The war in Ukraine completed one month last Thursday (24), and the West continues to announce more sanctions for Russia to end its aggression against the neighboring country.
Although analysts point out that President Vladimir Putin has prepared himself to minimize economic retaliation since those imposed due to the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the bill is beginning to reach Russian pockets: the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) estimates that the Russia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will decline by 7.3% in 2022.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov admitted that the Kremlin was surprised by the scale of sanctions being applied due to the invasion of Ukraine.
In many countries, major economic difficulties often result in demonstrations against the government of the moment, so the question remains: will harsh Western sanctions make Russians abandon Putin?
For lawyer and professor Renato Ribeiro de Almeida, doctor in state law and master in political and economic law, it is still too early to predict this.
“On the one hand, there are all these sanctions that are being imposed, but on the other hand Putin has been working from the perspective of Russian nationalism, which is something very strong”, he justified.
“It is important to remember that, with the dismantling of the Soviet Union, the pride of the Russian people was badly hurt, especially in the face of scandals such as former President Boris Yeltsin routinely showing up under the influence of alcohol. Putin works on an image of a strong, nationalist leader, who leads the Russian nation to a supposed splendor”, added Almeida.
“He wouldn’t be in power yet, more than a month into the war, if a large part of the Russian population hadn’t bought into that speech.”
The expert also highlighted Putin’s recent decision that fossil fuels exported by Russia to “hostile countries” be paid in rubles, in an attempt to appreciate the currency, which has suffered a vertiginous fall since the invasion of Ukraine.
“It can begin to reverse some of these difficulties,” Almeida pointed out, citing the dependence on Russian energy exports, which European countries are unlikely to be able to get rid of in the short term.
The economy ministers of the countries that make up the G7 agreed this Monday (28) to classify this payment in rubles as “unacceptable”, but Almeida believes that does not change much.
“It is not up to the G7 to say that it will not pay in this or that currency, because it is important to pay in the currency in which the seller wants to receive. Europe is dependent, not in a position to negotiate this issue,” he argued.
Experts warn Putin could escalate authoritarianism
Russian filmmaker Maxim Pozdorovkin said in an interview with the Washington Post that in his country “a totally one-sided information war” has been raging for the past decade, basically blaming the West for all the problems Russia faces – from banning athletes from the country after the doping scandal at the Sochi-2014 Winter Games to economic sanctions.
“When you root this message of victimhood so completely, what happens when there is some kind of aggressive action by Putin, like what is happening now, is that a lot of people in Russia don’t see it as aggressive – they just see it as a defense of their way of life”, he argued.
In an article published on The Conversation website, researchers Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager, from Colorado State University, and Evgeniya Pyatovskaya, from the University of South Florida, mentioned that the sanctions strategy can be compromised by Russian nationalism and a spirit of confrontation. of the difficulties that the country, which went through communism, rationing and two world wars in the 20th century, has always been carrying.
“We believe that the West’s sanctions strategy could backfire. Not all Russians support the war in Ukraine and the government that dragged them into it. But all Russians are suffering from the sanctions and the crisis. Their common suffering is a dangerous thing: it is all too familiar; it makes them angry, and some are eager to fight back,” the researchers wrote.
“Western freedoms are only partially attractive, as historically Russians have never had them – not freedom of speech, self-determination and religion or unrestricted travel. Instead, the Russian people are patient, stoic and often irrationally devoted to their cruel homeland, whose autocratic leader has started a war,” argued Khrebtan-Hörhager and Pyatovskaya.
A poll conducted after the start of the war showed that 58% of Russians support the invasion of Ukraine and only 23% oppose the conflict.
The two researchers warned that rejection by the rest of the world could strengthen ties between the Russian people and their president, which “will likely lead to the intensification of Putin’s autocratic regime, under the guise of restoring the country’s industry and economy in the face of Western rejection”.
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