- 2 days ago
Putin’s war did not only destroy Ukraine. It quietly made Russian life smaller.
👉 What World Leaders NEED to Know about Russia: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6d9EIByxz1AdkmIOYUlrDd0rmByq5zSN
In this episode, Elvira Bary audits what Russians actually lost after four years of Putin’s full-scale war against Ukraine. Russia did not only lose soldiers, money, and military prestige. Ordinary Russians lost access to the world, normal travel, foreign media, familiar brands, reliable routes, working bank cards abroad, affordable credit, European energy markets, arms customers, and the educated people who could have built the country’s future. The Kremlin calls this sovereignty, resilience, and import substitution. But behind the slogans is a shrinking life — more expensive, more isolated, more censored, and much harder to escape.
Video Chapters:
00:00 The Four-Year Audit
01:47 The Closed Window
04:12 The Stolen Reality
07:15 The Missing Goods
09:46 The Broken Routes
12:48 The Trapped Money
16:05 The Lost Markets
18:41 The Human Drain
JOIN ME ON THE JOURNEY
👉 Sign-up for news about the New Book here: https://elvirabary.com/elvira-barys-newsletter/
👉https://www.facebook.co
👉 What World Leaders NEED to Know about Russia: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6d9EIByxz1AdkmIOYUlrDd0rmByq5zSN
In this episode, Elvira Bary audits what Russians actually lost after four years of Putin’s full-scale war against Ukraine. Russia did not only lose soldiers, money, and military prestige. Ordinary Russians lost access to the world, normal travel, foreign media, familiar brands, reliable routes, working bank cards abroad, affordable credit, European energy markets, arms customers, and the educated people who could have built the country’s future. The Kremlin calls this sovereignty, resilience, and import substitution. But behind the slogans is a shrinking life — more expensive, more isolated, more censored, and much harder to escape.
Video Chapters:
00:00 The Four-Year Audit
01:47 The Closed Window
04:12 The Stolen Reality
07:15 The Missing Goods
09:46 The Broken Routes
12:48 The Trapped Money
16:05 The Lost Markets
18:41 The Human Drain
JOIN ME ON THE JOURNEY
👉 Sign-up for news about the New Book here: https://elvirabary.com/elvira-barys-newsletter/
👉https://www.facebook.co
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LearningTranscript
00:00Before the war, Russia still had a window. You could travel, study abroad,
00:05fly to Europe and read foreign social media. You could dream that tomorrow will be better than
00:10yesterday. Then Putin started the full-scale war against Ukraine and that window began to close.
00:18People often ask what Ukraine lost. That question is right and necessary.
00:23But today I want to ask another one. What did Russia lose by choosing this war?
00:31I'm Elvira Berry, a writer born in the Soviet Union, and today we'll look at the losses Russians are
00:37trained not to see. Here's our roadmap. The closed window. How Russians lost easy access to the world.
00:46The stolen reality. How censorship creates an alternative version of truth.
00:52The missing goods. How familiar brands vanished and returned as expensive contraband.
00:59The broken routes. How transport became slower, pricier, and more fragile.
01:05The trapped money. How payments, credit, and business were squeezed by war.
01:10The lost markets. How Russia gave away customers its spend decades obtaining.
01:15The human drain. How the war pushed out brains, workers, and hope.
01:21If you'd like to keep getting this kind of deep dive analysis, please subscribe, like, and share.
01:26You can also join my think tank. Support through PayPal or Super Thanks or tap
01:30Hype Points to help this episode travel further. And if you are listening on Spotify,
01:37follow the show so the next episode lands in your feed automatically.
01:41Now, let's begin with the first loss. The closed window.
01:52The main thing Russia lost is access. Now, if you are a Russian citizen, you can't board a plane without
01:59making a strategy. Before 2022, this was normal for millions of Russians, especially in large cities.
02:05Moscow and St. Petersburg were full of people who spent their vacation in Europe or had family
02:13studying and working there. The war broke that rhythm. The European Union suspended its visa
02:20facilitation agreement with Russia in 2022. That didn't ban all Russian travelers, but it made visas
02:28slower, more expensive, and more uncertain. Later, the rules grew stricter. Some countries stopped
02:36issuing tourist visas almost entirely. Others kept issuing them, but with more scrutiny, fewer multiple
02:43entry visas, and longer waiting times. That made travel a privilege, almost like it was in the Soviet
02:51Union. In Russian culture, travel and ties to foreign countries are markers of class and status. Before
02:59the war, people with money would often fly to Europe just for the weekend. If you spent your vacation in
03:06Italy or France, they had sent a very clear message. Life had turned out well. Now, a vast number of
03:14Russians
03:15no longer have that option. And not only because they personally cannot get visas, but because the
03:21companies they work for are under sanctions. When you apply for a visa, you have to state where you work.
03:28Many top officials and businessmen are under personal sanctions as well. That is even more humiliating.
03:35A great number of them own property in Europe with millions of dollars invested in it, but they cannot
03:41actually use any of that wealth. So now, even very rich people find themselves in the awkward position of
03:49having to put on a brave face and insist that they do not need Paris or London anyway. Turkish bedroom
03:57suits
03:58them just fine. Even if you get a visa, every trip now means connection flights through Istanbul, Yerevan,
04:05Belgrade, Dubai or Tbilisi, and paying several times as much as before for a ticket.
04:17A second thing Russia lost is reality. When a state controls what people are allowed to know,
04:23it steals the shared ground under everyone's feet. Since the full-scale invasion, Russian media have
04:30been forced to use the official language of the state. Not war or invasion, but especially military
04:38operation. Roskomnadzor instructed outlets to rely on official defense ministry information and punish
04:45those that told the truth. Independent media were blocked, pushed abroad, labeled foreign agents,
04:53or crushed by censorship laws. Facebook and Instagram were blocked. Access to foreign news became harder.
05:01VPNs became part of ordinary life for people who still wanted the outside world.
05:07And even the internet started to feel unstable. Freedom House reported that Russian internet
05:12freedom reached a new law, with authorities expanding isolation from the global internet
05:19and testing restrictions under the excuse of security and drone threats.
05:24This is how a country loses reality. A war happens, but television does not call it a war. Cities are
05:32attacked, but local media pretended life is normal. Men die, but the state TV shows concerts. Prices rise,
05:41but officials report stability. And sometimes the absurdity becomes almost comic. During the St.
05:50Petersburg International Economic Forum in June 2026, Ukrainian drones struck targets in and around the city,
05:57including oil infrastructure and naval facilities. Fires broke out, smoke was visible from downtown,
06:05flights were disrupted, and strikes landed near the very city hosting Putin's Polish economic showcase.
06:13This should have been the dominant local story, but Russian local coverage tried to keep this spell intact.
06:20On the day of the attack, Fontanka, the city's most popular outlet, ran this as its top front page item,
06:28watching a beautiful sunset in St. Petersburg. Meanwhile, the whole city could hear the blasts
06:35and see a vast cloud of smoke hanging over it. That is Russia now. The sky is burning and the
06:42headline says,
06:43admire the colors. This is not only censorship, but psychological training. Over time, this creates
06:50a special kind of person. Someone who knows the truth, but behaves as if he does not know it. The
06:58Soviet Union trained people in this skill for decades. You could stand in a line for flower and still hear
07:04on
07:05television that the socialist economy was the most advanced in the world. You could know your neighbor
07:11was arrested for nothing and still clap at the meeting. The missing goods.
07:19Before the war, Russians in big cities lived inside the same consumer world as Europeans and Americans,
07:26with IKEA furniture, Apple phones, Zara clothes, Nike sneakers, and McDonald's. Then, one by one,
07:34their familiar names left. Some closed stores or sold their Russian business.
07:39Some stayed in legal form, but cut operations so deeply that the old relationship was gone.
07:46Russia answered with parallel imports. That means Russian companies bringing in foreign goods without
07:53the permission of the trademark owner. The product may be real, but the route is illegal. A phone is not
08:01sent directly from Apple to Russia. It goes through another country. China, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Armenia,
08:08Georgia, the UAE, or another middleman. At every stop, someone earns money. And the Russian buyer pays for
08:17all of that. This is why the shelves did not become empty Soviet shelves. Many of the same goods as
08:23before
08:24are still available, but harder to get and much more expensive. An iPhone can still be bought in Moscow.
08:32Ikea-style furniture can still appear through resellers. Branded shoes can still reach a shopping mall.
08:40But the old world of warranty, official service, stable pricing, and normal choice is broken.
08:47This does not only hit the middle class, but also the industry. Modern Russian manufacturing depends on
08:55imported components, software, machine tools, and electronics. Agriculture depends on imported seeds,
09:02machines, and chemicals. When those links become slower and more expensive, repairs take longer and quality
09:11degrades. Substitutes are found, but not always good ones. Medicine shows the same pattern. The import of
09:20medicines themselves was not broadly sanctioned, but the war still made them harder to move and more
09:26expensive to finance as payments became harder and foreign suppliers became cautious. When import channels
09:34get strained, patients feel it. At the end, Russia did not become self-sufficient. It only became dependent
09:42on more complicated routes and more expensive middlemen. The broken routes
09:51The war turned any movement to, from, or around Russia into improvisation. Russian planes were banned from EU
09:59airspace. European planes stopped flying to Russia. Direct routes to many countries disappeared. At the same time,
10:06even transport inside Russia became more fragile. Aviation is one of the clearest examples. Russian
10:13airlines still fly many Western-made planes, but official access to Boeing and Airbus parts was cut.
10:21So the system depends on workarounds, cannibalizing aircraft, finding parts through third countries,
10:28using substitute suppliers, stretching maintenance systems. Cars tell the same story. Western,
10:35Japanese and Korean brands pulled back or left. Chinese brands rushed in. By 2024, Chinese cars dominated
10:44a huge share of Russia's new car market. The Kremlin presents this as a pivot to the East. In practice,
10:53it means Russia exchanged one dependency for another and paid more for it. Chinese cars are not automatically
11:00bad. The problem is dependency under bad conditions. Russia is no longer a normal, competitive market
11:07where global brands fight for their consumer. It is a sanctioned market where sellers understand that
11:13buyers have fewer choices. That means markups. Russian analysts report that new car prices rose sharply after
11:22the invasion. The average price of a new car in Russia became far higher than in China, even though Chinese
11:29brands make up a large share of Russian sales. And every Chinese car price in Russia starts at $45,000,
11:37which is 25% to 50% more than these same car sales in Europe. There is a scheme where
11:45zero mileage
11:46vehicles are exported from China to Russia as used cars, allowing restrictions to be skirted while dealers
11:54still sell them in Russia at prices close to new cars. The same is true for luxury electric cars.
12:00A Tesla is not officially sold in Russia, but you can still find Teslas in Moscow for parallel importers.
12:07Model 3 comes at $70,000, more than twice its price in Europe. The Moscow price includes the risk margin
12:17and
12:17the cut of each middleman. But that is not all. Ukrainian drones are regularly striking oil
12:24infrastructure, which is already causing fuel shortages, especially in remote regions and the
12:30occupied territories. Given that Putin has no intention of ending the war and Ukrainians have
12:36no intention of surrendering, this trend will only intensify. Already in Crimea, it is impossible to buy
12:44gasoline unless you have official authorization. The trapped money.
12:53The third thing Russia lost was normal money. After 2022, Russian cards stopped working normally
13:02abroad as Visa and MasterCard suspended operations in Russia. If you travel abroad, the Russian bank card
13:08in your pocket is useless. Visa and MasterCard suspended network services in Russia in March 2022.
13:14Cards issued by Russian banks kept working inside Russia through the domestic payment system,
13:20but outside the country they stopped functioning. It is impossible to pay for many foreign services
13:26directly. That includes software, subscriptions, cloud services, education platforms, and many other
13:32tools people need for their work. A whole small industry appeared around this. People who help pay for
13:39foreign services. People who exchange rubles into dollars, euros, kratos, and stablecoins. People who receive
13:47money abroad and handed over through another channel. People who open cards in neighboring countries.
13:54All of these middlemen charge a percentage for making normal life possible. Again, everyone earns except the
14:01person who just wanted to pay a bill. Sending money to relatives became harder too. A Russian parent helping a
14:10child abroad or a son sending money to an elderly mother now have to look for reliable intermediary instead of
14:18simply making a bank transfer. Trapped money also includes credit. Russia's war economy flooded some parts
14:25of society with cash. Soldiers, defense workers, and military contractors received money.
14:31But the supply of normal goods and productive capacity did not grow in the same way. That creates inflation
14:38pressure. So the central bank has to keep interest rates high. The key rate reached 21% in late 2024,
14:47then was cut gradually, but borrowing remained painfully expensive. Today the rate stands at 14.5%.
14:56For business, this is brutal. A normal entrepreneur needs credit to buy equipment, expand to new markets,
15:04or modernize production. But when loans are too expensive, investment dies. Then the state offers
15:11high yields through banks and deposits. From the point of view of a cautious person, the choice becomes
15:18obvious. Why risk opening a business in a shrinking, sanctioned economy when a bank deposit can provide
15:25a huge return. This is how war eats the future twice. First, it takes money directly to spend on weapons
15:31and soldiers. Then it makes peaceful investment irrational. Factories postpone modernization. Small
15:39businesses stop expanding. Infrastructure wears out. Everything waits because the money is elsewhere. And the
15:47state cannot easily fix this. Cut rates too fast and inflation can jump. Keep rates high and
15:55businesses weakens. Spend less on war, and the regime becomes shaky. Spend more on war,
16:01and the civilian economy collapses under the weight. The Lost Markets
16:09Before the war, Europe was Russia's most valuable energy customer. Then the full-scale invasion
16:15destroyed that relationship. Europe cut Russian energy with a speed many people thought impossible. Russian
16:22seaborn crude and oil products were banned, cutting EU-Russian oil imports by about 90%. So who replaced
16:32Europe? China, India, Turkey, and other buyers in Asia and the Global South. But replacement does not mean
16:40equality. Europe was close, rich, predictable, and tied to Russia by infrastructure. India and China are
16:48farther away, tougher negotiators, and happy to buy at a discount when Russia has fewer options.
16:55The same logic applies beyond oil. Russia also damaged its weapons market. For years, Russian arms had a
17:04strong reputation in many parts of the world. They were cheaper than Western weapons, battle-tested,
17:10and familiar to countries that had used Soviet systems for decades. India, Vietnam, Algeria, Egypt, and others
17:17built military habits around Russian platforms. The war exposed the weakness behind the image.
17:25The world saw Russian tanks burn and air defenses failed to create a safe sky. The Black Sea Fleet was
17:32pushed back
17:32by a country with no traditional navy. The aura of unstoppable Soviet-style military engineering is now
17:39gone. Over the first three years of war, Russian arms exports fell by 64%. That's essentially a collapse.
17:49France, the United States, South Korea, Turkey, China, and others stepped into spaces Russia once occupied.
17:56India is building more at home and buying more from other suppliers. Countries that still buy Russian
18:03weapons must now ask a practical question. Can Moscow deliver on time when its own army is burning
18:11through equipment in Ukraine? And then there are the quieter export losses. Russia once sold not
18:16only oil and weapons, but metallurgy, chemicals, fertilizers, nuclear technology, engineering services,
18:23timber, and grain. Some of that still continues. What did not make Russia disappear from world trade?
18:29But it changed the terms to worse as buyers demand discounts, logistics cost more, payments and
18:35insurance are harder, and sanctions risk follows every deal. The human trade
18:45The deepest thing Russia lost was people. Who could have built its future?
18:51After February 2022, hundreds of thousands left. And many of them were exactly the people a country needs
18:59most. Software developers, designers, journalists, entrepreneurs, scientists, and artists. People with
19:06languages, professions, savings, and enough initiative to start again in another country. I have a dedicated
19:14video about where these people went and how they adapted in their new countries.
19:20A study of software developers found that by November 2022, over 11% of highly active Russian developers
19:27in the data set had changed their listed country. The study also found that those who left were often
19:33more active in professional networks. At the same time, Russia has a labor shortage. The war pulled men into the
19:42army and defense industry while demographics were already weak. The state needs workers for factories,
19:49construction, agriculture, logistics, and services. Reuters reported that Russia needs at least 2.3 million
19:57additional workers and has started looking more actively toward India as the inflow from Central Asia becomes
20:05less reliable. And there is one more loss. The one that may be the hardest to measure. Russia lost calm.
20:13One recent immigrant told me that in the early 2010s, people were kinder and more cheerful. Many felt that
20:21things were moving slowly towards something better. You could travel, work, learn, build, save, and make plans.
20:28Now, he said, people are angry and frightened. Everyone watches what they see. That is the real
20:37wound. A country can live through hardship if people believe the hardship leads somewhere.
20:43But Putin's war offers no future. Only more fear, more isolation, and more expensive ways to pretend that
20:50nothing was lost. Before you go, I want to ask you something personal. Have you ever lost access to
20:56something you once took for granted? Travel, work, money, information, a place, a language, a future,
21:04and only later understood how much of your life had depended on it? If this video helped you understand
21:11what the war has cost Russia from the inside, please like the video and subscribe. Share it with one
21:18person who still thinks Putin's war only damaged Ukraine and the West. And if you want to support
21:24this work directly, you can join my think tank, leave a super thanks, support via PayPal, or tap
21:31Hype Points to help this episode travel further. And for those listening on Spotify, follow the show so
21:38you don't miss the next one. Thank you for watching. See you next time.
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