After war broke out in Ukraine a year ago, amidst a slew of shop closures, sanctioned products and predictions about the ruble falling to rock bottom, there was a wave of panic buying in Russia. Many expected supply chains to fully collapse by the end of 2022 as internal stocks of this and that ran out.
Meanwhile pro-war Russians, or at least economic optimists, repeated the mantra that the world needed Russian oil and gas, and that Western companies could barely do without the vast Russian marketplace to sell their products in. Everything, they said, would return to normal. As of February 2023, we’re caught somewhere halfway between these two extremes.
Whatever sanctions the West is imposing, it would seem Russia is proving masterly in dodging them
As Andrey Nechayev, the former Russian Minister of Economic Development from 1992 to 1993, posted on Telegram recently, the Russian budget may well be cracking at the seams.
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