Opinion | Russia and Its Ruble Are Starting to Be Squeezed by Sanctions – The New York Times

Vladimir Milov, a Russian opposition politician who favors strong sanctions against Russia to stop the war in Ukraine, asked me this week to imagine I m in the Amazon rainforest when a giant anaconda coils itself around me. What I should do, he said, is try to strangle the anaconda before it strangles me. You don t stop every five minutes and release your grip to see if it s working. You just do it until the job is done.

Likewise, Milov told me, the United States, the European Union and other allies should squeeze Russia with economic sanctions for as long as it takes to stop the Russian war machine in Ukraine.

The bad news is that complete success may take a very long time, Milov said. The good news is that the sanctions have already begun to squeeze. One way to see that is in the sliding value of the Russian ruble. As the chart below shows, the ruble has had its downs and ups. It fell immediately after Russia s invasion, then surprisingly strengthened, mostly because a jump in oil prices increased Russian oil revenues. Lately, though, the ruble has lost some of those gains.

via www.nytimes.com

Peter Coy. I remember Peter from when he was Editor-in-Chief of the Cornell Daily Sun, way back in the day.