I publish this, partly for fun, but also because it gives an idea of what people expected from all the sanctions. Once again, Putin & Co thought longer and better.
Here are the first two things I could find that I wrote at the time saying Russia was surviving quite well: Sitreps 20160519 and 20160623. Another illustration of the fact that we, on our side of the divide, are less often surprised that the others are.
U.S. billionaire philanthropist George Soros has predicted that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime will face bankruptcy in 2017, when the nation’s economic troubles erode its leader’s domestic approval ratings, according to a column Soros published this week.
“Putin’s popularity, which remains high, rests on a social compact requiring the government to deliver financial stability and a slowly but steadily rising standard of living,” Soros wrote in his column on the Project Syndicate website on Wednesday. “Western sanctions, coupled with the sharp decline in the price of oil, will force the regime to fail on both counts.”
Russia Observer 