline. The war is running $28 billion over budget. It is projected to overspend by a further $54 billion in 2027 and 2028. The territory Russia is acquiring works out at $90 million per square mile. $90 million per square mile of a country it was supposed to consume in days. And then there is the labour shortage. Close to half a million soldiers killed. Hundreds of thousands wounded. Hundreds of thousands of working-age men who left after mobilisation and never returned. Factory workers and delivery drivers choosing frontline service over civilian jobs because war wages are higher. You can adjust interest rates. You can print money. You cannot conjure back a missing generation of workers. The question is not whether this is sustainable. It isn't. The question is what breaks first — and how badly. Full video in first comment ↓ | Follow Pyotr Kurzin for more
Pyotr Kurzin171,728 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
🇷🇺🪖 Putin is now trapped in his own war. If he mobilises, he admits the war is failing. But if he doesn't, his frontlines collapse. Russia's military is demanding 500,000 additional soldiers immediately. The MOD is warning that without them the front lines will collapse this winter. 30,000 casualties a month and climbing. But mass mobilisation terrifies the Kremlin more than the front line does. It would pull more men from an already depleted labour force. It would trigger protests from soldiers' mothers — the one constituency historically capable of putting real pressure on Russian governments. And it would make the scale of this war visible and personal for every Russian family in a way that four years of state television have carefully prevented. There is no version of this that doesn't force Putin to admit something he has spent four years refusing to admit. A winning military does not face this choice. And then there is Ukraine. A Ukrainian general just resigned rather than preside over failure. That act — choosing accountability over self-preservation — is structurally impossible in Putin's military. Russian generals don't resign. They fall out of windows. One system corrects. The other compounds. That is the difference between who wins this war. Full video in first comment ↓ | Follow Pyotr Kurzin for more
Pyotr Kurzin147,599 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
🇷🇺⚠️🇺🇦 Putin is completely losing Crimea. And Ukraine hasn't even sent in a single troop. Paul Warburg — one of the most forensic analysts of drone warfare — in an exclusive interview says the siege of Crimea is not just happening. It's happening faster and more dramatically than even he predicted. Ukraine has effectively taken control of the Sea of Azov. It is in the process of taking the entire Black Sea from a shipping standpoint. It has conducted the first successful amphibious drone landing in military history. "Strategically speaking, Crimea is done for the Russians. There's no benefit to fighting for Crimea other than saving Putin's ego." Two years ago Warburg's Crimea thesis was called insane propaganda. Ukraine is now executing it with a confidence its military has never previously shown in public. This is what winning looks like. Without a single boot on the ground. Full interview in first comment ↓ | Follow Pyotr Kurzin for more
Pyotr Kurzin74,607 просмотров • 21 дней назад
🇷🇺⚠️Every Russian general who ordered strikes on civilians is now a marked man. Retired US Army Ben Hodges, in an exclusive interview, says the GUR has already started the clock — and there is nowhere to hide. "Every officer in the chain of command — for the rest of his life — is going to have to be checking under his car. Because the GUR is going to hunt them down." Russia can't protect everything. And neither can its generals. Full interview in first comment ↓ | Extended cut for X subscribers
Pyotr Kurzin193,947 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад
This is what the #Olympics is about. About pushing the limits of humankind. About the absolute camaraderie between athletes. About the utterly electric atmosphere of this shared experience and Olympics enabling everyone to be in the moment. Phenomenal Duplantis #GOLD
Pyotr Kurzin1,477,470 просмотров • 2 лет назад
🇺🇸🤯🇷🇺 "Trump has been kissing Putin's ass for years." A sitting US Senator. On the Intel Committee. Said it on camera. US Senator and combat veteran Captain Mark Kelly, in an exclusive interview, says Putin didn't just benefit from Trump's deference — he exploited it. And Ukraine is paying the price. "Putin has played Donald Trump in a way that has clearly benefited Putin and put the Ukrainians at further risk." This is a member of the Armed Services and Intel Committee. Not a pundit. Not an op-ed. That's not incompetence. That's a pattern. Full interview in first comment ↓ | Extended cut for X subscribers Senator Mark Kelly
Pyotr Kurzin121,776 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад
🇷🇺☢️ Everyone inside Putin's circle agrees his war can't continue. They just can't agree on how to end it. Mark Galeotti — one of the world's leading experts on Russia and the Kremlin — in an exclusive interview says the debate is no longer behind closed doors. It's public. And it goes all the way to the first deputy head of the presidential administration. "This is nothing that wasn't being said behind closed doors in previous years. But now it's being said publicly." The pragmatists say freeze it and walk away. The hawks say escalate — send in the 150,000 conscripts Putin hasn't deployed yet and impose an end on Russia's terms. Either way, the clock is running out on Putin's war. Full interview in first comment ↓ | Extended cut for X subscribers | Follow Pyotr Kurzin for more
Pyotr Kurzin80,602 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад
🇺🇸📉 Trump's US is now the 5th most disliked country on earth. More disliked than Russia & China. In Canada — historically America's closest ally — positive perceptions have fallen from 52% to 19%. In France, 73% no longer believe America is an ally. France was America's first ally. This is what disengagement actually produces. Not stability. Not gratitude. A competition to fill the void America leaves behind. Russia doesn't want a power vacuum in Eastern Europe. It wants to fill it. China doesn't want a less engaged Indo-Pacific. It wants to exploit it. And the middle powers — Brazil, India, Turkey, South Africa — are not sitting neutrally. They're making choices. Trump has convinced them they can align with both China and the US simultaneously. That's not American leverage. That's its erosion. More countries are choosing to work around America than at any point since World War II. This is not strength. This is what retreat looks like from the outside. Full video in first comment ↓ | Follow Pyotr Kurzin for more
Pyotr Kurzin58,317 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
🇷🇺🪖 Putin isn't just losing Crimea. His entire war campaign is being trapped in a siege. Retired Gen Ben Hodges , in an exclusive interview on The Global Gambit (GG), says Ukraine is executing classic siege tactics — isolating the peninsula, destroying fuel shipments, cutting transportation infrastructure. Crimea is not self-sustaining. It has water problems. It cannot hold. "People are leaving. Not just disappointed vacationers. Government officials. People realising that Crimea is becoming a trap." And on nuclear escalation — the threat Putin uses to keep the West hesitating — Hodges is direct: "There's no practical benefit for Russia to use a nuclear weapon. The real benefit is the threat. Because they see how we hesitate. We allow ourselves to be blackmailed." Putin is running out of road. And Crimea is running out of fuel. Full interview in first comment ↓ | Follow Pyotr Kurzin for more
Pyotr Kurzin47,609 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
🇪🇺🇷🇺 Europe has Putin by the throat. It just hasn't tightened its grip. Retired US Army Ben Hodges, in an exclusive interview, says Europe's combined economies, technology and industrial capacity dwarfs Russia — and it has tools it hasn't even begun to use. Every shadow fleet vessel carrying Russian oil and gas to China and India passes through NATO and EU waters in the Baltic and Black Sea. "You can stop those. Or stop giving out visas to Russian tourists. There's a lot of things that could be done." Europe doesn't need America to win this war. It needs to decide it wants to. Full interview in first comment ↓ | Follow Pyotr Kurzin for more
Pyotr Kurzin61,979 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад
🇺🇸 🤯 🇮🇷 Trump isn't stupid. It's much worse than that. ian bremmer - the world's leading geopolitical risk analyst - in an exclusive interview on Trump's Iran deal says has genius-level political instincts and catastrophic policy incompetence. Both simultaneously. "He has a genius in marketing and branding. His political instincts are incredible. And yet his staggering level of self-confidence and narcissism serves his policy impulses incredibly badly." A CEO with this record would be fired. America re-elected him. That's not stupidity. That's something far more dangerous. Full interview in first comment ↓ | Follow Pyotr Kurzin for more like this
Pyotr Kurzin63,303 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад
🇷🇺❌🇺🇦 The real reason Putin cannot ever meet Zelensky. Not won't. Can't. Sitting across the table from Zelensky as an equal requires treating Ukraine as a legitimate sovereign state — which demolishes the entire ideological foundation the war is built on. The Russian justification has always been: Ukraine isn't a real country, doesn't have a legitimate government, and the "SMO" is there to protect ethnic Russians from Nazification. The moment Putin shakes Zelensky's hand as a head of state, that justification collapses in real time, on camera, in front of the world. So this isn't stubbornness. It's a structural impossibility dressed up as a choice. And Zelensky just walked him into it in front of every Global South delegate Putin has spent years courting. Full video in first comment ↓
Pyotr Kurzin56,923 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад
🇷🇺⚔️🇺🇦 Russia is losing 35,000 troops a month. The Ukrainians want to push that to 50,000. In an exclusive interview, US Senator and combat veteran Captain Mark Kelly just got back from Odessa. He finished his panel at the opera house and went straight into a bunker. "We get our panel done and then we've gotta go into the bunker because Odessa's under attack." This is what the war actually looks like. Not the ceasefire theatre. Not Trump's phone calls. The ground truth. Full interview in first comment ↓ | Extended cut for X subscribers! Senator Mark Kelly
Pyotr Kurzin50,049 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад
🇷🇺 🇺🇦 Russia’s claims that Ukraine attacked Putin aren't random. They’re a signal. A potential false flag attempt. Its a familiar pattern: whenever diplomacy gains momentum, especially between the US and Ukraine, Moscow escalates. Not randomly. Deliberately. When Washington shows patience, Russia applies pressure: • heavier strikes • civilian infrastructure hit • escalation timed to talks Then, right after “constructive” US-Ukraine meetings, Moscow shifts arenas, from the battlefield to narrative space. A sudden claim of a drone attack on one of Putin’s residences. No evidence. No damage. Unclear if Putin was even there. Ukraine denies it. Zelensky calls it a lie designed to derail diplomacy. This isn’t really about drones. It’s about shaping the story of what happens next. If talks slow or fail, the groundwork is already laid: 'Russia didn’t reject peace — it responded to provocation.' That’s why the timing matters. This wasn’t meant to force escalation now. It was meant to create flexibility later. • Talks continue → claim fades • Talks stall → claim justifies hardening • Escalation follows → claim becomes “proof” Not a trigger. A placeholder. When Russia’s options narrow, escalation (real or manufactured) is how it regains leverage. And that’s the part too many people still miss.
Pyotr Kurzin132,662 просмотров • 7 месяцев назад
🇷🇺🇺🇦 Putin spent years cultivating Trump. It just backfired spectacularly. Trump sat next to Zelensky, called him a winner, and said Ukraine has a lot of future. Putin's two core strategic bets — that Western support would fracture and that Ukraine couldn't sustain the military pressure — are both failing simultaneously. The coalition hasn't fractured. Ukraine just got a licence to manufacture the one weapon system Russia has most desperately tried to prevent it from having. NATO locked in 2 years of financial guarantees at a level Russia can never match. Ukraine's defence industry is being integrated into NATO's industrial base. And the one external actor Putin needed most has completely shifted. Never before have I seen Putin this paranoid. Never before approaching Russian elites asking for money. Never before so rattled — not by the United States, but by Europe and Ukraine. Putin is running out of road. Full video in first comment ↓ | Follow Pyotr Kurzin for more
Pyotr Kurzin30,401 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
🇷🇺💥Putin promised to protect Russians. Ukraine just burned their Amazon and he couldn't stop it. On the same day Ukraine struck an oil depot 50 kilometres from Moscow, it hit Wildberries — Russia's largest online marketplace, processing millions of orders a day. The platform the Kremlin has been using to maintain the fiction that life continues completely normally. That fiction is now on fire. Zelensky calls this Ukraine's long-range sanctions plan. Sanctions aren't designed to win wars immediately — they're designed to raise the cost of a policy until that policy becomes unsustainable. Ukraine is applying that logic with missiles. One refinery. One fuel depot. One warehouse. One symbol of Russian normality at a time. Russia's strategy for winning this war depends on two things: outlasting Western support and maintaining enough domestic stability to absorb the costs indefinitely. Ukraine is now targeting both simultaneously. And Putin can't stop either. Full video in first comment ↓ | Follow Pyotr Kurzin for more
Pyotr Kurzin22,731 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
🇷🇺🪦 Putin's war has cost Russia 1.4 million casualties since 2022. More than four times every American killed in war since World War II. An entire generation. Lost to one man's warped obsession. And still it isn't working. Russia's monthly casualty rate has now exceeded its monthly recruitment rate. 30,000 casualties every month. 27,000 new recruits. The gap widens every single month. In April alone, Russia lost 25,000 troops to advance 53 square kilometres in Donetsk. 470 soldiers per square kilometre. The casualty ratio has risen from two or three to one earlier in the war to eight to one in 2026. Russia is offering $140,000 signing bonuses. It is signing up foreign nationals, students, and residents of occupied Ukrainian territories. And still the numbers fall short. Because no financial incentive can fix the reason people aren't signing up. They know what happens when they arrive. The CIA confirmed what Russian military bloggers had been saying for months. The average life expectancy of a new Russian recruit after arrival is between 20 and 30 minutes. These numbers reach every Russian family. Not through state television. Through the silence of a phone that never stops ringing and a son who never comes home. Full video in first comment ↓ | Follow Pyotr Kurzin for more
Pyotr Kurzin18,447 просмотров • 29 дней назад
🇷🇺🤥 Russia's military has been deceiving Putin for years. Equipment that didn't work. Contractors paid to approve things that should never have been approved. And the man they were lying to built his entire career on detecting exactly that. Retired US Army Ben Hodges, in an exclusive interview, says this corruption is what has been breaking Russia's war from day one. "The corruption had created a situation where there was not accurate reporting. Equipment in storage turned out to be unready — even though the ministry had been paying contractors to approve it." Putin isn't micromanaging this war because he's in control. He's doing it because he can no longer trust anyone. Full interview in first comment ↓ | Extended cut for X subscribers
Pyotr Kurzin34,906 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад
🇷🇺⏲️ Putin's Ukraine strategy rested on one bet — time favours Russia. The NATO Summit just completely undid that. Allies are formally committing $70 billion in additional military assistance to Ukraine — not just this year, but next year too. That's on top of the $90 billion Europeans committed in December and January. Ukraine is negotiating drone production agreements with 15 NATO states. Its defence industry is being integrated into NATO's industrial base. And for the first time, the summit declaration formally recognises Ukraine not as a passive recipient of support, but as an active contributor to Allied security. Putin's narrative has always been that Western support is politically unsustainable. That European democracies would tire of the cost. That the coalition would fracture. Russia's own propagandists have now shifted their language from triumph to endurance. That shift tells you everything. Putin's calculation that time favours Russia is being directly challenged. And the direction of travel couldn't be clearer. Full video in first comment ↓ | Follow Pyotr Kurzin for more
Pyotr Kurzin18,339 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
🇺🇸⚠️This isn’t anti-American. It’s about permanently weakening US interests. The transatlantic alliance remains the biggest force multiplier for US power. That’s precisely why this approach is so damaging. Sanctioning Europeans over EU tech law doesn’t pressure Brussels into backing down. It misunderstands how the EU works, and weakens the alliance Washington benefits most from. Here’s the core mistake: Europe doesn’t respond to pressure by folding. It responds by locking in alternatives. The figures being targeted are tied to the Digital Services Act - legislation democratically adopted, approved by the European Parliament, and backed by all 27 member states. Sanctioning individuals doesn’t dilute that policy. It entrenches it. And the response isn’t loud confrontation. It’s quieter, and worse for US interests. Officials have already made clear visa bans change nothing. What does change is the internal calculus: more hedging, less trust, faster moves to reduce reliance on American systems. That isn’t hostility. It’s risk management - the same de-risking Washington applies. This is how the EU has always behaved. The irony being, that by trying to coerce Europe, Washington is accelerating the diversification it claims to fear. When the choice is between total reliance vs selective diversification, diversification always wins. That’s the real long-term cost to US interests.
Pyotr Kurzin72,813 просмотров • 7 месяцев назад