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They have a lot of natural resources, most of the EU is reliant on their natural gas, especially during the winter. If you live in certain parts of the world your choice is literally buy Russian gas or freeze to death.

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Because even if they actually had an income of zero, they had saved up enough money over the years to be able to survive off it for some time. Commonly referred to as a “war chest”. They don’t actually have an income of zero though, their income is actually quite significant since they still have major trading partners like Iran, India and China to sell their fossil fuels and other resources to. They don’t buy fossil fuels, incidentally, they sell them. Like Saudi Arabia.

Also, you can buy things with more than just money. People figure that Kim Jong Un probably isn’t trading his stuff to them for money, but instead is getting technological assistance from them. Just one of their modern fighter-bomber tech, for instance, would be immeasurably valuable to N Korea, where their own tech has lagged behind a good bit over the years.

Lastly, people in the west have been doing sanctions evasion. I recall some German financial/tech company has its CEO now wanted by Interpol for being a Russian agent. So, when your own people are playing fast and loose with the law, that’s going to make things like sanctions more difficult.

In addition to stockpiling, do not underestimate the oil thing. In another few years Germany would have become independent on needing oil from them, hence their time to strike was NOW (well, you know, back then I mean).

As it was, Russia extorted people like old grandma and grandpas in northern Germany when they hiked the prices so high they consigned them to just die in the dead of winter unless they paid their life savings or the German government stepped in, handing the cash to Russia in order to keep those old folks alive.

They knew what they were doing - they are greedy and murderous but not all THAT dumb. Plus Russia takes from neighboring states too, especially their citizenry to send to the front lines - every little bit helps!? It also “helps” that they don’t mind consigning their own citizens to die if it would save enough money for the oligarchs to justify the loss of those workers - they are not like how we are used to be. But don’t worry, dead or not, I’m sure that their “votes” will still be counted, when it comes time to reelect Putin!

There are a lot of actions they can take to prop themselves up in the short term.

Nothing they can do about their dying demographics though.

I mean I’m no expert but the US has only had 17 years of peacetime in its 247 ish years of existence and it’s still going. War can often be profitable though I couldn’t tell you if that’s the case here.

I do know, however, that Russia is a huge oil and gas provider and despite the hand wringing that politicians do over human rights they almost always ignore them when it comes to fossil fuels.

I wonder how much of it was just good old propaganda. I know it’s a lot, just curious to what extent. What proportion of Russia’s GDP the sanction represented. Also eVen Europe kept buying fuel from Russia. i m sure they still do to some extent. War is a funny thing you would think it’s all pure hatred , but the older I get more I see it as just kinetic négociation between the owners. With a bit of marketing sprinkled on it. To quote Lord Faarquad " Some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I am willing to make"

India has used it as an opportunity to get a lot of cheap oil from them

They’re a petro state. Attempts to keep them from profiting from oil have completely failed, as Russia can sell it to their friendly countries

An economics student from Russia here, here’s my perspective.

First, is that a country’s economy is a lot less volatile than we expected. There is also another factor that played into it. During covid, Russian companies amassed a sizable amount of inventory that was already inflated compared to European companies due to how volatile our economy is. This has given them enough time to reroute supply chains once sanctions hit.

Basically, the so-called “grey import” plays a major role in assuring the stability of our economy. Companies either route their import/export through neighboring countries or through affiliated companies.

Second is the competency of our central bank. After most of the major banks were cut off from SWIFT (used for international transactions), they raised the key rate, limited the amount of money you can cash out at one time, and did some other stuff. Higher key rate = higher deposit interest rate, but at the same time, credit became more expensive. All of this was needed for preventing banks from defaulting. Once panic died down, the changes were reverted. Now, they’re dealing with inflation.

Lastly, the majority of our budget comes from oil and gas. Since Europe didn’t want to buy it, Russia started selling it to Asia at discounted prices. Quantity of oil/gas sold drastically increased, which mitigated reduced prices and led to a surplus budget. Not to mention that they started pushing on large companies to reduce the amount of dividends and instead re-invest the money.

I wouldn’t call it “thriving,” however. All of this has definitely led to a slowdown in growth, which, as time goes by, will only get worse. But for now it’s fine.

Russians are not having a good old time. Things are very bad in Russia since the invasion.

They are being financed by China and India. Their long time prospects are pretty terrible because they will rack up massive debts to those countries. But I suspect they will be able to continue the war longer than Ukraine can stay politically favored in the West. If Trump is elected, it’s over for Ukraine.

How? How does a country take that much of a financial beating and still be thriving? Where is the point of being broke and not being able to fund a war anymore?

Not only that but I remember reading a lot of articles about how Russia was going to economically collapse as a result…almost two years ago.

Also a lot of articles about how weak Russia was militarily, how they lost all their troops and equipment already, how morale in their military was so poor the army was just going to run away at any moment, how one major asset after another was destroyed by the Ukrainians…for almost two years now.

Yet here they are still, not collapsed, not defeated. It probably is a good idea to take the media with a grain of salt and realize just because they’re the so-called free press doesn’t make them necessarily the truthful press.

oil and gas