The Russian economy is currently experiencing unprecedented pressure from a group of countries led by the United States, with more than 10,000 sanctions imposed on the country, its citizens, and companies.
Never before has such a volume of penalties been imposed on any one country. Even Iran, which has been the West’s geopolitical punching bag for many years now, is “only” subject to about 3,600.
Sanctions pressure on Russia has been growing since 2014, when key sectors of the economy – energy, the military-industrial complex, and the financial sector – were targeted. Since then, the country’s citizens have learned to distinguish between the dire predictions associated with sanctions and the tangible results of their implementation. While, in 2015, about 60% of Russians didn’t believe sanctions had any impact on their lives, by 2020, almost 90% said they felt no effects. In short, people adjusted and became accustomed to the threats. Unemployment didn’t grow and even sat at historically low levels. Low inflation made many banking products such as consumer loans and mortgages affordable, helping to fuel a real estate boom in some parts of the country.
According to the Russian authorities, while the country lost about $50 billion as a result of the sanctions, it was able to compensate for this. “I don’t care about them, about these sanctions,” President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with Russian media in March of 2020. This sentiment was shared by the Russian people. Western restrictions did not affect either the lives of the country’s citizens or the approval ratings of its leaders. On the contrary, confidence in the country’s president strengthened. Western political scientists have observed that the introduction of sanctions against Russia has only led to the well-studied ‘rally round the flag’ effect, where external pressure only encourages the resolve of a country’s citizens to rally around their figurehead.