The ruble crashes, the stock market closes and Russia’s economy staggers under sanctions.
… the sanctions imposed on Russia by the West over the weekend were shaking the foundations of Russia’s economy. The decisions by the United States, Britain and the European Union restricting the Russian Central Bank’s access to much of its $643 billion in foreign currency reserves have undone much of the Kremlin’s careful efforts to soften the impact of potential sanctions.
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“So, has Russia become Venezuela or is it still Iran?” the morning-show host on the liberal-leaning Echo of Moscow radio station asked an economist on Monday.
“We’ll go through the Iran phase, but what happens after that is hard to say.”
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…some analysts fear that Russia’s economic instability could lead Mr. Putin to escalate his conflict with the West using new military threats or other means, such as cyberattacks.
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But there was also extreme uncertainty inside Russia as the value of people’s savings evaporated and the interconnections with the Western world that Russians had come to take for granted in the last three decades rapidly broke away. …
“Times change, much has happened, but one thing has not changed,” a reporter on the state-run news channel Rossiya 24 said on Sunday. “When a united Europe tried to destroy Russia, this always ended up bringing about the opposite result.”
