Ordinary Russians already feeling the pain of sanctions over Ukraine war

The falling ruble pushes up the price of imports, which make up over half the consumer basket.

The daily life of ordinary Russians – not just the country’s political elite or super rich oligarchs – is already being impacted by economic measures imposed by the international community in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

As a scholar of Russia’s political economy, I was surprised by the speed and severity of the Western economic response to the invasion of Ukraine. Whereas the sanctions that the West imposed after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 were generally quite ineffective – at best slowing Russian gross domestic product