larry johnson insists the russophobes are barking up the wrong tree;

There are many in the West, especially here in America, that are desperately grasping at straws and strenuously insisting that Russia is in big trouble economically. Here is a typical example from a gentleman who has been consistently wrong in his previous dire predictions:

As of the end of August it is estimated that 17% of Russian oil refining capacity has been destroyed. Ukraine seems to have found a key vulnerability and is systematically able to destroy refineries.  If they are able to continue this as they have successfully done in August they will not only cause logistics issues for the Russian army but over time will seriously harm the economy which is already in trouble. I continue to contend in the end it will be economic decline and weakness due to refinery destruction and shutting off of oil sales that eventually brings Putin to the table for serious negotiation. It is a question of can Ukraine hold out until winter and stop the Russian offensive in the fall to give time to do much further damage to the oil sales and oil refineries enough to further harm the economy and to create fuel shortages for the army. 

The man is simply regurgitating what he is reading in the Western press. I decided to run some AI queries to see if that bias is showing up there. I used Grok and Perplexity AI.

Let’s start with Grok. I asked: How much has the price of petrol changed from July to August 2025 in Moscow and St. Petersburg? Here is Grok’s initial response:............more...........