Ukraine's Drones Expose Russia's Failing Economy - Jason Jay Smart

Russia’s refineries are burning, and the country’s war economy is collapsing in real time. Ukraine’s precision drone campaign has struck deep into Russian territory, hitting refineries in Orsk, Saratov, and Feodosiya. Each explosion removes millions of dollars from Moscow’s war chest and cuts directly into the fuel supply that keeps the invasion going. The result is a shrinking economy, rising costs, and a growing deficit that threatens the Kremlin’s ability to fund its own war.

While the fires spread, Russia’s elite display staggering wealth. A teenage heir tied to a Kremlin-backed warlord wears a Jacob & Co Billionaire ASHOKA watch worth more than nine million dollars. This luxury is not random excess. It is evidence of how corruption drives loyalty inside Putin’s system. Every refinery that burns becomes a deeper deficit, and every deficit increases political instability at home.

Ordinary Russian families survive on less than one hundred fifty dollars a month, while the ruling elite drain what remains of the national budget on watches, villas, and armored cars. The Kremlin’s financial network depends on oil revenue and petrochemical exports, and those are now being systematically destroyed.

In this investigation, Jason Jay Smart exposes how Ukraine’s strikes are bankrupting Russia’s war economy from within. Each attack weakens both the military and the state that funds it. Drones hit the money. The budget pays the war. The treasury is running out of both.

CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Intro
01:34 - Urgent Update: The Cost of Loyalty & War
03:05 - Kadyrov's Loyalty is Bought: The History of Betrayal & Moscow's Cash
04:22 - Chechnya: Putin's Vassal State & The Centuries-Old Russian Conquest
05:12 - Russia's Economy is Imploding: The Looming Fiscal Collapse
06:57 - The Kremlin's Trap: Why Ukraine's Strikes Cause a Budget Crisis
09:30 - The Prigozhin Test: Why Kadyrov's 'TikTok Soldiers' Feared Wagner
12:18 - Smoke vs. Diamonds: The Ticking Time Bomb Inside Russia
13:05 - Outro