The Wall Street Journal concluded that Russia has survived sanctions and, moreover, Western countries have received huge economic problems in return.
According to the publication, Germany, France and Italy will incur the heaviest losses. The same applies to industrial production decline JPMorgan Chase & Co predicts a fall of 3.5%, although earlier their colleagues from Washington noted that it would be as much as 15%, recalls the American edition. According to the German Central Bank, if Russian gas deliveries were to be halted completely, the country’s GDP would fall by 5% this year. The West’s main problems due to sanctions, according to the newspaper, are energy, unemployment and inflation.
“The sanctions have, in a sense, hurt the countries that imposed them and helped Russia. Although Russia exports fewer barrels of oil, the higher price per barrel means the country is expected to generate more revenue than originally budgeted,” the WSJ underlines.
The publication notes that high inflation has already led to a change of political elite and domestic crises in a number of European countries. And Europe’s plans to impose an embargo on Russian oil later this year could lead to an even steeper rise in energy prices and push the US and Europe into recession.
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