Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Something down is up in Russia

Normally traffic from Russia represents over 10% of my blog audience, going back years, but in the last week that has dropped off the cliff to zero.

It's like somebody turned off the spigot.

Reuters provides clues here:

"The large Moscow street protests of 2011 and 2012 illustrated the connection between economic growth and demands for greater political participation by the chief beneficiaries of Russia’s then-prosperity. Now, as the collapse in oil prices and Western sanctions undermine the economy, the mood inside Russia could hardly be more different. The creative class in big cities like Moscow is depressed and increasingly disengaged from political life. Some have given up and are just leaving the country. The combination of economic crisis, heavy propaganda, patriotic mobilization and hybrid war inside Ukraine have produced conformism, passivity and insensitivity."