When the war started it was seizure-this and sanction-that. I’ve read that $350B in Russian assets were seized and held, while major companies exited the Russian market, the ruble crashed, and inflation rocketed.
Meanwhile the cost of the Russian war must be astronomical to maintain, imports/exports have halted with Europe, there’s no financial aid to Russia (that I’m aware of) and multi-billion dollar resource supplies were cancelled.
All this, and Russia seems to still be having a good old time. Russians are on holidays en mass, the country is buying up arms and fossil fuels like its church Sunday, and their war machine still powers away and is prepared to keep fighting for a decade if it has to.
How? How does a country take that much of a financial beating and still be thriving? Where is the point of being broke and not being able to fund a war anymore?
I can only say from the point of view of sanctions why.
Yes, many normal companies have left RuSSia (unlike, for example, Nestle, Kellogg’s, Mondelez, German Storck, Perfetti Van Melle, Ferrero, P&G and Colgate, which make their products in China, lol), yes, sanctions will put more and more pressure on the RuSSian “economy” over time…
BUT, the sanctions, in my opinion, are “soft” compared to those that the United States, Europe and their partners have imposed on North Korea, Syria and Iran.
I am sure that no one (if we talk about consumer goods at least) from European or American companies can EVEN trade in such third world countries as Iran (with their terrorist government), Syria or North Korea (the last two are also terrorist states). That is, I think, even Nestle, which is hated throughout Reddit, cannot legally trade there, but if you look, every “dirty” and unethical transnational corporation trades with/sells their goods in RuSSia.