Vlad Vexler Is Right: With Respect to Economics, Putin Still Has Cards to Play
- john raymond
- Jul 11
- 4 min read
Vlad Vexler is right. The Russian economy, after years of wartime improvisation, has exhausted its slack.
The short-term growth that followed the 2022 invasion—driven by repurposed Western assets, redirected capital, and emergency industrial redeployment—is no longer replicable.
As Vexler sharply notes, the regime’s current position is “unbearable without change.”
But where he and I diverge is in the nature of that change...
Vexler knows that Putin still has meaningful strategic options. He floats the idea that the war could be paused, that the regime could recalibrate, that Putin might even shift course if the pressure becomes too great. The analysis is sound on its own terms. But it assumes a level of flexibility I do not believe the structure of Putin’s regime actually allows.
And I think the change is already visible. Putin is not reforming. He is not recalibrating. He is not winding down. He is cannibalizing. That is the card he has decided to play.
And it is a card that may buy him another year—but only that.
The War Will Not Stop
Let’s address the divergence directly. Vexler suggests Putin could halt the war, even temporarily, to regroup. I disagree—not because Putin lacks the legal authority to do so, but because he is structurally constrained from doing so.
He is not free in the way a Western leader might be. His power is entangled in a matrix of coercion, mythology, and fear. To end the war would be to rupture that matrix.
Chief among the reasons is what I call the vengeance trap. Even if Putin declared peace tomorrow, he could not walk away from this conflict safely.
The atrocities committed under his name, the war crimes documented, the deportations, the systematic targeting of civilians—these are not the kinds of crimes that can be bargained away.
There are too many people, particularly in Ukraine, who will pursue justice to the end. And among Putin’s own elites, peace would not bring relief. It would bring scrutiny. It would invite betrayal. It would show weakness.
There is also the problem of narrative collapse. The war is no longer just a conflict—it is the regime’s justification. It explains the economy, the repression, the isolation, the mobilization.
Remove the war, and the entire structure begins to look arbitrary, extractive, naked.
Without war, Putin’s domestic legitimacy—such as it is—evaporates. The regime's survival is now tied to the war’s continuation. He cannot exit without risking a death spiral.
The Change Is Cannibalization
So what, then, is the “change” that makes the current burden bearable?
The answer appears to be already underway. Putin is extracting from within. He is feeding off the institutions, individuals, and capital pools that once sustained the system.
This is not policy. It is expropriation under the guise of patriotism and wartime necessity.
The arrest of gold magnate Konstantin Strukov is not an outlier. I believe it is a signal.
Major wealth holders inside Russia are being put on notice: your fortunes are no longer safe, even if you are loyal. Oligarchs, regional power brokers, corporate executives—they are all subject to seizure, investigation, or “patriotic contribution.”
The state is turning inward, draining its own core.
Quasi-private companies are being pressed for extraordinary dividends. Banking liquidity is being quietly tightened. Pensions, personal savings, and foreign currency accounts are increasingly subject to restriction or surveillance.
And military conscription is expanding. New labor laws and asset controls are being justified by the same appeal to national emergency.
This is not wartime reform. It is the internal strip-mining of a nation trying to outlast collapse.
And the regime is doing this because it works—for now.
How Much Time Does This Buy?
This is where Vexler’s phrase—“cards to play”—becomes relevant again. Yes, Putin still has cards. But they are finite. And they are being played now, not held in reserve.
Based on current estimates of internal Russian wealth still within reach—wealth that is neither hidden abroad nor already frozen—the Kremlin has access to roughly a year’s worth of extractable value.
That includes what can be seized from oligarchs, squeezed from state-aligned corporations, taken through emergency levies, or redirected from institutional reserves.
But it's not unlimited. Much of the remaining wealth in Russia is either already tapped, highly illiquid, or shielded from immediate seizure.
What remains can fund the war effort and regime continuity for perhaps another twelve to eighteen months, if the pace of extraction is carefully managed.
This gives Putin what he needs: time. Not strength, not stability—just time. He can stretch another campaign season. He can keep the repression machine lubricated. He can delay full financial breakdown.
But every act of cannibalism now costs him future loyalty, productivity, and control.
This is not a strategic maneuver. It is survival through depletion.
The Nature of the Card
Vexler is not wrong to say Putin still has cards to play. But the nature of the card matters more than the fact that it exists. This card—this path—is not one of recalibration or reversal. It is not a lever that can be pulled again and again.
It is the decision to devour the economic interior of the regime in order to extend its exterior aggression.
And there are no reforms waiting behind this. There is no growth cycle to follow.
When the cannibalism ends—when there is nothing left to seize—the only thing left will be the regime itself, brittle and exposed, unable to fund either peace or war.
And that, more than any individual sanction or drone strike, is what will finally determine whether Putin endures or falls.
Until then, we should stop pretending he is preparing to stop. He is preparing to consume what remains.
Just like Hitler did, Putin will use his country—its people, its wealth—to protect himself right up until the very, very end.
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