Sanctions have another effect. That effect is the screwing up Russian ability to make more weapons. More anything to be honest but weapons is the key. Missiles, tanks, drones and so much more need stuff from the West. Now of course Russia is willing to pay smugglers massive amounts of money for stuff that has been blocked but there are limits to how successful these attempts can be and without these key components all sorts of Russian military hardware is going to be impossible to make.
We're seeing the results of this in the mix of missiles used. At the start it was mostly "smart" modern ones, then these were combined with adequate late soviet ones (1980s vintage) and now we're seeing ancient 1960s era stuff being used. That works fine if you just want to destroy things (which seems to be part of the Russian strategy) but it doesn't really stop Ukraine from fighting back and it certainly suggests that in another month or two Russia may simply be out of missiles all together.
Note that even in good years pre-sanctions, Russia could only make about 2 smart missiles a day across all the modern systems. With sanctions it's probably unable to make even one per day. Russia can and has been using up a years worth of production of these in under a week (and that ignores the ones lost in "smoking accidents"). Just stopping those imports massively helps the war effort
This is part of the reason Russia is using dumb munitions. They’re out of smart ones and are cannibalizing parts and pieces for other equipment. But they're not done yet. Again, time...
But now there’s reporting that they are also getting drones from Iran, and Putin - if history is any indication - will sacrifice much of the economy to continue building weapons. We’ve seen it before. He and Medvedev were told even back in the early 2010s that Russia needs to spend money on infrastructure, on diversifying the economy, etc. He did not listen. That was a big part of the reason Kudrin resigned as finance minister - disagreements over budgetary policy. They will continue sacrificing.
Sanctions have another effect. That effect is the screwing up Russian ability to make more weapons. More anything to be honest but weapons is the key. Missiles, tanks, drones and so much more need stuff from the West. Now of course Russia is willing to pay smugglers massive amounts of money for stuff that has been blocked but there are limits to how successful these attempts can be and without these key components all sorts of Russian military hardware is going to be impossible to make.
We're seeing the results of this in the mix of missiles used. At the start it was mostly "smart" modern ones, then these were combined with adequate late soviet ones (1980s vintage) and now we're seeing ancient 1960s era stuff being used. That works fine if you just want to destroy things (which seems to be part of the Russian strategy) but it doesn't really stop Ukraine from fighting back and it certainly suggests that in another month or two Russia may simply be out of missiles all together.
Note that even in good years pre-sanctions, Russia could only make about 2 smart missiles a day across all the modern systems. With sanctions it's probably unable to make even one per day. Russia can and has been using up a years worth of production of these in under a week (and that ignores the ones lost in "smoking accidents"). Just stopping those imports massively helps the war effort
This is part of the reason Russia is using dumb munitions. They’re out of smart ones and are cannibalizing parts and pieces for other equipment. But they're not done yet. Again, time...
But now there’s reporting that they are also getting drones from Iran, and Putin - if history is any indication - will sacrifice much of the economy to continue building weapons. We’ve seen it before. He and Medvedev were told even back in the early 2010s that Russia needs to spend money on infrastructure, on diversifying the economy, etc. He did not listen. That was a big part of the reason Kudrin resigned as finance minister - disagreements over budgetary policy. They will continue sacrificing.