More than 30 times the US government has imposed sanctions on Russia. The sale of Russian resources has been targeted by the sanctions. All actions meant to choke off the Russian economy have been included.
The president of Russia called sanctions a form of economic warfare. Even though the Russian economy is growing more isolated, the Kremlin believes it can still compete with the West, which is not used to the kind of privatization that has been commonplace in both recent and distant Russian history.
The Russian economy has confounded expectations as the war enters its fifth month, and that calculation has proven to be sound. The value of the ruble rose to a seven-year high this month. Exports of energy to China and India are still strong. Russian fast-food restaurants have taken over abandoned Mcdonald's outlets.
Some experts think that the signs of economic strength may be masking anxiety about the state of the economy. They say that sanctions are having their intended effect, both in shaping public opinion and limiting the Russian leadership's ability to operate effectively.
The University of California, Los Angeles told Yahoo News that the Russian economy is not currently showing signs of crisis. There is still no collapse. Everyone is expecting a worse situation.
The argument was underscored by Russia's recent default. Western observers compared the development to the most calamitous moments in post-Soviet economics, despite the Russian finance minister dismissing it as a farce. During that time, Putin came to prominence. He made the economic chaos happen.
Detractors of the Putin regime, like Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned political dissident, believe that it is only a matter of time before the sanctions impoverish and immiserate the Russian populace.
They don't like war. After an organization he founded, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, released a poll that showed Russians are showing increasing anxiety about the economy, Navalny said, "They need to live better."
They know that things will only get worse because of the war.
American credit card companies fled when the United States and Western allies imposed restrictions on Russian imports. The hope was that isolating the Russian economy from the West would cause the Kremlin to rethink their stance on the war.
The Atlantic headline was "Russia's Looming Economic Collapse"
There has been no collapse of this nature. The Central Bank of Russia raised interest rates in order to keep a bank run from happening. The domestic payment system Mir has been used by Russians who can't use American Express or Visa.
Russia's economy can survive because of its energy exports. China and India made up for the loss of Russian energy. In May, China bought a record $7.47 billion of Russian crude oil, and Russia still earns $1 billion per day in energy exports.
The late Sen. John McCain made a joke about Russia being a gas station masquerading as a country.
"If you're hoping for a Big bang moment, that almost by default can't happen in Russia." We didn't shut down the gas station as much as an energy embargo would.
The embargo seems to be more than European countries are willing to accept. Russia, which uses strict currency controls to keep the ruble stable, is also looking for new customers in Africa and Asia.
There are a lot of countries in the world that are still willing to do business with Russia. They are moving towards a new state where their ties to the global economy are not as strong. They are not out of the woods.
The severing of European ties was not surprising to the Kremlin, which has been suspicious of the West since Boris Yeltsin bungled economic privatization schemes.
It is unlikely that the Kremlin was prepared for the severity of the new penalties.
Much attention has been paid to Russian oil, but the question of whether it can find new buyers, and the choke off of imports into the country, could prove even more consequential, given how badly Russia relies on Western technology.
The lack of essential parts is causing chaos in the Russian automotive industry and other sectors that rely on Western imports. Aeroflot said last month that it would have to use spare parts from older airplanes to make improvements to its fleet.
According to a Moscow-based financial analysis center, there has been no progress in Russia's attempts to find new sellers in East Asia.
Russians are caught in the middle of the economic war between the Kremlin and the West. Whether or not they will continue to support the war in Ukraine is a matter of great interest to the West.
Dissidents think that support for the invasion is overstated. It's hard to measure public opinion accurately in societies where people are afraid of being retaliated against.
Russian citizens who refer to the invasion of Ukraine as a war can be sentenced to 15 years in prison. A poll conducted by Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation showed that Russian support for the invasion was not as strong as it could have been.
Opinion polls show that the majority of Russians are in favor of Putin's actions against Ukraine, according to Navalny. People are intimidated, they refuse to talk to sociologists, or they don't tell the truth.
The Russian government was asked what it should do if it found more money. The vast majority of Russians want to increase funds for education, health care, and government pensions, according to a survey.
Putin's propagandists call what is happening World War III in which Russia is opposed by the entire world. Is Russian buying this rhetoric? Navalny said that it was obvious not.
By the end of May the percentage of people who said that sanctions had affected them personally had risen to 42%.
More than 75% of respondents knew someone who had lost a job in the previous three months, and almost half of them had no savings at all. A majority of people said they weren't planning any major purchases.
If there is an embargo or a price cap, this will accelerate. A ceiling on how much Russia can charge for oil would put significant new constraints on Russia's economy, which has little room for maneuver.
The level of GDP will be 30% below where it was a year ago by the end of the year, according to the predictions of the author. It would be an economic collapse for a nation that used to be considered a power.
At the height of its power, the Soviet Union treated its own citizens with disdain. In a nation where the weather is a malign force, and where history runs through endless plains of hardship, the Russians don't like the way the Western world handles prices and shortages.
The Russians have a lot of thick skin. Let's talk about resilience. They are almostborn to suffer.
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