[dh2022]

How can Russia be economically stronger under sanctions? Before the war they were able to manufacture some goods (Volkswagen had a couple of factories. I think Unilever was making some washers/ dryers). This is all replaced by manufacturing of some weapons (which proven themselves so shitty in the war that no outside buyers want to buy them).

Russia went from selling their oil on the world market at competitive prices to selling to mostly 2 customers at heavily discounted prices. And Russia is going to use barter now because of financial sanctions on Russian oil buyers.

All Russian currency reserves are frozen, and the interest these reserves generate are given to Ukraine to buy weapons.

How is Russia economically better now than before Feb 2022?

[lazide]

It depends entirely on what you mean by ‘strength’, and ‘better’. Russia is ramping up its military industrial complex like no one’s business, for instance.

Manufacturing in general, actually.

Something which had essentially collapsed previously. Also, mining and other resource extraction - they’re necessarily rebuilding domestic production and becoming more independent.

[dh2022]

Well, yeah, sure, they are building lots of shitty weapons. Meanwhile they cannot take over an adversary a third of its size. About resource extraction - the West stopped giving Russia extraction technology. Which means Russia is coasting on what they had up to 2022. Meaning in a few years Russia will do what it did in the 70s: over-extract its most productive fields. To see how that movie ended read Gaidar's Collapse of an Empire.