Undoubtedly, the invasion of Russia in Ukraine will negatively impact civilians in Russia no matter the nature of the eventual conflict. With so many sanctions pelted out on Russia, millions of Russians are beginning to feel the effect of Western economic sanctions designed to penalize the country for invading its neighbor, Ukraine. The sanctions now hitting Russia are being described as an economic war, with the sole aim to isolate the country and create a deep recession there.
The sanctions against some Russian banks include cutting them off from Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, and Google pay. Many Russians are predicted to lose their jobs as their economy reels from being cut off from financial markets in the west. It keeps getting worse for Russian citizens. Just recently, accountancy giants KPMG, Deloitte, EY, and PWC have announced that they are stopping operations in Russia amid the ongoing attacks on Ukraine. A lot of companies displeased with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have been scrambling to cut ties with Russia.
Some companies have presently shut down their offices, closed stores, and ended online services or sales in Russia. According to one of the Big 4 KPMG, it issued a statement saying “We believe we have a responsibility, along with other global businesses, to respond to the Russian government’s ongoing military attack on Ukraine. As a result, our Russia and Belarus firms will leave the KPMG network”. They however disclosed that it was a hard decision to take, but this isn’t about them, it is a consequence of the actions of the Russian government.
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Apart from the Big 4 accounting firms leaving Russia, subscription-based streaming service Netflix has also come out to state that it has suspended its service in Russia concerning the circumstances on ground. Also, PayPal has stopped working in Russia as well as Twitch, as they will no longer pay Russian streamers. The citizens are indeed facing it hard lately. While reading some tweets on my Twitter timeline, I came across a Russian tweet where she lamented that her only source of income has been cut off due to the stop of PayPal in their country.
In her words, “so PayPal has stopped working in Russia today and Twitch will no longer pay Russian streamers. Thank you very much for cutting my only source of income. I am sure this will solve all of the world’s problems.” Funny thing is, all these sanctions hurt mostly the ordinary people and not those in power who are the main cause of it. It’s painful to watch innocent Russian civilians get punished for something they have zero control over.
According to Kremlin, they have earlier boasted that Russia expected these latest Sanctions and are ready for them, although it has not said whether businesses will be given extra help, as they were during the pandemic. But ordinary Russians, many of whom get their information from state-controlled television have already started noticing negative differences in their lives. Some Russian companies have started cutting hours of production with some others stopping production, this has however led to the increase of job loss in the country.
