Comment by misja111
14 days ago
I think he is asking how well the devastating sanctions have been working so far. Which is a retorical question of course, because obviously they haven't harmed Russia all that much. Actually, they are hurting the EU as well because of the risen energy prices.
> haven't harmed Russia all that much
Ruble is below a single penny.
Interest rates are at 21%, highest since 2003.
Inflation is out of control.
Not really all that rosy.
In Feb 2022, just before the war started, the Rubble was worth $0.012. Now it's $0.0099. That's a 17% value drop in almost 3 years. It's true, the inflation is high, but nowhere near out of control.
Also, the discussion was about the effect of the sanctions. But the inflation is going up not because of that, but because of the huge amount of Russian government money that's flowing to the military and to the weapon industry.
> It's true, the inflation is high, but nowhere near out of control.
I'm not sure how useful that exchange-rate data is when the Russian government has made it harder to for their people to actually trade away rubles even at a price they like. [0]
I'd also expand the time window: The Jan-2022 ruble had already taken geopolitical damage, because of how Russia attacked Ukraine using insignia-less forces in 2014. In contrast, a 2012 ruble was more like $0.30.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/russia-capital...
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none of those things prevent russia from waging war.
All of it are merely suffering that the russian citizens suffer, but canwithstand. Russia does not import food, does not need to import fuel, and can import most consumer goods from china and bypass western sanctions.
Therefore, russia's gov't can allocate most of their internal resources for war production.
It's not so much how much they "can withstand" (under the absolute worst of circumstances), as opposed to how much they are wiling to withstand given that, on a certain level, most of them have to understand that the war is basically optional for Russia.