Yellen-Sanctions Threat Impairs Ability To Acquire Goods For War Effort

Speaking at the G20 Finance Ministers' and Central Bank Governors' meeting in Brazil, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says that she 'believes we have constrained Russian revenues with sanctions and the oil price cap', adding that the 'US threat of sanctions on financial institutions is impairing Russia's ability to acquire goods needed for the war effort'.

• Comes a day after ajoint articlefrom eight EU finance minsiters claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “peddling lies” about the state of the Russian economy.
• The ministers write, "While Russian GDP may be growing, the economy is increasingly geared towards the war industry, upheld by large fiscal stimulus. This is not an endless source of growth, nor a sign of a stable economy.[...] The tight labour market has put upward pressure on wages, while the weaker ruble increases import prices and is contributing to increasingly high inflation, despite Russian central bank efforts to fight it with high interest rates."
• The ministers say Putin is 're-Sovietising' the economy, and call for "Sanctions [to be] strengthened – particularly in strategically important sectors like energy, finance and technology; while the enforcement of existing sanctions must be improved."
• While in the EU and US there is an inclination to see the Russian economy as teetering amid the raft of sanctions, the Kremlin's deepening economic links with major Asian economies notably India and China is - in the short term at least - proving sufficient to keep the Russian war machine running.
• MNI's preview for the upcoming CBR rate decision can be found here.