The big question, though, is with sanctions imposed by the West and there have been a series of them. Will they actually do some serious damage? At the moment, it has not deterred Vladimir Putin, who is making Kim Jong Un of North Korea look positively Nobel Peace Prize worthy. That's exactly of what Putin is doing. So let's take a look at what these sanctions are and what exactly, potentially they could do to Russia and its economy. So, firstly, we know that the assets of Russia's central bank have been frozen. The central bank has some $600 billion in reserves now. Most of that money cannot be accessed by Russia because it is in foreign currency. Major Russian banks have been banned by the US The UK are the European Union from what is known as the Swift Financial Messaging services, which which basically means that Russian banks of people, businesses, et cetera will find it very, very difficult, very, very slow to conduct financial transactions in the world market. It also slow payments to Russia for oil and gas exports, which is really there. USP businesses from these different Western countries have been banned from dealing with Russia's central bank. Assets of wealthy Russians are including Putin himself have been frozen. European Union airspace. American airspace has been banned for Russian jets, including the private jets of those oligarchs who have those fancy planes. Switzerland, which is neutral. They have also adopted these you sanctions against Russia, which is sort of completely unexpected. The result of that already is that the Russian ruble has crashed. Our inflation within Russia may rise to 70%. So this clearly stress on the Russian economy as a result of this. But there are some loopholes is well because these sanctions have clearly avoided Russia's energy sector. Russia is a key supplier of energy, of oil and gas to the rest of the world to Europe, et cetera. And so therefore, these countries are very careful in not directly targeting this particular our sector are in Russia. Also do politically. The question is whether this will drive Russia into the arms of China. It's already moving much closer to Beijing and is it going to sort of facilitate that a much, much faster
