According to him, ordinary citizens did not feel the changes. “In Moscow, everything is as usual. The shops are well stocked, the restaurants and nightclubs are packed,” the journalist said.
He stressed that the Russian authorities have successfully coped with rising inflation and have been able to stabilize the national currency. There was no catastrophe in the industrial sector either. With the exception of the defunct “French (Société générale), Swedish (Ikea) and British companies”, many Western companies are still active in the market, Raffret added.
He suggested that cooperation with China helped minimize losses from reduced trade with Western countries.
Earlier, Politico reported that the governments of Western European countries began to doubt the effectiveness of sanctions against Russia. The newspaper drew attention to the fact that the forecasts about the collapse of the Russian economy under the yoke of sanctions did not come true and admitted that these efforts were in vain.
