How Russia is weathering the storm of Western sanctions
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
