How is Russia not Financially Crippled?
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?
As far as I understand they had prepared a pretty big warchest, and gas is still worth a lot and is being sold to countries that didn't commit to sanctions (like China and India).
And stupidly kept 1/2 of it in Western financial institutions.
We're about to start selling Ukraine NATO weapon systems with what used to be Russian money.
Pootin also launders oil money offshore, so... all means are good for him.
And yet, he is a “former” KGB officer, a bandit from St. Petersburg who has been involved in dubious schemes since the 90s, so what else could you expect from him...
And if that actually happens, then very few countries will trust the US dollar as they reserve anymore and buy up gold as they are already doing.
Well, their warchest mostly consisted of assets in western countries. Most of these were immediately seized. That didn't completely destroy Russia, but it put them in a far worse situation.