Source: NYT > Business
Russia’s pivot toward punitive taxation of surviving small businesses signals a government abandoning the pretense of economic diversification—instead extracting whatever cash remains from the productive sector to fund warfare, a strategy that historically precedes either economic collapse or radical political rupture. This isn’t just inflation or adjustment; it’s the visible moment when state survival instincts override market functionality, foreshadowing either a hard economic reset or the emergence of entirely informal/grey economies as Russia’s actual commercial backbone.