Dad

I’ll start from the end. My personal sympathies, of course, lie with the residents of those Russian regions who regularly pay for the gas supplied to them, while the inefficient monopolist, enduring losses in the Caucasus, justifies every new tariff increase with non-payments. This time, the regional legislative assemblies, impressed by the fact that Chechnya was once again declared a privileged subject of the federation, also began to compete in demanding the cancellation of their residents’ far more modest debts.

Whether this trolling was successful, or simply competing Caucasian security officials used this quirk to assert themselves at each other’s expense, interesting facts began to emerge immediately following the court decision to write off the debts. It turned out that the debts being written off were pinned on the population without any basis, whereas in reality, the gas was either stolen or squandered (while money for infrastructure repairs was stolen) at a higher level. And now, cases are being opened against those who managed the gas distribution, and in general, it seems that quite a few heads will roll as a result of all this.

In a peaceful region, a utility non-payer will quickly have all supplied resources cut off, and recovery for what has already been consumed will begin. In regions like Chechnya, whoever makes such a decision will be forced to start worrying about their health, so they will prefer to ignore the problem for as long as possible, although with a much greater probability, being unable to defeat the theft, they will lead it.

It is unlikely that as a result of all these investigations, Gazprom will recover any noticeable part of the stolen money. The most sensible thing its management could do is try to get rid of the loss-making asset and sell its Caucasian divisions to those ready to conduct business in the region according to the much more brutal local rules. Gazprom would then only have to honestly supply gas to a regional private gas operator at domestic Russian rates and on a prepayment basis. Let them continue to sell it at three times the price on the spot and try to get at least some money for it.

Since ancient times, representatives of the military aristocracy have considered it shameful to pay for what can be taken by force, for then allies might consider them weakened and turn away, and enemies, for the same reasons, might decide to attack. Therefore, of course, the costs of ensuring the fulfillment of contracts in Chechnya and other bandit enclaves must be monstrous. In such an inefficient system, maintaining even a modicum of stability requires a constant influx of external resources, but those are exactly what are starting to run out.

So, in the foreseeable future, we will see fierce infighting there over dwindling flows of budget funds, over any poorly controlled resource supplies, and simply for the right to dispose of people. Unfortunately, there is also a high probability that violence will spread outward from there even faster.

However, if one does not try to drown the problem in money—which only makes it swell—then all these inefficient practices die off relatively quickly, especially if there is strong opposition to attempts to spread archaic orders to territories where more efficient ones are adopted. And this applies not only to Chechnya, but also to the wonderful, tolerant Europe, which also prefers to appease its internal bandits with handouts rather than presenting them with the fact that this is not that place, and things are not done this way here.