Topic: How Russia is surviving NATO-backed sanctions - page 2. (Read 344 times)

It's called BRICS. You can ask the Russians how the measurement works. Brazil is the first letter of BRICS, and Russia is the second letter. Figure it out.


Ooh Lula La! Brazil Wants To Dedollarize Too

---

https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/ooh-lula-la-brazil-wants-dedollarize-too
Friday saw US Treasury yields 10-12bps higher and the curve flatter after headline retail sales were lower but strong core, Michigan year-ahead inflation expectations leaped from 3.6% to 4.6%, the Atlanta Fed wage tracker showed steady *positive* real wage growth for job switchers and stayers, and the heads of JP Morgan and Blackrock both said they don't see inflation falling back rapidly, and that US rates will stay higher for longer. The Financial Times ('Why economists are learning to speak human') also mentioned Polanyi's view that markets sit on politics and society --e.g., 2016's 'Thin Ice' said the global neoliberal architecture would crack once the US saw China as a hegemonic rival; or the surge in US investment being seen under the IRA, as noted in the press today-- stressing this will continue; as will related arguments over redistribution; as will financial repression that keeps inflation higher than bond yields to reduce debts.

On Sunday, Yellen said credit tightening is de facto Fed rate hikes --not her job-- and that "There is a risk when we use financial sanctions that are linked to the role of the dollar that over time it could undermine the hegemony of the dollar," even if this is not "easy" to do. That kind of talk raises structural inflation risks, as do a flurry of related geopolitical developments:

US regulators are focusing on hedge funds and shadow banking, following on from crypto.

Germany shut its final three nuclear power plants despite energy tail risks ahead.

A US intelligence leak says China secretly agreed to send Russia lethal aid, as a defence minister visit looms, and the Kyiv Independent says Chinese components are in Russian supplies. China would gain swift air superiority over Taiwan, according to the same source.
...

---

At least now you understand why people in Russia don't take to the streets to overthrow Putin. Very little has changed in their daily lives since the start of the special operation in Ukraine.

I do not think that Russia has any serious problems with the production of modern types of weapons. I don’t know where you got this story about the T-55 from, but this is hardly a mass case, perhaps a single episode, or even a fabrication of Ukrainian propaganda. The Nizhny Tagil UralVagonZavod alone produces several thousand armored vehicles a year, including hundreds of T72B3 and T90M main battle tanks. This is several times more than the entire united West can transfer to Ukraine without compromising its own combat readiness.

There is no problem selling coffee to the RF citizens, nor even providing consulting. That is absolutely fine. Now, try to find the technology you need to produce modern means of fighting and modern means of production and you will know why there are T-55s in the frontlines. What is next? T-34s?

The RF economy is unlikely to collapse big time like a super-nova style explosion. But the erosion is there, as it happened with the USSR: the young and prepared leave, the citizens have to be forced into conscription, growth is stagnant for a BRIC country...

But what is more, things are unlikely to go back to where they were. Putin's war of aggression has permanently damaged RF stance in the world.

Here is an interesting article in the Washington Post about this. Its essence is that more than 90% of Western sanctions against Russia are a fiction. It seems that few Western companies want to lose the Russian market, even declaring the opposite in words. Maybe that's why the effectiveness of sanctions is so low?

"The first casualty of War is Truth" - Its possible that I don't have full knowledge because both sides of the conflict are trying to manipulate the data to their advantage. No doubt about that.



Name a measuring method which proves that "Russia is doing just fine".

You make one major mistake in your thinking. Your view is from a US/Nato point rather than from the Russian point of view.

Russia would have liked to have traded with the US and Nato. But the sanctions only made her move on to solidifying BRICS and adding new applicants for it, and operation her economy in ways she wasn't ready for, then. Besides, many US and Nato companies are trading with Russia under pseudonyms. Russia is doing just fine, but her success can't be measured by US/Nato methods of measuring.

Although most of the sanctions imposed against Russia are of an economic nature, it is wrong to say that they are primarily directed against the Russian economy and have the goal of destroying it. The sanctions were introduced in stages after Russia's full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, and they aim at Russia's inability to continue the war. Considering that Russia is heavily dependent on the technologies of the United States and the West, first of all, the possibility of manufacturing high-precision weapons was blocked, and here sanctions have achieved significant success.

  During the year of the war under sanctions, Russia has only about 15 percent of precision-guided missiles left, and the possibilities for their production are very limited. Russia no longer has the ability to produce aircraft, helicopters and armored vehicles, especially with the latest modifications.

Russia has already brought almost all of its weapons reserves into battle in Ukraine, even the old T-55 tanks, which were produced in the 50-70s of the last century, have been reactivated. Therefore, they are going to be used as stationary artillery points, dug up to the very tower into the ground. The possibility of removing World War II T-34 tanks from pedestals throughout Russia and making them a separate unit is being discussed quite seriously.
Putin also acknowledged the significant impact of economic sanctions recently at a government meeting. Therefore, sanctions inevitably work.

Through strict but smart policies and unfortunately a fairly strong international influence despite being a terrorist state, Russia has indeed survived the sanctions somewhat better than many expected. But others pointed out facts that go against the op's portrayal of events, and I agree with Fortify that the op looks like a person who is spreading Russian propaganda here on the forum.
That being said, harsher policies against Russia are clearly needed to achieve the goal of sanctions, which was and remains the following: ensure that Russia becomes too weak economically to continue its war against Ukraine. Too much business is going as usual, too many areas are unaffected by sanctions so far.

You look like a transparent Kremlin sheep posting propaganda and then disappearing back into the hell you came from. Nobody with a brain expected Russia to vanish or implode after sanctions. It has had a life altering impact on the average Russian citizen however. No more tourists with easy visits to their European neighbors, who have some of the best culture and sights in the world. No more fancy brands that have the best quality and highest tech. No more selling your oil and gas at full prices, just taking whatever scraps China and India will throw at you - getting pennies on the dollar. This is also hiding the fact that we knew Russia had economic reserves, they were built up in anticipation of their invasion and they gave Russia the ability to burn money for a year or two. After that, as we see with the plummeting Ruble, they ran out of time. It's going to get a lot worse now they're a year in and have burned through their safety net.

I'm with you on this, Russia is feeling the heat, no doubt. But the fact that the country is big and was prospering will not make it have much effect on them soon, but it should be in years. Russia will continue to have their countermeasures, but it should not dare to do more than what they have done in Ukraine now. The country is enjoying the benefits of not being the war location, yet the economic sanction on them will last long and the effect will continue to bite slowly.

First of all, no one seriously expected that country size of Russia collapse after one year of sanctions, like no one expected (expect few haters) that Europeans will freeze to death last winter. I mean, just take a look at North Korea, Cuba and other similar countries, they are under sanctions for decades and yet still somehow their political system survives. Sure they are not in war like Russia is which is way more demanding, but still.

To put it simply, Russia survived and can survive many years of such sanctions because majorify of their people are used to be treated bad and to have generally low quality of life so for them its just business as usual. These sanctions can even help their regime to sell the bullshit how that is another proof that everyone is against them and they have to stick together etc.

you make one mistake in your reasoning that leads to completely wrong conclusions. You forget that such a large organism as a country with over 100 million citizens, with the largest area, based on strategically important raw materials, does not collapse in one day. These are the months/years during which little can be seen until the subcritical stage is reached, which is the beginning of rapid changes. So the fact that russia hasn't collapsed in 1 year is not proof that russia's economic isolation doesn't work.

What we already see:
1- the Russian currency has lost 30% against the dollar in the last 100 days
2- in the first three months of 2023, russia exceeded the budget deficit planned for the whole year
3- demographic problems caused by young people fleeing the country
4- rising tensions in some regions of Russia, which may result in a breakaway from Russia.

Why 2022 wasn't so bad for russians? Because of the inflationary panic and unrest related to the war that inflated the prices of raw materials in the short term, which increased the revenues to the budget. The temporary pump is over, raw materials are back down to the levels prior to the war, and the beginning of 2023 looks like the beginning of a disaster.

It didn’t take long after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 for NATO countries to throw sanctions down on Putin's economy, all designed to destroy Russia and it's citizens like Venezuela, from transacting on the global market. The sanctions were the broadest and harshest, coming almost weekly, and severing Russia's link with SWIFT, sometime akin to Dvaid Trezequet goal against Italy in EURO 2000, a golden goal.How could a country so dependent on selling fuel overseas ever recover from that?
“What we’ve done to Russia over the last weeks has blown the top off sanctions,” Julia Friedlander, director of the Economic Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, told a magazine last March. A year later, Russian troops are still carrying out their SMO.
 It has been proven that sanctions are almost never effective at forcing countries to change their behavior. However, the fact that the Russian economy has fared far better than anticipated in the face of wartime sanctions is more surprising. In 2022, its economy shrank 2.1% — substantially less than the 10-15% some forecasters made when sanctions first hit last March
Why did the experts get it wrong? Or, in other words: How did Russia’s economy prove resilient in the face of such heavy sanctions?
According to a senior economist,  Moscow has been "sanctions-proofing its economy" since 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimea and faced its first round of sanctions. This involved shedding of external debts by companies and banks, subsequently diminishing their dependence on Western funding. Russian consumers experienced a severe pinch as a result of being suddenly deprived of imports during the initial weeks of sanctions. However, Russia quickly shifted its focus and began importing consumer goods primarily from or through China, Kazakhstan, and Turkey.












https://qz.com/how-russian-economy-survived-a-year-of-sanctions-1850144335