Since the war began, we have been hearing that sanctions haven’t had much impact at all on the Russian economy. So what gives?
Russia is a gas station. They generate fuel; including nuclear. Russia just simply moved from western customers to China and India. There may be a shortage of eggs. They have switched from egg suppliers. All in all Russia is about the same as always. A crummy place to live.
“Since the war began, we have been hearing that sanctions haven’t had much impact at all on the Russian economy. So what gives?”
Check the sources. If they are pro-Russia sources, they deny that the sanctions have any negative impact; indeed, they claim just the opposite, that the sanctions were a boon to the Russian economy.
It’s how the propaganda war is played; and always has been. All sides play the game.
We do not really know.
There has been so much propaganda and gaslighting from all sides that it is almost impossible to see through the fog to what is really happening in Russia or the Ukraine. Even the leadership from both sides is being conned by their own propaganda.
It is quite possible for both sides to lose.
It is very obvious that the NATO wonder weapons have not turned the tide of war and the Russian artillery and drones were way more effective than expected. Also, the Russian commanders were willing to ruthlessly expend their soldiers like ammunition, and they had a lot more of them than the Ukrainians did.
The Russians were not very good at combined force operations, else Kyiv would have fallen in the first week of the "Special Military Operation". They reverted to "grid square obliteration" using artillery followed by human wave charges for their successes. Very traditional Russian tactics. That only works when you have a lot of extra men available.
It is also obvious that many traditional tactics of war are no longer viable. All armored vehicles can be killed by cheap drones, and so can exposed infantry, or even bunkered infantry. Drones keep getting ever more deadly, and so does precision guided artillery. Manned aircraft are basically targets for missiles.
Generals still think in obsolete terms, which are the equivalent of arranging men in a battle line and having them charge into machine gun nests, as they did in World War 1. Nobody can afford the kind of slaughter that causes.
If you can see enemy forces, you can kill them. And vice-versa. There needs to be a lot of thought about new tactics and strategies to deal with that.
I believe Ukraine will fall apart by this summer as the US fails to provide economic and military support. We are simply too broke to continue. So, Russian will have their victory in Ukraine. The prize has already cost them more than it will ever be worth.
The battlefield and economic sides of the conflict both suffer from "the fog of war". The reported Russian economic numbers are made up. While the news reports them, no one making decisions believes them. The economic side of the conflict is to make the war so costly for the Russian economy and weapons production they can't keep up or afford it.