Russia’s Oil Tycoons are Now Preparing for Sudden Collapse

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]We've just received the data that confirms something that our common sense has been telling us to expect for years now. Russia is now shutting down their oil wells at scale. And this is according to details that were shared by President Zullinsky of Ukraine who was citing a report that was intercepted by Ukrainian intelligence officers. This report is fascinating and it goes into the details of what's really happening to the Russian economy, the true status of Russia's banks, and the true status of Russia's oil companies. information that's obviously not intended to be shared with the Russian public. And according to this report, we don't have that many details yet, but at least one Russian oil company, and not even a big one, has already been forced to shut down at least 400 different oil wells.

[00:00:48]But this number in reality is likely far far bigger than this 400 number because Zillinsky specifically said they were going to share more details soon, but they were looking for a way to do that that would not compromise the integrity of their sources. which indicates that Zalinsky right now is trying to communicate truths about what's happening in Russia by sharing specific details that point to broader realities where he can't give specifics without compromising the safety and integrity of the people who are getting those details. But when we really look at this 400 number, it tells us the directional trend of where we should be looking. The reason that these oil wells are being shut down is quite obvious. Ukraine has been ramping up the strikes on Russian energy infrastructure really for the past several years, but especially over the past two months where Ukraine has actually been shutting down Russia's export terminals so that Russia physically cannot get oil onto ships to deliver it to markets around the world.

[00:01:48]And as that happens, Ukraine is also destroying Russia's storage fe facilities, storage depots, something they've already been doing throughout the war. meaning that Russia has nowhere to sell their oil and nowhere to store their oil. Because of that, Russia is being forced to shut down production.

[00:02:07]But that trend of shutting down production is much worse for Russia than you might at first think because of the specific geographic nature of Russia.

[00:02:17]Which means that when you shut down oil production, most of the time you can't actually turn it back online. That means that Russia has now sustained permanent damage to its oil economy and they have sustained permanent infrastructure losses, permanent losses of capital investments, losses that will sustain even after the war is over. But right now, those losses are likely just getting started. Now, it's important to understand that this 400 oil well figure is just the tip of the iceberg. We don't know specifically what companies Linsky is referring to, but we know that it's not one of the big Russian companies.

[00:02:55]And that lets us estimate the actual damage that's being done. And when we remember the fact that this company is not just shutting down the oil wells just because, but they're specifically shutting down the oil wells to stop production because there's nowhere to sell or store that oil. We realize this company is likely shutting down some of their more productive wells, not some of their least productive wells. And when we have all that information, we can estimate that this company, again, we don't know the specific one, but it's likely lost somewhere between 15 and 25% of its production capacity so far. And again, that's just the beginning. And if that's happening to one Russian company, it is likely reflective of the broader Russian oil industry, which would not be a surprise at all given the actions that Ukraine is taking to actually catalyze this movement in the first place. So, Russia is in an oil crisis right now, and it's far, far worse than you might expect. There's a lot of details that you might not hear anywhere else. So, let's get into them. Father's Day is coming up and a lot of people are looking for the perfect gift for their dads, grandpas, husbands, sons, or brothers. And I think a really great gift idea that often gets overlooked is a new wallet. A really nice one. I recently realized that having a nice wallet is a massive missed opportunity for most guys, where you can upgrade the way you feel every single day without breaking the bank. Because if you're like me, you probably touch your wallet more than just about anything else you own. A couple years ago, I started carrying wallets from Extter, the sponsor of today's video, and I haven't looked back since. Xter's wallets are beautiful with so many different style options to customize them to your personality. And they're the most functional wallets that I've personally ever seen. They have a spot for everything you need, including Extra's brilliant custom accessories, like their GPS Finder card that lets you locate and ping your wallet if you ever lose it. I also love the click mechanism to fan out my cards, which makes it easy to access the card I need and is also just super satisfying.

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[00:05:33]Thanks again to Extter for sponsoring today's video. Now, there's some context you need to know to truly understand just how bad this oil crisis could actually become for Russia. And it has to do with Russia's geography and Russia's history with that geography.

[00:05:49]Russia of course is an oilrich country and they're also rich in natural gas.

[00:05:54]But everybody also knows that Russia is known for something else when it comes to their geography, which is that Russia is really big and Russia is really, really, really cold. This causes some problems when it comes to oil production that aren't experienced, for example, in Saudi Arabia or in really most other countries that produce oil, which is that if oil stops flowing, the cold weather means that the oil actually freezes up. It can freeze up in the oil wells themselves. It can freeze up in the pumps. It can freeze up in the pipes. It can cause massive problems.

[00:06:31]And this is not just speculation. This actually happened to Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the state-run oil companies didn't really have any owners for a short period of time. Production stopped. And when production stopped, lo and behold, the oil wells and oil pipelines actually froze up. And we're talking about thousands and thousands of kilometers of pipelines going from deep in Siberia where a lot of the Russian oil is all the way across Russia down south and west towards where the actual refineries and processing facilities and ports are that make use of that oil and actually transport it. This was a massive problem for Russia as they were in their infancy. But luckily they had somebody to bail them out which was the entire Western world who were happy about the Soviet Union's collapse and they wanted to help the Russian Federation out and make sure that they actually survived. So what they did is they invested billions and billions of dollars over many years into Russia's oil infrastructure to literally replace all of these pipelines where the oil had actually frozen up due to the stop in production. And that took a very long time. And it was only completed, funny enough, just before Russia decided to invade and annex Crimea. kind of a thank you to the West for us helping them literally save their entire economy.

[00:08:05]They just tried to use what we repaired for them as leverage against the Western world to extract more out of us. Now, I share those details because they show you how Russia is in an especially vulnerable position right now. On the one hand, they are on the precipice of a reoccurrence of a crisis that has already happened within their country in recent history, a sudden stop in oil production, albeit for different reasons. And on the other hand, they no longer have the lever to pull that helped their economy escape and recover last time, which of course was western support, or to be a little bit broader, just outside support in general. But the reasons for that outside support and the incentives no longer exist. Outside support came for a couple of different reasons. Obviously, companies had a profit motive. They wanted to tap into Russia's vast oil resources and they were willing to invest in infrastructure because they thought that they could have a relationship for the long term and make a profit from that. And on the other hand, just politically, there was an incentive because everybody wanted Russia to succeed and to be integrated with the broader world. Contrary to Russian propaganda, we did a lot of things to try to make the Russian Federation an absolute success. Just like we did for all of the other posts Soviet countries. Now though, people have been burned. companies, even if they don't care about ideology or politics, are going to be very, very leerary about investing in Russia again because they can lose access to their infrastructure with a government that's run by a dictator. Or just very simply, if Russian oil continues to be sanctioned, it's no longer as valuable because its broader market, the European market, which was the majority of the Russian market, is simply gone. likely is going to remain gone for a long period of time. The only potential solution to this, of course, is if other countries like China or India, who have been continuing to purchase Russian oil during sanctions, decided that they wanted to invest in Russia's infrastructure this time to help themselves. But we've already seen a couple of movements in that direction by Russia trying to offer, for example, to build pipelines into China. and China has rebuffed those efforts taking advantage of Russia's vulnerability to demand massive discounts. So if China or India do get involved in investing in Russian infrastructure, it is not to help the Russian economy, but it is to take advantage of discounted terms for themselves. And they're going to try to make Russia frontload the cost of rebuilding that infrastructure, which is kind of Russia's problem in the first place. Russia can't make money without selling oil or natural gas, but without money, they can't invest in rebuilding the infrastructure either. It's sort of a catch 22. China and India, of course, aren't exactly rolling in the dough either. And so, when it comes to them actually even having the money in the first place to invest in Russian infrastructure, well, it's not altogether clear that that money would actually be there. It really shows that Russia is in a dilemma if this current problem continues. Already I've cited this number which could indicate that 15 to 25% of their production has been shut offline. And we'll have more clarity on that number soon. It's possible that I could be way off and the real number could be way lower at the current point.

[00:11:29]But at the same time, the trend is just beginning. The trend has not yet ended.

[00:11:35]Because if anything, Ukraine is only ramping up their strikes on Russian infrastructure.

[00:11:42]There are more holes than there have ever been in Russia's air defense lines, and those holes are only growing every single day. Simultaneously, as Ukraine's capability to exploit those gaps is growing stronger, Ukraine is consistently hitting more refineries, more storage depots, more terminals more regularly with bigger weapons that cause more damage. This is not a recipe for success for Russia. It shows you that if they continue their war, they will just continue to do more and more irreparable damage to their own economy. Now, that said, already at current levels, this is causing massive problems for Russia's ability to continue funding their war.

[00:12:28]I'm not saying that Russia is going to end their war tomorrow because their economy is just so poor. But rather, each day that goes on, Russia has to make harder and harder choices to continue funding their war. Choices that degrade the internal stability of Russia more and more. Russia is always going to choose to fund their war machine over internal stability. So, they're always going to find the money to do that. But the question is, how much will Russian society tolerate? And as the ground gets weaker and weaker beneath the feet of Russian leadership, how much of a populace do they have to lean on to continue waging their war, for example, a year or two years into the future?

[00:13:11]We've already seen this year that just in the first couple of months, Russia's deficit has been far far higher than expected. And this is because a huge portion, I think it's like 40% of Russia's current budget is based on the sale of oil and natural gas. These projections are based on a certain price. And what's interesting is that the prices actually ended up being far higher than Russia projected due to the war in Iran. But Russia is still making less revenue because you cannot take advantage of high oil prices if your terminals, your export terminals are being taken offline to the point that you actually have to stop production all the way back in the supply chain. This is a huge problem for Russia. they are running out of money and if oil prices recover even to some small level in the next couple of months or over the next year that will be the breaking point for Russia. It could be that the only thing keeping them even teetering along right now is the fact that oil prices are so high but that hasn't given them a huge stimulus. It is just allowed them to keep going at the burn rate they had before the war in Iran. And so without those high oil prices, they're really really in a precarious position. In short, this pause in oil production only accentuates the already existing problems within Russia where they've already essentially run out of the funds they need and the only way to keep running their country is number one to print more Russian rubles causing inflation or number two to sell off Russian gold so that they can get more currency without having to print it. But they've already run out of most of the gold that they can actually sell. And China is taking advantage of what they have left to get that gold at lower prices. And inflation is already through the roof. Likely much higher than official numbers state because if you look at videos of Russian citizens within Russia, they are complaining about prices that are many magnitudes higher than what you would expect with the actual published inflation rate.

[00:15:24]This is really bad news for Russia. For the rest of us, it's good news. And it's good news for two reasons. Number one, it means that the end of the war in Ukraine is getting closer. As with everything, we are talking about a trend. We're not saying that the end is right here in front of us. But we are saying we can see the light at the end of the tunnel and that light gets a little bit closer every day. Things are continuing to trend in that direction.

[00:15:50]So that's very, very good news. But it's also good news because it means that with this long-term destruction to the Russian economy, it is unlikely that a future generation of Russian leadership will be able to fund this type of warfare again in the future. Now, I feel bad for the average Russian citizen, especially the ones that didn't have anything to do with this war, because they're going to have to reap the consequences for this leadership. But at the same time, every citizen within every country bears at least some responsibility for their leaders actions. And that is certainly how the rest of the world will see it.

[00:16:28]Certainly, we are living in very interesting times right now, but you might not know it if you didn't know the finer details and the backstory behind those details. That's why this channel exists. And if you want to go even a level deeper than we've gone in this video, I've recently started doing insider Q&As's for YouTube channel insiders and patrons, those who choose to support my work. We've had some very interesting conversations so far. I take your questions on my videos from the week and I answer them, the most popular questions, the ones that are really burning in the back of your minds. And you might be fascinated by some of those details. Last week, I talked about would Putin fire a nuke if Russia were actually going to lose the war and Russia was severely threatened. I also answered the question of whether Ukraine would really be able to take back Crimea and whether they would want to take back Crimea in the first place and a lot of just next level depth in terms of the topics we discuss here. So, if you want to check out the answer to those questions or if you want to ask a question yourself and potentially see it in a future Q&A, just become a channel insider by clicking the join button right below this video. It's right next to the picture of my mug, my face right there below. Thanks for those of you who choose to support my work. I couldn't do it without you guys. I'll see you on the next