Oil prices were unmoved. In terms of barrels flowing and who runs Russia, nothing had changed. And the oil market is used to drama, even drama of what might be called Wagnerian proportions. After all, an actual war, in Ukraine, and subsequent severing of energy links had sent oil back into triple digits in 2022 for the first time in eight years. Less than 18 months later, the price is below where it stood on the eve of the invasion.
Recently, one of the more diverting headlines about Russia concerned one of its diplomats apparently squatting on a plot of land in Canberra, defying the Australian government in a dispute over a new embassy. Nonplussed, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese dismissed this minion of Moscow as “some bloke standing on a blade of grass”. Ah, Russia.
Within 24 hours, headlines were instead debating a potential coup in the world’s second-largest exporter of crude oil (and largest holder of nuclear weapons). A day later, we were all left wondering what, if anything really, had happened.
