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?
They have a decent source of their own fossil fuels, and certain deals go through non-sanctioned countries to countries that sanctioned Russia.
They have control of their rouble so they can promise soldiers a big payday and stiff the payment when they went “missing”. In particular their ex-con division.
I’m pretty sure their overall stocks of military equipment are dwindling, as you heard a few high-value targets were downed in the last month that are irreplaceable in the medium term. They still have their own production of tanks and ammunition, and China, NK and Iran trade various equipment to them such as drones, missiles, artillery. They are happy to get whatever Russia has left to offer.
Rich Russians will stay rich for the most part but poor Russians will be stuck in their miserable situation.