Four years after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian economy is showing clear signs of structural exhaustion. The contours of a genuine economic endgame are coming into view for Russia. This is the finding of a new Kiel Report published by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics.
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Ok, let’s start from the very very beginning.
“are draining” is in the present progressive. It denotes an action in progress, not a completed action. Meaning the sanctions were in the process of draining the economy. Von der Leyen’s claim was not that the draining had completed but that it was in progress.
next is your complete lack of understanding of how sanctions work.
The very first sanctions package was immediately called “first sanctions package” at the time
The understanding, from the very first sanctions package, was that this would be a continuous process, with sanctions package after sanctions package, not a one and done deal that then needs to haphazardly be amended as you seem to think.
Sanctions need to be amended as the economic reality shifts and loopholes need to be plugged as the target of sanctions finds ways to evade them.
The 17 packages after the third were always going to happen because that is fundamentally how sanctions work.
And let’s look at numbers. European sanctions have reduced Russian fossil fuel export revenues by about $300-500 million per day. Not sure how you would describe this, other than “draining the economy”. And this does not include any other sanctions affecting other parts of the economy.
In your favourite metric, ballistic missiles, that is worth about 750-1000 Iskanders per day given the $400-500k unit production cost. Now of course money isn’t the biggest limiting factor in Russia’s ability to manufacture those, it’s largely parts availability that leads to big fluctuations in production quantities. Parts availabilities, which, surprise, are limited due to sanctions.
Strawman. “draining the economy” is not about making things a little more shitty for ordinary Russians. It’s about reducing Russia’s ability to finance the war, which takes time considering Russia had a $600 billion war chest, half of which is frozen in mostly European banks, thanks to the sanctions, and the other half is now, thanks to the sanctions, that were draining the economy, mostly drained. And it is about reducing Russia’s ability to source industrial machines and components to reduce their ability to manufacture weapons, like your favourite one, the ballistic missile. Where production quantities, as mentioned above, are fluctuating due to sanctions.
As I have stated before, it was constantly repeated all the way back in 2022 that sanctions would not defeat Russia on their own, and certainly not immediately, and would take years. The point was, from the very beginning, to make it increasingly difficult for Russia to finance the war and to produce weapons, so Ukraine could gain the upper hand, which is now manifesting on the battlefield, after years, as predicted.
People like you were told in at the very start in 2022 that the real world doesn’t work like TikTok instant gratification, and here you are more than 4 years later still not having gotten the point.
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1 hole in a bucket drains the bucket 3 drain it faster, so why do you need 17 more? because holes can be plugged and 20 drain it faster than 3. Are you really this fucking stupid?
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Then where did their $300 billion war chest drain to dumbass? Already addressed in previous comments. But you’re too illiterate to read.
You just don’t fucking know what “drain” means.
You assume drain must mean drain completely to 0 so Russia completely starves.
The first package was already draining, the next were draining more. Already explained to you by others at the very beginning of the thread, and by me multiple times. That’s how sanctions work.
You certainly think so, yes, that is very obvious. That is your biggest problem really.
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Ok buddy, you have got the spirit, but you really need to tackle topics in your wheelhouse.
The percentage of GDP being above 0% is meaningless. >0% of what?
If the GDP growth rate is >0 then the economy is growing. That would be the amount of additional GDP in relation to existing GDP over a given timeframe or (ΔGDP/GDP)/Δt, usually over one year (Δt = 1 annum) or annualized for ease of comparison. Usually expressed as (ΔGDP/GDP)*100% where the Δt is implied.
here is a more in depth explatation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_growth
Once you’ve digested that, look at Stimulus and Quantitative Easing
That will explain where the $300 billion of the NWF that weren’t frozen disappeared to. And why the Russian banks now experience such a dire liquidity crisis.
And once you understand all of that you can put 2 and 2 together, and understand WHY the Russian economy had such low growth rates despite such a gargantuan stimulus effort.
There is a massive hole in the economy, through which an enormous amount of money has been draining, which is the aforementioned sanctions. And Russia had to pump almost the entirety of their remaining NWF into the economy and also do an enormous amount of QE to keep the economy at a slightly elevated growth rate. Although since late last year that’s no longer working and the economy has been in a recession.
And we’ve come full circle. (Or rather we will have come full circle once you’ve done your required reading to understand the subject matter)
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