As for the real damage to the Russian economy recorded since 2014, the State Department officials report “that oil price volatility explains the vast majority of the decline in Russia’s GDP and import demand, with very little left to be explained by sanctions or other factors. Thus either sanctions had only a small negative effect on these variables or other positive factors largely cancelled out the effect of sanctions.”
The real losers, they add, of the combination of sanctions and Russian counter-sanctions have been the European Union states, especially the most anti-Russian of them on the western border, which have paid a much higher price than the sanctions alone have inflicted on Russia.
