I'd like to know how these sanctions are working for us. Short term: not too good. Long term: great. Russia is a mafia state where oligarchy funded by resour

I'd like to know how these sanctions are working for us. Short term: not too good. Long term: great. Russia is a mafia state where oligarchy funded by resource exports uses most of money for lining their pockets but they spend rest on keeping up appearances that Russia is modern developed country. This setup allowed them to weaponize their foreign trade and use it against Europe on many occasions. Oligarchs don't care about changes of prices of goods on domestic market as long as they get money from resources while at same time European companies functioning on free market depend on trade to Russia for part of their income. So if Russian govt. wanted to pressure some government in Europe, they would just randomly announce that they found african pig virus in imported meat, and they are ceasing all meat imports from the country immediately. Or they would announce that apples are sick and do the same. Or they would announce that in October that they will have to reduce gas exports to given country because they have unspecific technical issue in transit system that they are currently working on resolving. This is why limiting economic ties to Russia is so important for Europe. Its a shock therapy that will let us bullet-proof our economies from Russian political influence while at same time Russian corrupted economy will not have it this easy to switch their tech industries (namely heavy industries and military production) away from dependence on European imports. And "they'll just switch to Asia" excuse will not work here because they are cut from first-league Asian exports because those happen to also be democracies that are part of states sanctioning them. They are left with China, Turkey and India who don't know how to produce fifth-generation radar systems for fighters, fifth generation tank armors and gun barrels or fifth generation tracking systems for their munitions. Great twitter thread explaining the situation: https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1501360272442896388 https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1501360272442896388