Russia’s mutiny underscores oil’s fragility

Last Friday morning, 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, the headlines were instead

debating a potential coup

in the world’s second-largest exporter of crude oil (and largest holder of nuclear weapons). A

further turn around the sun later,

we were all left wondering what, if anything really, had happened.