Russian Official Admits Nation is Brought to Knees By Western War Sanctions

A senior Moscow official admitted Russia is being pummeled severely by western financial and economic sanctions.

These sanctions exist against Russia because of its atrocious dictator Vladimir Putin’s vicious war of aggression and conquest against Ukraine.

War Sanctions ‘Broke’ Russia’s Logistics & Foreign Trade

Russia has been under financial sanctions since 2014 (when Putin’s regime staged its first partial invasion of Ukraine).

However, the West really pulled out the big guns after the Moscow tyrant sent 200,000 heavily armed troops to conquer Ukraine on February 24.

Financial and economic sanctions usually take a while to start eroding a dictatorship and its ability to carry out external aggression.

It seems, however, that anti-Russian sanctions caused by the war in Ukraine may already be literally bringing Putin’s dictator economy down on its knee, per the admission of Russia’s Minister of Transportation, Vitaly Savelyev.

It is notable that Russia’s situation appears to have worsened even as Europeans are still failing to agree on imposing a full embargo on Russian oil and natural gas exports, the biggest cash cows of the Putin regime.

Western sanctions aren’t just taking a tool on Russia, but have “practically broken” the country’s logistics and foreign trade, according to Savelyev, as cited by Russian news agency Interfax and The Daily Mail.

Seeking Non-Existent ‘North-South’ Trade Routes in Eurasia

The impact of the sanctions appears so significant that it’s forcing Moscow to completely rethink its existing trade routes and try replacing them with ones far less capable and far less secure.

The Russian Ministry of Transportation made it clear that western sanctions ruined Russia’s trade, not just with the West, but also with the Asia-Pacific region.

Before the Russian aggression against Ukraine, the latter used to go mostly through the Suez Canal and around Asia, rather than through the Russian Far East and its main Pacific maritime port of Vladivostok.

Savelyev directly confessed that Russia is now “forced to look for” what he described as “new logistics corridors.”

The Russian Transportation Ministry, however, did admit the obvious. The three main Russian Capsian Sea ports have very limited capacities to carry a sufficient volume of international trade.

Then, there are also highly deficient, inadequate land transport infrastructures all over the newly proposed route, such as bridges and non-existent highways.

In 2021, most of Russia’s trade in goods was with Europe: 49%, compared to 42% with Asia, as per data from the Russia Briefing, which seems to exclude oil and natural gas.

The crushing of Russian foreign trade by the Ukraine war sanctions is expected to hammer Russian consumers.

This is because Moscow exports mostly energy and raw materials. It also imports all sorts of manufactured and industrial goods.

The Putin regime still rakes in massive amounts of foreign cash through the sale of natural gas and oil because of the dependence of Europe on cheap Russian energy resources.

However, Russia’s energy exports are rapidly becoming more and more problematic. The expected decline in petrodollar income will likely devastate Putin’s dictatorship in the medium run.

 

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