‘A Well-Executed Closure’ of Russia’s Failing Coal Industry Could Lead to Growth in Many Sectors but Putin Regime Won’t Carry One Out, El Murid Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 19 – Russia’s coal industry is headed to collapse because of the loss of markets and possibly even explosions in the form of massive strikes like those which hit the Soviet Union in the last years of its existence, Anatoly Nesmiyan who blogs under the screen name El Murid says.
    Those dangers could be avoided and other parts of the economy could benefit if the Kremlin executed “a well-executed closure” of Russia’s failing coal industry, but tragically, there is no sign the Putin regime will do anything but continue to extract what profit it can from this sector until its death leads to the decline harms the broader economy  (t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/23626 reposted at charter97.org/ru/news/2025/2/18/630259/).
    And a decision to close the coal industry is among those which can be made only at the highest levels because it is about shifting resources from one sector to others, something the Putin regime has shown itself largely incapable of doing, preferring instead to exploit an industry until it dies and then walk away.  
    If instead of putting the country on a course to industrial actions and economic decline the regime did take action, the closure of the coal branch could create new marks for alternative energy solutions and the growth of training centers so that miners left without jobs could find new and more productive work.
    But the Putin regime is so obsessed with foreign conquests and not with the improvement of conditions at home that there is little or no possibility that it will even consider such a step let alone take it, El Murid continues. And the consequence of that failure is that the collapse of the coal sector will lead to the collapse of other sectors rather than their growth.
    For a useful discussion of just how bad the situation in Russia’s coal industry already is, see novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/02/21/na-ugle; and for the ways in which its approach death has sparked strikes and is likely to again spark more in a sector few now view as a threat, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/02/economic-protests-in-russia-likely-to.html.