You are really scary Western sanctions against Putin? Actually not much. But fearing them serves as a “commodity of exchange in negotiations. There is in Putin’s cynical geopolitical vision. On the other hand, it hangs over the Europe whose risk Putin condemns a serious financial crisis, also considering investors’ historic and deepseated aversion to retaliation, which inevitably impacts the real economy. The Kremlin’s goal is clear: to destabilize the Western powers thanks to the energy blackmail, that is, by hitting the lungs of their economies. And by forcing them to a new distribution of world resources, and also technological resources (among the consequences of the war in Ukraine there are those with IT servicefrom online purchases to hotel reservations, from surveillance operations to banking transactions: several multinational companies have part of their companies based in Eastern Europe, a million employees and developers are at stake).
Russia must counter sanctions strategically foreign exchange reserves currently just over $630 billion, part of which is blocked in certain countries. It also features the fifth gold reserve world, which corresponds to 2361.64 tons of gold deposited in the vaults of the Central Bank of Russia: the United States has 8134, Germany 3362, Italy 2452 and France 2436. Since 2008, after the global financial crisis, Russia started gold regularly and massively to buy. At that time the inventory was 500 tons. In 2012 it surpassed the 800ton mark, in 2014 Russian gold reserves in connection with sanctions over the annexation of Crimea reached almost a thousand tons. But the real acceleration took place in the following two years: 1500 tons in 2016, 1900 in 2018, 2300 in 2020.
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Over the past five years, Moscow has developed what many Western analysts have dubbed overseas “shadow funding”a real shadow finance, parallel to the main markets, but which operates clandestinely or almost clandestinely, exploiting the use of cybercurrencies and dirty money, similar to the experiences experienced by, for example, Iran and South Korea or big organized crime , but also by the Taliban or by Isis (who financed themselves with oil smuggling, drug trafficking and art theft).
Russian oil and gas exports make up more than 55 percent of the state budget, an important currency value. With our money, Putin has reorganized and modernized the armed forces. To circumvent the cut in supplies to the West if there is one… Moscow will have considered alternative outlets and perhaps encouraged new customers with competitive prices (see China, India, Turkey). Without forgetting that the sanctions adopted in 2014 were not as effective as some might think: since that moment, Russia has gradually responded diversified its trade relations, the strengthening of the autonomy of its industrial production and the circumvention of the boycott through systematic triangulations, through shadow companies (with foreign seats and nationalities), companies on which a dense network of transactions is carried out to formally manage foreign trade, banned by Sanctions, but happily hurt by swarms of unscrupulous entrepreneurs who did such lucrative deals with the Russians: a secret of Pulcinella, which, by the way, was alluded to by Putin himself when Italy warned should it apply the sanctions decided by Washington and Brussels.
But it’s not just an Italian sin. Le Monde last week published five episodes (a full page each) of a survey on the major French companies that, despite sanctions, have maintained excellent relations with Russia and have no intention of breaking up (Total and Renault, for example). for the rich and indispensable Russian market. So let’s expect another mockery of the “compensation” for the alleged lack of business of our own entrepreneurs with Russia when they sell their products to intermediate companies (in Serbia, in China …) who will turn them to Moscow. That’s how much Pantalone pays off.