Russia is the most sanctioned country in history – meaning damaged Russian space shuttle Progress will remain in space for now

According to British estimates, about 200,000 Russian soldiers were killed, wounded or captured. But the elite can still shop for underwear from Rolls-Royces or Agent Provocateur in Moscow.

The economy is in only a mild recession, in fact it has its largest trade surplus of all time. In the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin can easily tease that victory will only take a little longer.

Russia is the country with the most sanctions in history. Has this economic war yielded nothing or too little, measured in costs? Would the West have left it alone? Time for a balance.

Why are statistics kept secret?

The assessment of sanctions is itself a theater of this war. Putin has restricted access or stopped publishing statistics that could paint an ugly picture.

The Russian people must not know what to pay for their war, their self-portrait as the new Tsar Peter the Great. The West, on the other hand, should believe that the sanctions only harm themselves and that it is in vain to try to assist Ukraine anyway.

Why is a balance sheet difficult?

There is now a whole barrage of sanctions. The US has issued about 3,000 so far. The European Union has imposed sanctions on more than 1300 people and 171 organisations. These are the toughest sanctions the EU has ever introduced.

Every few days the list gets longer. The West Sanctions. bypassing Russia. The West approves the bypass. Russia is circumventing the sanction of circumventing the sanction. And so on. Studies are written and by the time they are published they are out of date.

What are sanctions about?

Armies don’t just fight in wars. There are countries, economies, military industries and logistics networks that oppose each other, explains military historian Philipps O’Brien. It’s a battle over who brings more resources to the frontline: more soldiers, weapons, ammunition.

And the opponents prevent each other from bringing these resources forward at all, wherever and however they can. There are many means to achieve this, Himar’s precision missile launchers are one example, sanctions are another.

Using Himar’s precision missile launchers, Ukraine destroys Russian depots full of weapons before they can kill at the front. The sanctions, in turn, are designed to dry up sources of revenue so that Russia cannot even buy these weapons for its depots.

Even if Russia does receive money, it is still not allowed to buy weapons with it – the sellers are threatened with sanctions. Or resistance to the war should arise in Putin’s entourage, with sanctioned oligarchs losing their status symbols: jets, yachts, football clubs.

Should the sanctions continue?

Wars are a battle for resources, and sanctions are an important tool. So in the end, success or failure will turn out just like this: if Ukraine wins, they were worth it. If they lose, it wasn’t them.

Bean counters naturally want to know what the exact percentage was. But they will hardly find out – wars are too confused and complicated for that. There is nothing for it but to try out the sanctions.

Otherwise, it is Western money that Russia is using to deport one and a half million Ukrainians, kidnap children or buy the next missiles that will destroy Ukrainian apartment buildings.

Why is Ukraine so important?

Putin dreams of a Eurasia, with a dominant Russia and a destroyed European Union, American historian Timothy Snyder told the “FAZ”. For this he needs Ukraine, its conquest and exploitation. He is not the first to build an empire on Ukraine.

Stalin pursued a policy of “internal colonization” aimed at Soviet Ukraine. He introduces collective ownership and turns the peasants into state officials. It fails, but Stalin continues to confiscate grain. More than 3 million people are hungry.

Hitler wants to colonize Ukraine, which is his main goal in World War II. In his empire, it should be Ukrainian agriculture that supports German industry. “Millions of Ukrainians should be starved or enslaved.”

Is Russia running out of computer chips?

The West has little choice but to keep trying and counter the next circumvention with a new sanction. Several studies recently drew an interim conclusion about this interplay.

When it came to oil, the West seemed to be failing. Russia posted the largest trade surplus in its history. But there has been an upper limit on the price since December and further sanctions will come into effect from February. This could almost halve sales.

According to the Kyiv School of Economics, this drop will help push Russia into a severe recession this year. Last year economic production fell by only 3 percent, this year there will be a minus of 6 percent.

When it comes to technology, the West has been successful at times. Although Russia lived on oil, it no longer received computer chips. It had to extract these from washing machines and install them in weapon systems. The West was happy, but Russia reacted.

Russia now imports more chips than before the war, especially from China, according to a study by the Free Russia Foundation. It gets drones from Iran. It’s the West’s turn again. The EU imposes new sanctions on Iran. The US is attacking the helpers of Russian oligarchs. And both are considering sanctions against China.

How will it end?

The battle is in full swing, with an open outcome. However, lately there is a good sign. Putin yelled at his armaments minister on TV with “Stop fooling around”. The British Ministry of Defence so to speak: Russia’s military industrial production is too low – and the leadership knows this.