Cold War 2.0? The Global Economic Impact of Sanctions Against Russia

It is not sufficiently stressed in general analysis and commentary that the sanctions were not caused by Russian forces troops shooting at Ukrainian cities. Russia could drop most of its munitions into a restricted area in Ukraine and it would probably not make German PPI skyrocket way above historical records, or threaten Egypt's food supply for this year.

These financial nukes were deployed by Western institutions and leading states, and it is increasingly harder to justify them on the basis of the war we've seen in Ukraine (but not on basis of ideology, where cost-benefit analysis can be discarded).

There are funny tells in these sanctions. Like the potential risk of causing food crisis around Africa is a small price for EU to pay to 'combat Russia' in the eyes of Western leaders, where as potential risk of political volatility in Europe is not (implicit in not banning Russian energy).

A big reason for the sanctions is the chance to punish third parties not conforming to them, so it will be interesting to see what these third party states carrying the risk from the sanctions (like Egypt) will do ..

TLDR: I find it misdirected that people try to blame the effects downstream from sanctions on Putler.