Free Republic

The effects are being felt nationwide, with support for the war falling as Russians feel the financial pinch caused by sanctions... "Western sanctions seriously disrupt the Russian economy. At the very least, they increase production costs for Russian enterprises," Sonin said... "Sanctions cannot destroy the Russian economy — sanctions are not missiles or bombs — but they slow down the production and decrease the volume of what Russia produces," Sonin added... On August 23, Russian newspaper Izvestia reported gasoline shortages at fuel stations across the country. This happened in the cities of Astrakhan, Volgograd, Saratov, Ryazan, and Novosibirsk, as well...

For seventy-five years of mutual deterrence, nuclear weapons have saved the world, and people just got used to it. Now we see with our own eyes that nuclear weapons no longer stop, because the unthinkable is happening: the West has unleashed a big war in the underbelly of a great nucler power... At some point, we also calmed down, went in line with Western theories and recklessly raised the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, which the West is now using for a reason. There all the time, semi-officials emphasize: no, the Russians will never use nuclear weapons. They...