Sanction enforcement gains ground while Russian oligarchs divide up a smaller pie
Every week, I collect news articles and publications I think might be worth including in this newsletter. Normally, there aren’t very many and the theme of the week is pretty obvious. In the 82 years that have passed since last week’s newsletter, however, I have accumulated so many things that I don’t have any idea where to start.
Many of the stories relate to the horrible situation faced by the millions of Ukrainians forced to flee their country into Moldova, Romania, Poland and elsewhere, but I am trying to talk about oligarchs, so I shall just share this link for UNICEF’s fundraising platform and try to focus on something else.
When trying to make sense of sudden crises, I find that it’s normally a good idea to turn to Adam Tooze, economist and prolific writer, and I found the latest edition of the podcast he makes with Foreign Policy really interesting.
He puts the sanctions that have been placed against Russia in context and attempts to lay out what they will mean for ordinary Russians. I think he overstates the chance that Russia will be able to build up domestic capacity over the next few years – corruption will see to that – but not the devastating impact that Putin’s war will have on ordinary Russians for years to come. It is of course easy to discount this, since the impact on Russians is far less severe than what Putin is inflicting on the Ukrainians, but I find it hard to read pieces like this one about Russians fleeing to Istanbul, or this one about Bishkek, without thinking that some of them at least are victims of this senseless war too.