Death Spiral of Russia’s Coal Industry Brought Forward a Decade by Kremlin Miscalculations and Putin’s War in Ukraine, Economist Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 24 – The role that strikes by coal miners played in the collapse of the Soviet Union is one of the most important but largely unrecognized factors in the collapse of that country (newleftreview.org/issues/i181/articles/theodore-friedgut-lewis-siegelbaum-perestroika-from-below-the-soviet-miners-strike-and-its-aftermath.pdf ).

    Consequently, the fate of Russian coal mines has long played a much larger part of the thinking of post-Soviet Russian leaders than many in the West are inclined to think. But now a Russian economist is warning that the death spiral of that industry is not only close but has been brought forward by perhaps a decade by Kremlin miscalculations and Putin’s war in Ukraine.

    Tatyana Lanushina, an independent expert on energy issues, draws that conclusion on the basis of a close analysis of what has been happening to Russia’s coal industry over the last several decades and what has taken place in particular during the last three years (theins.ru/ekonomika/280751).
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    She says that more than half of all Russian coal companies were unprofitable last year, the result of Moscow’s failure to recognize changes in the world’s energy industry, a failure exacerbated by the Kremlin’s push to get funds from existing sources to finance its war in Ukraine.

    Had the Kremlin begun to shift away from goal to renewable energy, she suggests, it would be in a far better position, an argument others have made as well (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/02/a-well-executed-closure-of-russias.html). But because it failed to do that, the branch faces collapse and massive strikes are possible.

    Such strikes, her analysis suggests, could shake the government and the country in ways equally profound to those which helped to undermine the Soviet government and led to the disintegration of the USSR in 1991.