The Ruble Has Collapsed. Here's What It Means for Russia.
Russia’s currency collapsed after Western leaders announced unprecedented sanctions aimed at crippling Moscow, signaling an imminent crisis that experts say will deepen Russia’s isolation and fuel social discontent.
The Russian ruble has lost some 20 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar since Thursday, when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine. This means anyone holding the currency can now buy less with their money.
Over the weekend, Western countries announced a set of new sanctions to punish Russia for its unprovoked invasion of the sovereign nation, including banning some Russian banks from the SWIFT payments system and restricting the Russian central bank from using its $640 billion of foreign exchange and gold reserves to prop up the ruble.
The measures, deemed unprecedented by many experts, are expected to deal a strong blow to the Russian economy. Anxious Russians waited in long lines outside ATMs on Sunday, worried the country would run out of cash.
“Economy and life in Russia will never be the same again,” said Alexander Titov, a Russia historian with Queen’s University Belfast.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgma4k/russia-ruble-collapse-economy
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Pootie owns a lot of property in Russia, mostly stolen or confiscated from political enemies. I've never seen a list of what Pootie owns outside of Russia, but I'm certain that his oligarchs have made investments for him. They're business partners after all. Other than bank accounts which are now frozen, I'm not sure how much liquidity he has. What can he sell quickly to raise cash? What would people be willing to buy, if they knew they were buying from Putin? That's what all this sanctions stuff is about - making it impossible for them to benefit from what they stole from the Russian people.
If one counts the total population of Russia at 150 million, that's $4,300 per citizen.
After this little military adventure, he'll probably use up most of that, and end up bankrupting his New Russian Empire for a dream of the old one.
I'll bet Putin is having a few second thoughts about the long term benefits of having hitched his wagon so tightly to Trump's wagon six years ago:
