This article is originally from . appeared in bitcoin magazine “The Censorship Resistant Issue.” To obtain a copy, visit our store.
If the world around you collapsed overnight, it’s easy to imagine you’d have a plan. Many people pack their bags and leave on the next flight to start a new life in a better way. But when society slowly breaks down, it’s hard to know when to leave. Sure, the shelves are bare now, but that’s only because of the panic. The government may have passed laws banning criticism, but they won’t last, right? And besides, what would you do with your cat, with your job?
For weeks, the Russians had asked themselves these same questions when suddenly, it was too late. At first glance, not much changed after Vladimir Putin ordered an attack on Ukraine. Across the border, rockets rained down, killing countless civilians and forcing millions to flee their homes, but in Moscow, things were going more or less as normal. People worked, shopped and partyed as before. But gradually, and then suddenly, the war began to shake the lives of the Russians as well.
In the months before the invasion, people believed what they had been told by the government – that reports of troops crowding along the shared border of Western spy agencies were mere frenzy, and there were no plans to launch an offensive.
“In its entire history, Russia has never attacked anyone,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted, two weeks before the tanks rolled down. “Having so many in ourselves, we are the last country that will resort to war.”
Some, it seems, were as surprised as ordinary Russians, when Putin appeared on his television screen at midnight to announce that he had launched “a special military operation” to “demilitarize and de-nazify” Ukraine. had ordered.
“We were like little kids,” Masha Kopilova, 28, a marketing executive from the Siberian city of Tyumen, told Bitcoin Magazine, “we didn’t think anything bad would happen – and then it happened.”
She was on a business trip to Turkey at the time worried about economic chaos and political repression; She is one of thousands of Russians who have now decided not to return home.
In those days and weeks, the West has pressed the financial equivalent of the nuclear button, imposing sanctions on a never-before-seen scale against an economy that, until recently, was the sixth largest in the world in real terms. Measures launched by countries such as the US and Britain, as well as the European Union, have blocked investment by international firms and cut off access to foreign funds, threatening to force Russia to default on its loans. Has been. The scale and severity of sanctions imposed against countries like Iran, Cuba or North Korea in the past outweighs anything. Even if no one knows specifically what they will achieve, it is clear that they were designed to hurt.
“This is an economic blitzkrieg against us,” President Vladimir declared in March, as another round of Western sanctions began. “But it has failed.”
The Kremlin has been working for years to reduce its reliance on foreign exchange and technology, fearing the day may come when they will shut down. In reality though, Russia was almost as connected to the global financial system as anywhere else. Its disconnection from the SWIFT payments platform has wiped billions from the value of its banks, while export restrictions have halted manufacturing of everything from cleaning products to ground tanks.
Few believed that their personal circumstances would change so much of everything. “We have imposed sanctions before,” said Andrei, an agricultural pesticide seller from the Volga River city of Samara, just 36 hours after the invasion began. “We got them because of Crimea, we got them because Donald Trump won that election – they would try to punish us for anything. But it never affected me.” And, in many ways, it wasn’t – he drives a new Mercedes and his Instagram is full of photos taken on overseas vacations from China to London. However this time things were different.
People like Dmitry didn’t even notice that the ruble had lost half its value after a brutal day of trading, until the prices of basic goods began to rise due to rising costs for manufacturers. The price of a new iPhone had nearly doubled by the end of the first week, with speculators rushing to turn their cash into any value, and Apple fans fearing the company would drop out. Just days later, the Silicon Valley firm announced that it would stop shipping devices to Russia, closing its online store. “We only have one laptop left,” said a shop worker at a reseller on Moscow’s dazzling Tverskaya Street the first weekend since the start of the war. “We’ve been completely put off.”
Social networks such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Twitter have been banned, turning the country into an increasingly isolated state. The new laws ban “defamation of the Russian military” and threaten journalists with up to 15 years in prison for spreading “fake news”, which officials insist is just a “special military operation”. . In effect, this means no printing of facts not coming directly from the Kremlin, forcing independent media to shut down rather than transforming themselves into propaganda outlets. In their place, a web of Telegram channels and online newsgroups has become the only source of Russian-language news that challenges Putin’s narrative.
At the same time, young people were horrified by the news that some of their favorite brands, including H&M, Uniqlo and IKEA, would be leaving the country, as well as fast-food firms such as KFC, Burger King, and McDonald’s. Some intrepid Happy Meal-lovers queued for hours on the last day the Golden Arches was open to fill their fridges with Big Mac and Cheese Sauce—a specialty menu item only available in Russia. “It’s not fair that ordinary Russians are being punished,” said Vyacheslav, a student who works part-time in a store. “People have families, they need to pay taxes.”
The country being cut off from the rest of the world has not made everyone so disappointed. “The news is getting better and better every day,” the brutal Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov wrote online. “The market was dominated by McDonald’s of American body-busting alcohol and convenience foods, catering to people who want to make themselves fat. I’ve always asked people to buy our organic food and eat right. In addition to giving dietary advice, Kadyrov was put in charge of the failed attack on Kyiv and previously charged with kidnapping political opponents and murdering LGBTQ+ people in an area that has He rules.
Elvira Nabiullina, governor of Russia’s Central Bank, agrees. “Now it is perhaps more important than ever that people do not waste money on unnecessary products,” she warned in April in a harsh assessment of the “difficult period” facing citizens. “The sanctions mainly affected financial markets, but now they are starting to affect the economy,” she said, warning of price rise and inflation out of control.
But it’s not just luxury imports that Russians are missing out on. Fearing a return of Soviet-style scarcity, pensioners have raided grocery stores across the country, snatching tinned goods and foods with longer shelf-lifes. “The shelves were empty – no salt, no sugar, no pasta, no grains, and only expensive rice,” said Anna, a shopkeeper at the Perekrestok supermarket in the Russian capital, after a clip of elderly people wrestled to the post. After discarding the item. “Now my cat is eating more expensive food than me,” said 25-year-old interpreter Darina.
Like Kopilova, who has decided to stay in Turkey, many Russians are desperate to move and live abroad instead. But with much of Europe closing its airspace to flights from the country, people have few options to avoid, tickets to some destinations are still open – Turkey, Georgia and Armenia – effectively tripling the cost. . “I bought a Rolex about a year ago,” Sasha, an IT specialist working for a British firm in St. Petersburg, told Bitcoin Magazine from a coffee shop in Istanbul. “I sold it to pay for tickets for myself and my girlfriend to come here, and so we’ll have some money to set up.” Others are not so lucky, and it is believed that hundreds of thousands of immigrants have returned home because they could not access their funds with Russian bank cards blocked abroad.
In an effort to prevent people from taking their savings out of the country, Putin has banned buying foreign currency and made it illegal to leave with more than $10,000 in cash. To solve that problem, many people were forced to buy jewelry or electronics to sell when they arrived at their destination.
“I waited an hour to buy dollars,” sighed Kyle, a US citizen working in the Russian capital, after queuing at a currency exchange with desperate locals, “but the woman in front of me got the last one.” He has since left the country; “Finally, I put all my rubles into crypto to withdraw my money,” he says via an online update.
Anastasia, a young Moscow-based investor who advises trading in cryptocurrency under the pseudonym @LadyAnarki, says interest in digital exchanges has increased in recent weeks. “The Russians understand the black market and the gray market – everyone here understands how to get around rules they don’t like. It’s quite anarchist in that way. They follow the rules they actually have to do.” They aren’t selling dollars, so where do people look? For bitcoins.”
“Russians generally take everything in their stride, that is how we are culturally because of how much we have come through as a country,” she adds. “Some people understand what’s going on, and it’s the people who want to leave, but most are staying and bowing down and whatever negative consequences and poverty will come, they’ll take it. The older generation who live on pensions.” Doesn’t understand crypto, will be the biggest blow to her.”
In January, the country’s central bank said it was considering a “total ban” on cryptocurrencies — buying, selling, holding, and mining an offense punishable by heavy fines. According to officials, the technology consumes a lot of energy and is a high-risk investment for citizens. However, since the start of Putin’s war in Ukraine, it is clear that many see bitcoin as a safer bet than the ruble.
There is speculation that Moscow and Russian state businesses may use crypto to get around restrictions imposed by the West. US Senator Elizabeth Warren claimed that “cryptocurrencies run the risk of easing sanctions against Russia, allowing Putin and his allies to escape economic pain.”
While top industry figures have opposed the ban on buying and selling Russians, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao said that although it complies with the law, “we see a distinction between Russian politicians starting a war and ordinary people”. Let’s do, many ordinary Russians do not agree with the war. We are not political, we are against war, but we are here to help people. Despite this, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find an exchange capable of processing Russian plastics Is.
Those who have left and are able to wait out the crisis abroad are well-paid IT specialists who work remotely and were the first to invest in bitcoin. One, Taras, who is half-Ukrainian but grew up outside Moscow, has relocated to the Turkish coastal city of Antalya. “At first I wanted to protest,” he said, “but I realized that I would be arrested, I would lose everything I had, and I would still be in Russia. I never thought that this would happen. But at least I had a plan to get out when it happens.” Those who didn’t think ahead now find themselves in a poorer, sadder and more oppressive country.