

Blair Burgess
6K posts
@Desibesi
just trying to make a go of it in the horse business. That's me 100% of the time lately.




Russia did not fire a single missile in this war. It is winning anyway. Every dollar Brent rises above $60, Russia earns money it was not supposed to have. The sanctions architecture was built around a world where Gulf oil kept flowing and global prices stayed suppressed. That world ended on February 28. Brent is now at $84. Russian Urals crude trades at a discount to Brent, typically $15 to $20 below. That still puts Russian export revenue at levels that were unthinkable two weeks ago when the EIA was forecasting a $60 average for 2026. Reuters analysts say Russia needs Urals to rise 50% to fully balance its budget. That threshold is now within reach for the first time since the sanctions regime was constructed. Here is the second layer nobody is discussing. China and India were buying Russian crude at steep discounts because they had options. Gulf producers were competitive. Qatari LNG was flowing. The buyers had leverage. Qatar just declared Force Majeure. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. China ordered its refiners to stop exporting diesel to protect domestic supplies. The options are gone. Russian crude is no longer the discounted alternative. It is the only alternative for the world’s two largest import markets, and Moscow now has the pricing power to prove it. Putin abandoned Iran when it mattered. Russia refused to intervene. Iran fought alone and is losing. And Russia is collecting the revenue from that outcome every single hour the Gulf stays closed. There is a word for profiting from an ally’s destruction without participating in the fight. The market has not priced what happens to the Ukraine war if Russia enters 2026 with an unexpected energy windfall funding a military that was supposed to be running out of money. That is the hidden second front of this conflict. And it is playing out in Moscow’s finance ministry right now. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…


We just made a $200,000,000 AI movie in just one day. Yes, this is 100% AI.



Andrea Bocelli singing Nessun Dorma in a black turtleneck at San Siro. It doesn't really get more Italian than that.