Are Sanctions Hurting Russia?
Russian businessmen view sanctions as manageable and even a blessing in disguise.
Sanctions against Russia are a blessing in disguise, according to Alexey Butrimov, the general director of BJet, a Russian aviation company. Although he readily admits that the new restrictions have created significant complications for businessmen such as himself, he is confident that in the long-term, they will provide Russia with the much-needed stimulus to revive its long-dormant aviation industry.
“On the one hand, we look at all the problems caused by sanctions with sadness, but we also understand deep down inside that we can finally resurrect our aviation,” he said. “When times are good, you don’t have much incentive to develop anything quickly. But now that we find ourselves in a situation where we don’t have anything, the only path forward is to build up our own aviation system.”
(This a brief excerpt from my reported feature on Russia sanctions for the upcoming print edition of The American Conservative Magazine. For the piece, I interviewed Russian businesspeople across a wide range of industries, such as aviation, IT, and even luxury furniture. To my surprise, I found that many of them are pretty optimistic about their long term prospects under sanctions.
Full article can be found here.)
In some ways it's not surprising. Often developing countries eg those in Africa struggle because the more developed countries flood their markets and this doesn't give those countries the time to develop their own versions at competitive prices.
China often makes these arguments and suggests that help should be given to countries (infrastructure, financing) to allow their own indigenous markets to develop. Later they will be able to compete on an international level but initially fledgling industries need protection. The West never sees it this way. It's free markets all the way which clearly benefits them as they buy up the natural resources from these countries, produce whatever and then sell the product back profit margins fully protected.
Obviously it's more complicated than I'm making it out to be, but I hope Russia will use this space to their advantage and later, when it can, maybe help other countries to develop similarly.
Thanks for keeping us informed with truthful information