{"id":33135,"date":"2025-07-04T05:06:35","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T05:06:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=33135"},"modified":"2025-07-04T05:06:35","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T05:06:35","slug":"perfect-storm-how-the-west-has-wrestled-with-moscows-oligarchs-and-oil-barons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=33135","title":{"rendered":"Perfect Storm \u2014 how the west has wrestled with Moscow\u2019s oligarchs and oil barons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> \n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description o3-type-body-base\">Your guide to what Trump\u2019s second term means for Washington, business and the world<\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=4e67a3a6-04b9-4337-8e80-4b43570d573f&amp;newsletter-id=65b8fec772badb00166eafc6\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>On a visit to interview President Vladimir Putin last year, the US conservative firebrand news host Tucker Carlson stopped at a Moscow mall to film a segment about how years of sanctions had impacted Russians\u2019 shopping. As he strolled through a branch of Auchan, the French hypermarket chain, Carlson marvelled at the low prices and broad assortment of goods from other western multinationals. \u201cLooks pretty non-sanctioned to me,\u201d Carlson said, \u201cbut what do I know?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The bounty (and Bounty bars) on offer were emblematic of Russia\u2019s resilience to western economic pressure since Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Instead of returning to the empty shelves of the late Soviet era, most western consumer goods remain widely available. Russia\u2019s oil exports fund the Kremlin\u2019s splurge on defence and trickle into ordinary Russians\u2019 pocketbooks. The technocrats who led Russia\u2019s efforts to integrate its economy with the west are now the vanguard of the Kremlin\u2019s fightback against sanctions.<\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s economic warfare is rooted in three decades of failed attempts to draw Russia closer to the west, Thane Gustafson, a professor at Georgetown University, argues in <em>Perfect Storm<\/em>. Instead of drawing the cold war adversaries together, efforts to integrate Russia into the capitalist system gave each side powerful weapons against the other. When Putin\u2019s tanks rolled into Ukraine in 2022, Kyiv\u2019s allies responded by expelling Moscow from global markets and supply chains. Russia cut Europe off from cheap gas supplies and crowed that the continent would soon freeze.<\/p>\n<p>Gustafson traces how the euphoria that greeted American-style capitalism\u2019s arrival in Russia masked a brooding resentment at the Soviet empire\u2019s defeat. Russians stood in lines for hours at Moscow\u2019s first McDonald\u2019s when it opened in 1990, but were less excited about swallowing triumphalist, often condescending advice from their western betters \u2014 or \u201cspinach\u201d, as former senior US diplomat Victoria Nuland put it. \u201cI know you guys would like to come here and teach us heathens how to eat with a fork and knife and just to make sure we brush our teeth the right way,\u201d the Russo-Georgian tycoon Kakha Bendukidze quipped. <\/p>\n<figure class=\"n-content-image n-content-image--inline\" style=\"width:200px;max-width:100%\" data-component=\"image-set\"><picture><source media=\"(min-width: 700px)\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/ftcms%3A840934b1-b581-4380-b084-7e4fc5d73d86?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=200&amp;dpr=1 1x\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\"\/><\/picture><\/figure>\n<p>In any case, the Russians had their own way of doing <em>biznes<\/em>. Boris Yeltsin\u2019s liberal economic reformers lamented the lack of a Marshall Plan for Russia, as the US had arranged to rebuild Europe after 1945, but did much to discredit western capitalism themselves. Their \u201cshock therapy\u201d reforms immiserated millions, while a loans for shares deal to keep Yeltsin in power enriched a tiny coterie of oligarchs. As western companies leapt to get their hands on Russia\u2019s riches, those who had already made it in <em>biznes<\/em> headed the other way. Inflows into the country totalled over $630bn from 1992 to 2020 but were dwarfed by an estimated $800bn of Russian money held outside the country. <\/p>\n<p>This created a vulnerability that western sanctions have sought to exploit, limiting Russia\u2019s ability to sell commodities abroad and import irreplaceable goods for its war machine with the proceeds. But predictions of economic disaster, made in Washington and Moscow alike at the war\u2019s outset, have not come to pass. Gustafson finds the sanctions have been too incremental, often laxly enforced, and rarely with a clear goal in mind. The most successful have constrained Russia\u2019s financial flows. He writes: \u201cthe Russian dependence on the western financial system became its greatest source of vulnerability\u201d. Russia has proved skilful at evading those, too \u2014 as evidenced by the western components found in missiles that strike Ukraine, often smuggled through its ally China.<\/p>\n<div class=\"n-content-layout\" data-layout-name=\"card\" data-layout-width=\"inset-left\">\n<div class=\"n-content-layout__container\">\n<h3 id=\"summer-books-2025\" class=\"n-content-heading-3 o3-editorial-typography-subheading\">Summer Books 2025<\/h3>\n<div class=\"n-content-layout__slot\">\n<figure class=\"n-content-image n-content-image--full\" data-component=\"image-set\"><picture><source media=\"(min-width: 700px)\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/ftcms%3A3eb745a9-f3a2-41c2-a9af-0e963171712b?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=1 1x\" width=\"700\" height=\"450\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/https%3A%2F%2Fd1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net%2Fproduction%2F3eb745a9-f3a2-41c2-a9af-0e963171712b.jpg?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=1\" alt=\"\" data-image-type=\"image\" width=\"700\" height=\"450\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/picture><\/figure>\n<p>The best titles of the year so far \u2014 from politics, economics and history to art, food and, of course, fiction, FT writers and critics choose <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/summerbooks2025\" data-trackable=\"link\">their favourite reads of the year so far<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Gustafson holds out hope that what remains from Russia\u2019s opening to the west could help the sides reconcile once Putin is finally gone. He even sketches out a future president\u2019s speech in which Moscow renounces Putin\u2019s imperialism, accepts its goals in Ukraine are unattainable, and rejects its dependence on Beijing. <\/p>\n<p>Putin\u2019s war, however, has laid new foundations that will be difficult for any successor to shake off. Power and wealth are in the hands of a venal elite in the security services. Sanctions have fuelled resentment even among an elite that once looked to the west. No western companies have made an effort to return to Russia. And those who have profited in their absence are in no rush to welcome them back. Or, as Putin put it last month when he backed efforts to block McDonald\u2019s from returning: \u201cOnly cowards pay their debts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Perfect Storm: Russia\u2019s Failed Economic Opening, the Hurricane of War and Sanctions, and the Uncertain Future <\/strong>by Thane Gustafson <em>Oxford \u00a322.99, 328 pages<\/em> <\/p>\n<p><em>Max Seddon is the FT\u2019s Moscow bureau chief<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Join our online book group on Facebook at <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/groups\/139838140082304\/\" data-trackable=\"link\"><em>FT Books Caf\u00e9<\/em><\/a><em> and follow FT Weekend on <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/ft_weekend\/\" data-trackable=\"link\"><em>Instagram<\/em><\/a><em>, <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/ftweekend.com\" data-trackable=\"link\"><em>Bluesky<\/em><\/a><em> and <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ftweekend\" data-trackable=\"link\"><em>X<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/4e67a3a6-04b9-4337-8e80-4b43570d573f\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free Your guide to what Trump\u2019s second term means for Washington,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":33136,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}