All right, Alexander, we are here with Rod McKenzie, joining us on the Duran for the first time.

Rod, how are you doing?

Welcome to the Duran and where can people follow your work?

Well, you can find me at SCO Bricks Insight.

In fact, I published quite a lot of stuff on your website, the durand.com.

But you can find me on YouTube or SEO bricksinsight.com.

All right.

And I will have those links as a pinned comment, as well as in the description box down below.

So you can follow Rod's work and his analysis.

And Rod, Alexander, we are going to talk about everything going on in the

Russian economy, and there is lots going on. So let's just jump right into it, Alexander. Let's do so. Let's absolutely do so. Now, as many will probably know, this is a subject that I've always been quite very interested in and have discussed on numerous occasions. But of course,

I discussed it from a discreet. that I've always been quite very interested in and have discussed on numerous occasions.

But of course, I discussed it from a distance. I am in Britain.

Obviously, I take an interest and I follow the statistics and the changes that take place there,

but there is no substitute in talking about the economy of a country for being there on the ground.

And Rod McKenzie is there on the ground.

And so he's able to discuss with us what the current state of Russia is.

And of course, he's been in Russia for a long, long time.

He was there at the time, I think, when the Soviet Union

itself collapsed and he's seen the entire sequence of changes that have taken place

since then. So firstly, Rod, greetings to you. Good to see you. It's a long time since we've

been in touch. Tell us a little bit about your impressions of the state of the

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