Yves right here. It is a stable, wide-ranging abstract of what the Collective West financial sanctions have wrought. It’s readable and accessible to laypeople, so I hope you’ll flow into it extensively.

This text additionally signifies a shift within the zeitgeist, even when an incremental one. Whether or not because of the limits of their data sources or a must not get too far forward of what their readership can abdomen, Medea Benjamin and Nicholas Davies have commonly salted their usually fantastic items with typical, factually-challenged anti-Russian tropes. That’s absent from this piece.

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of Conflict in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Mindless Battle, accessible from OR Books in November 2022. Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the creator of a number of books, together with Inside Iran: The Actual Historical past and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nicolas J. S. Davies is an impartial journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the creator of Blood on Our Arms: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

With the Ukraine struggle now reaching its one-year mark on February 24, the Russians haven’t achieved a army victory however neither has the West achieved its objectives on the financial entrance. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the US and its European allies vowed to impose crippling sanctions that might carry Russia to its knees and pressure it to withdraw.

Western sanctions would erect a brand new Iron Curtain, a whole lot of miles to the east of the previous one, separating an remoted, defeated, bankrupt Russia from a reunited, triumphant and affluent West. Not solely has Russia withstood the financial assault, however the sanctions have boomeranged–hitting the very international locations that imposed them.

Western sanctions on Russia decreased the worldwide provide of oil and pure fuel, but additionally pushed up costs. So Russia profited from the upper costs, at the same time as its export quantity decreased. The Worldwide Financial Fund (IMF) studies that Russia’s economic system solely contracted by 2.2% in 2022, in contrast with the 8.5% contraction it had forecast, and it predicts that the Russian economic system will truly develop by 0.3% in 2023.

However, Ukraine’s economic system has shrunk by 35% or extra, regardless of $46 billion in financial support from beneficiant U.S. taxpayers, on prime of $67 billion in army support.

European economies are additionally taking a success. After rising by 3.5% in 2022, the Euro space economic system is anticipated to stagnate and develop solely 0.7% in 2023, whereas the British economic system is projected to truly contract by 0.6%. Germany was extra depending on imported Russian power than different giant European international locations so, after rising a meager 1.9% in 2022, it’s predicted to have negligible 0.1% progress in 2023. German business is ready to pay about 40% extra for power in 2023 than it did in 2021.

The US is much less instantly impacted than Europe, however its progress shrank from 5.9% in 2021 to 2% in 2022, and is projected to maintain shrinking, to 1.4% in 2023 and 1% in 2024. In the meantime India, which has remained impartial whereas shopping for oil from Russia at a reduced worth, is projected to keep up its 2022 progress fee of over 6% per yr all by means of 2023 and 2024. China has additionally benefited from shopping for discounted Russian oil and from an total commerce improve with Russia of 30% in 2022. China’s economic system is anticipated to develop at 5% this yr.

Different oil and fuel producers reaped windfall income from the consequences of the sanctions. Saudi Arabia’s GDP grew by 8.7%, the quickest of all giant economies, whereas Western oil firms laughed all the best way to the financial institution to deposit$200 billion in income: ExxonMobil made $56 billion, an all-time report for an oil firm, whereas Shell made $40 billion and Chevron and Whole gained $36 billion every. BP made “solely” $28 billion, because it closed down its operations in Russia, nevertheless it nonetheless doubled its 2021 income.

As for pure fuel, U.S. LNG (liquefied pure fuel) suppliers like Cheniere and firms like Whole that distribute the fuel in Europe are changing Europe’s provide of Russian pure fuel with fracked fuel from the US, at about 4 occasions the costs U.S. clients pay, and with the dreadful local weather impacts of fracking. A gentle winter in Europe and a whopping $850 billion in European authorities subsidies to households and firms introduced retail power costs again right down to 2021 ranges, however solely after they spiked 5 occasions greater over the summer season of 2022.

Whereas the struggle restored Europe’s subservience to U.S. hegemony within the brief time period, these real-world impacts of the struggle might have fairly completely different leads to the long run. French President Emmanuel Macron remarked, “In at the moment’s geopolitical context, amongst international locations that assist Ukraine, there are two classes being created within the fuel market: those that are paying dearly and people who are promoting at very excessive costs… The US is a producer of low cost fuel that they’re promoting at a excessive worth… I don’t assume that’s pleasant.”

An much more unfriendly act was the sabotage of the Nord Stream undersea fuel pipelines that introduced Russian fuel to Germany. Seymour Hersh reported that the pipelines had been blown up by the US, with the assistance of Norway—the 2 international locations which have displaced Russia as Europe’s two largest pure fuel suppliers. Coupled with the excessive worth of U.S. fracked fuel, this has fueled anger among the many European public. In the long run, European leaders could nicely conclude that the area’s future lies in political and financial independence from international locations that launch army assaults on it, and that would come with the US in addition to Russia.

The opposite large winners of the struggle in Ukraine will in fact be the weapons makers, dominated globally by the U.S. “large 5”: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and Common Dynamics. Many of the weapons thus far despatched to Ukraine have come from present stockpiles in the US and NATO international locations. Authorization to construct even greater new stockpiles flew by means of Congress in December, however the ensuing contracts haven’t but proven up within the arms companies’ gross sales figures or revenue statements.

The Reed-Inhofe substitute modification to the FY2023 Nationwide Protection Authorization Act licensed “wartime” multi-year, no-bid contracts to “replenish” shares of weapons despatched to Ukraine, however the portions of weapons to be procured outstrip the quantities shipped to Ukraine by as much as 500 to 1. Former senior OMB official Marc Cancian commented, “This isn’t changing what we’ve given [Ukraine]. It’s constructing stockpiles for a serious floor struggle [with Russia] sooner or later.”

Since weapons have solely simply began rolling off manufacturing traces to construct these stockpiles, the size of struggle income anticipated by the arms business is finest mirrored, for now, within the 2022 will increase of their inventory costs: Lockheed Martin, up 37%; Northrop Grumman, up 41%; Raytheon, up 17%; and Common Dynamics, up 19%.

Whereas just a few international locations and firms have profited from the struggle, international locations removed from the scene of the battle have been reeling from the financial fallout. Russia and Ukraine have been essential suppliers of wheat, corn, cooking oil and fertilizers to a lot of the world. The struggle and sanctions have induced shortages in all these commodities, in addition to gasoline to move them, pushing international meals costs to all-time highs.

So the opposite large losers on this struggle are individuals within the World South who rely upon imports of meals and fertilizers from Russia and Ukraine merely to feed their households. Egypt and Turkey are the biggest importers of Russian and Ukrainian wheat, whereas a dozen different extremely susceptible international locations rely nearly solely on Russia and Ukraine for his or her wheat provide, from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Laos to Benin, Rwanda and Somalia. Fifteen African international locations imported greater than half their provide of wheat from Russia and Ukraine in 2020.

The Black Sea Grain Initiative brokered by the UN and Turkey has eased the meals disaster for some international locations, however the settlement stays precarious. It have to be renewed by the UN Safety Council earlier than it expires on March 18, 2023, however Western sanctions are nonetheless blocking Russian fertilizer exports, that are presupposed to be exempt from sanctions below the grain initiative. UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths instructed Agence France-Presse on February 15 that releasing up Russian fertilizer exports is “of the very best precedence.”

After a yr of slaughter and destruction in Ukraine, we are able to declare that the financial winners of this struggle are: Saudi Arabia; ExxonMobil and its fellow oil giants; Lockheed Martin; and Northrop Grumman.

The losers are, initially, the sacrificed individuals of Ukraine, on each side of the entrance traces, all of the troopers who’ve misplaced their lives and households who’ve misplaced their family members. But in addition within the shedding column are working and poor individuals all over the place, particularly within the international locations within the World South which might be most depending on imported meals and power. Final however not least is the Earth, its ambiance and its local weather—all sacrificed to the God of Conflict.

That’s the reason, because the struggle enters its second yr, there’s a mounting international outcry for the events to the battle to search out options. The phrases of Brazil’s President Lula replicate that rising sentiment. When pressured by President Biden to ship weapons to Ukraine, he stated, “I don’t need to be part of this struggle, I need to finish it.”