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?
In addition to stockpiling, do not underestimate the oil thing. In another few years Germany would have become independent on needing oil from them, hence their time to strike was NOW (well, you know, back then I mean).
As it was, Russia extorted people like old grandma and grandpas in northern Germany when they hiked the prices so high they consigned them to just die in the dead of winter unless they paid their life savings or the German government stepped in, handing the cash to Russia in order to keep those old folks alive.
They knew what they were doing - they are greedy and murderous but not all THAT dumb. Plus Russia takes from neighboring states too, especially their citizenry to send to the front lines - every little bit helps!? It also “helps” that they don’t mind consigning their own citizens to die if it would save enough money for the oligarchs to justify the loss of those workers - they are not like how we
areused to be. But don’t worry, dead or not, I’m sure that their “votes” will still be counted, when it comes time to reelect Putin!