KW: Russia is fighting sanctions with inventive workarounds designed to defeat them. Russia is working with banks in China and India to reestablish hard currency payment channels. Russia has implemented capital controls that’ll shift the pain of sanctions from Russian borrowers to western lenders who will now suffer defaults on the Russian bonds they own.
And Russia has announced that it will cut-off exports of important chemicals, metals and processed gasses to the west. These exports are indispensable to Western manufacturing processes including semiconductors, automobiles and agriculture.
Russia may be the first victim of sanctions, but it won’t be the last. In the end, most of the economic pain will fall on Western manufacturing and farming. The Biden administration will find out the hard way that in a globalized densely connected world, what happens in Russia doesn’t stay in Russia.
BUT in Russia it seems as tough supermarket shelves are empty causing frightening food shortages and impacting everyday Russians. Inflation is soaring and the ruble is tumbling with a deep recession seemmingly just ahead as reported by Zerohedge. However us$ denominated bonds could be in default now as Russia has been banned from SWIFT and has no ability to pay USD$117 million in interest payments due today
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/soviet-inflation-returns-sanctions-shock-russia-crisis
Completely compromised US spokesperson Jake Sullivan ‘commited to imposing costs on Russia’ after the Russia requested western countries to stop sending arms to Ukraine even as Ukraine realises it is not going to be able to join NATO now.