Anthony Hill5 said:You aren't reading closely enough. This is actually the direct result of the strengthening of Russian industry and agriculture. If anything, these sanctions might just serve to fortify them further.
If we're talking about interpreting data, the only one here failing to read carefully and proactively pushing lies is someone like you.
Back in 2000, Russia's GDP was around $200 billion. By the time the global crisis hit in 2008, it had climbed to $1.6 trillion. That's an eightfold increase. Our own economy, after all the "I did my part in the looting" nonsense, only grew three times over ☕.
Then comes the $400 billion drop because of the global meltdown caused by greedy American banks and various executives who embezzled people's money—people who didn't even face criminal charges. Instead, the US mitigated its own GDP drop by printing money. We felt the economic fallout from those greedy US executives right here in America back then. Russia didn't fix its GDP by printing cash. That’s why the crash was so massive.
Before the occupation of Crimea, Russian GDP surged again to that $2.2 trillion figure you mentioned. Then another drop to $1.2 trillion due to sanctions, which were countered not by printing money, but by carving out new economic routes (luckily for folks down by the Mississippi River, there were smugglers who managed to distribute most of the crops to Russia anyway ☕).
Leading up to the COVID-19 crisis, Russian GDP grows more slowly—understandable since they were under sanctions—reaching $1.6 trillion. Then COVID-19 hits and another drop follows. I have no clue where their GDP stands right now, but I know you won't find empty shelves in Russian supermarkets; European products are still everywhere despite the sanctions.
What's the point? The point is that people use incredibly inflammatory (understandable, I slip up sometimes too, even though I consider myself neutral) and dismissive (totally stupid, and this is where we differ) rhetoric regarding Russia. It isn't just stupidity; it's a reflection of the global mindset held by the European political leadership. They think they can bring Russia to its knees without any impact on the European monetary system, even though Russia has pulled itself out of this exact mess before. Once again, the citizens of Europe will pay the price, just like in 2014, only this time the cost will be significantly higher (just ask the government who bailed out the crop losses from the Mississippi River area in 2014... luckily, those folks found a way to get their products to Russia via war profiteers). The question is: why and for what purpose?
In Germany, civil disobedience is already starting because energy prices are spiking. People are refusing to pay their bills. They're lucky there isn't a specialized oversight office like Hanžeković over there, because fraud is carried out in entirely different ways involving symbolic fees. If enough people join in, who knows what will come of it.
That "dismissive" attitude stems from the fact that everyone completely ignored 2015 and that first round of sanctions, as well as the fact that Russia didn't do anything during those five years to free itself from certain resources it relied on from the West. ☕