Sanctions Failed: Vast Majority of Russians Still Back War Effort in Ukraine
The Trends Journal said since before the war that sanctions that were supposed to hurt Russia would only end up hurting Europeans
Newly released polling from internationally recognized Russian agencies showed that the majority of Russians continue to support the military campaign in Ukraine and “naive predictions that popular discontent triggered by sanctions and the wartime restrictions imposed on daily life would bring down Vladimir Putin’s regime have come to nothing.”
The Atlantic Council, citing data from the Levada Center and the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, found that about 75 percent of Russians “consistently support the invasion of Ukraine.”
The Economist also ran a headline, “Putin Seems to Be Winning…for Now.”
It read, in part:
Mr Putin is also winning because he has strengthened his position at home. He now tells Russians, absurdly, that they are locked in a struggle for survival against the West. Ordinary Russians may not like the war, but they have become used to it. The elite have tightened their grip on the economy and are making plenty of money. Mr Putin can afford to pay a lifetime’s wages to the families of those who fight and die.
There have been over 13,000 international sanctions imposed on Russia, its companies, and its citizens by July 2023. The Moscow Times noted that the number is more than what has been imposed on Iran, Cuba, and North Korea combined.
Despite the unprecedented effort, Russia’s GDP only fell by 2.1 percent in 2022, according to the International Monetary Fund. The paper said Moscow is expecting a 2 percent growth in 2023. To put that number into perspective, economic activity in Germany is expected to decline by 0.3 percent in 2023. 1
Putin has said that Russia managed to withstand strict Western sanctions by turning away from the West, focusing on Asia and Africa while embracing one of our Top Trends: Self-Sufficiency.
Putin’s comments came after more than 1,000 Western companies left the country and applied crushing sanctions on Russia’s energy exports. Russia managed to find new buyers. The Moscow Times, citing the independent media outlet Agentstvo, reported that oil and gas exports from Russia in 2022 hit $383.7 billion, 43 percent more than the year before. The amount was more than the country spent the whole year.
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Putin told a business conference in St. Petersburg last year that the West’s effort to smash the Russian economy failed, and backfired. He said European countries suffered from these sanctions.
“The economic blitzkrieg never had any chances of success,” he said. “The weaponry of sanctions is a double-edged sword . . . European countries dealt a serious blow to their own economy all on their own.”
TRENDPOST: On 8 March, The Trends Journal noted that “the general public is only getting a one-sided view of the sanctions and mandates imposed against Russia, which we forecast will do nothing to alter Moscow’s military posture, but will cause great hardship for the people of the world.”
President Joe Biden didn’t waste much time to admit that the sanctions plan didn’t work. Biden said sanctions “never deter” an invasion, but they can be effective when kept in place for a long period of time. He said the most important thing is that the West stays “unified” and for the world to continue to focus on what a “brute” Putin is.
Republicans seized on Biden’s sanction remarks and claimed that his administration made it clear a month ago that they were a centerpiece in the effort to stop Putin from invading.
Vice President Kamala Harris, for example, was asked in February about the sanctions and she said the White House believed that the economic threat would deter Putin.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was interviewed on CNN prior to the invasion and said the purpose of the sanctions “in the first instance is to try to deter Russia from going to war.”
Daleep Singh, the deputy national security adviser, also said sanctions are “not an end to themselves.”
“They serve a higher purpose,” he said. “And that purpose is to deter and prevent a large-scale invasion of Ukraine that could involve the seizure of major cities, including Kyiv.”
European Commission, Autumn 2023.