Quote:
Originally Posted by Itse
That's all Russian propaganda. No one outside Russia knows the real numbers, and they are not likely to give any real numbers to outsiders.
(Russia being Russia, it's questionable if anyone inside Russia knows the real numbers.)
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Those are numbers cited by the Economist, the Carnegie Endowment, and the Washington Post - hardly organizations that have a track record of peddling pro-Russian propaganda.
Yes, the internal economy of Russia is murky, and it’s hard to get credible information. But if we’re to assume none of the economic data about Russia is credible, then we have no way of knowing if sanctions are hurting them at all. And where does that leave us?
What we do have is data showing that Russian trade with China, India, Turkey, Egypt, the Central Asian Republics, and the Gulf States is booming. This isn’t the 90s anymore, and the West doesn’t have a stranglehold on global trade. Most of the developing world doesn’t consider the invasion of Ukraine to be any of their business, and they’ll happily circumvent sanctions against Russia if it’s good business for them.