The war is raging on in Ukraine but the destruction is caused in Russia. The Russian currency, Ruble, has crashed horribly in the last few days, now, there are long waiting lines outside the ATMs in Russia. The Banks are out of cash to give to people. People have started hoarding phones and electronic items buying as many as they can, because they are the only things whose value wouldn’t depreciate. The hard-earned money of the Russian citizens has started losing its value.

Sanctions from the west are already having a major impact on Russia’s economy. A 30% loss in value is seen in Ruble. Many people are worried about their income. Majority of Western Multinational companies like Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, HP, Intel, Netflix, and McDonald’s are stopping new sales in Russia. Even TikTok, won’t allow posts by Russian users. The condition is such that now the Russian Ruble is worth less than a penny.

A study conducted by the Centre for Economic Recovery, claims that in the first four days Russia had to incur expenses to the amount of $7 billion for starting this war. Approximately more than ₹500 billion was only for the first four days. With the continuation of the war, the same study has estimated that this cost can eventually cross $20 billion per day for Russia. It means that each day Russia has to spend $20 billion to fight this war. This is only the direct expense borne by the Russian government.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg. 33 countries have closed off their airspace for Russian airplanes. It means that Russian aircraft aren’t allowed entry into the airspace of those countries. It includes the USA, Canada and numerous European countries.

According to the estimates, about 150,000 Russian tourists in these countries, who were there for a visit, are now facing extremely difficult condition for return. Airbus and Boeing have said that they would stop sending their spare parts to Russia to the Russian airlines, and would suspend their operations in Russia.
Major clothing companies and shoe brands, like H&M, Puma, they have suspended their operations in Russia. BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Jaguar, Toyota, and Honda, the major car companies which said that they would stop exporting their cars to Russia, and their operations in Russia, the car production, for example, were also stopped.

The oil giants, like BP and Exxon Mobil, have similar responses too. BP has said that it would dump the 19% stake in the Russian state-owned energy company. It shows that the foreign companies are pulling out their investments from Russia.
Further Visa and Mastercard, two of the biggest payment processing networks in the world, have decided to block Russian banks. 74% payment transactions in Russia, were processed through Visa and Mastercard. The international payment transfer companies Remitly and Wise, the two have also suspended their Russian operations. The Russian banks against whom sanctions have been issued, cannot use these platforms either. As result making normal payments using Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay for their daily lives have become difficult for people. This caused people to run to the ATMs, to withdraw cash. These led to frequent and large withdrawal of cash which banks don’t have in their inventory which led to a massive Bank Run situation.
Observing this situation the Russian authorities have anticipated a major stock market crash, as result, ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, the Russian stock market hasn’t opened up for trade.
Apart from the steps the multinational companies have took to curb the Russian ambitions, Governments have also taken action against Russia in form of heavy economic sanctions. A major sanction which is imposed on Russia, is the SWIFT block.

It means Russia has been banned from the major payment system which is used internationally by more than 11,000 financial institutions. More than 200 countries used this globally. The central bank of almost every major country uses this SWIFT system. But the SWIFT system doesn’t actually move the money. It merely communicates the source, amount, and destination when money is to be moved.
Since Russian banks have been cut off from SWIFT, it means that neither can Russian banks accept money from international sources nor can they send money. But Russia isn’t the first country this has been done to, before this, Iran was blocked from SWIFT access. It resulted in Iran losing one-third of its foreign trade. But it isn’t like Russia wasn’t prepared for this. When Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, lighter levels of SWIFT sanctions were imposed on Russia. Since then, Russia worked on creating its domestic messaging system for payments. This would lead to severe effects in the short term, but in the long-term, Russia will come up with some way or the other, it will develop its payment processing system.

Another major example of these sanctions is freezing the assets of Russia’s central bank. The central bank of every country has some foreign exchange reserves called Forex Reserves. It basically means that the banks keep some money in foreign currency. The reason for maintaining forex reserves is that payments have to be made to other countries or for facilitating any global trade. Like every country, Russia’s central bank maintains reserves in US Dollar. As America and other countries have freezed these dollar reserves. Therefore the forex of $630 billion Russia has with itself  become complete waste.

Further sanctions have also been imposed on Putin and Russian Oligarchs and their assets outside Russia. Their private properties, private airplanes and huge yachts are being seized. As a specific example, a Russian oligarch named Egor Sechin, had a superyacht worth $120 million, the French government has now seized it.

But fearing this, the Russian Oligarchs, are moving their yachts to countries where the Western governments cannot seize them. Like the Middle East or the Maldives. According to the various news reports, at least 5 superyachts of Russian billionaires were found in the Maldives.
But as a flip side one thing that proved very hard to cut off from Russia, was oil and gas. For European countries, one-third of their gas supply is from Russia. They import gas from Russia, if they cut that off, the gas price in the European countries would skyrocket.

Despite that, Germany suspended the approval of Nord Stream 2 Pipeline, a pipeline that’s already built, but they hadn’t begun using it. America said that they have large oil and gas reserves, and are willing to send it, so that Europe can cut off their dependency on Russia.
These measures resulted to be so harsh that the Russian Ruble, is crashing at a speed of formula 1 racing car. In 2012, $1 was equal to 30 ruble. At the beginning of 2022, $1 was around 70 ruble, but since this war began, as of the day of this recording, $1 is poised to cross 150 ruble. Their currency is losing its value this rapidly. The money that people had earned and saved is now losing value.

Though Russia invaded Ukraine, the war is being fought in Ukraine. But the common Russian people are paying the price with their own money.