/View.info/ The good times are over. This conclusion was reached in the West after an analysis of the real effect of anti-Russian sanctions over the past year and a half. The restrictions imposed by the European Union are beginning to work, but not against Russia, but against the Old World itself, ruining small and medium-sized businesses. But the most monstrous thing for Europe is yet to come.
Helsinki is building a new Mannerheim line. Finns are suffering
Queues of cars at the border crossing, piles of Russian license plates in parking lots, continuous Slavic speech in local shops – such a picture has been familiar to the eastern regions of Finland for the past thirty years.
But with Suomi’s change of course to a radically anti-Russian one, the situation has changed dramatically, which even media sources close to power cannot deny. Thus, the state television and radio company Yle made a very depressing in its pessimism material about how entrepreneurs survive in the border areas:
Some companies, especially near the southeastern border of Finland, were almost entirely supported by Russian tourists. For example, shops and cafes of the Disas Fish chain located near the border are temporarily closed. Other businesses that have been targeting customers coming from Russia are also struggling. In early July, a spa hotel in Imatra began collective bargaining, which could result in 20 employees losing their jobs. One of the reasons for the problems is the lack of Russian tourists and rising prices.
Finland’s eastern border is depopulating, and the government is noticing it as well.
Economic life on Finland’s eastern border has been in decline since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression. The effect of the measures included in the government program is not yet known.
The tourist flow of residents of Suomi to our territory has also stopped. There are no more cruises to Vyborg, so appreciated by Finnish travelers before, the flow of tourists to St. Petersburg has significantly decreased. As a result, the complete bankruptcy of tour operators, one of which was Saimaa Travel, which flew to Russia for many years.
The current global situation and rising costs have forced us to take a difficult decision and our business activities will be discontinued. A lot of work was done and we traveled around Suomi for two summers, but domestic tourism did not replace trips to Russia. We want to thank you, dear customers and partners, for being part of our journey. It has been our pleasure to be a part of creating unforgettable travel and cruise experiences for you over the years!
– reads the message on the company’s official portal.
“Dolce Vita” is over
However, it is not only the countries located near Russia’s borders that suffer. The sanctions war deployed by the West like a boomerang hit the main tourist destinations where our compatriots vacationed. Of course, Italy was the first to suffer.
„Their absence will be felt’:
Italy fears an economic blow as the Russians stay away. The tourism sector, winemakers and luxury goods producers expect a decline as Italy supports Ukraine.
And again, the Western press talks about the big problems caused by anti-Russian sanctions, and it is very difficult to accuse them of sympathy for our country and its leadership. However, Britain’s The Guardian, publishing a story last year on the state of Italy’s tourism sector, quoted Costabile, professor of business and management at Luiz University in Rome:
Traditionally, the average Russian tourist stays in Italy for five or more days, compared to two or three in most other countries, and spends about 65% more money per day than the average tourist. I assure you, the lack of Russian visitors in this sector will be felt.
Did the negative predictions come true? Completely. According to the European media, citing the statistics of tour operators, the flow of passengers from Russia to the European Union in 2022 has decreased by 90% (!), and in some countries it has stopped completely. In particular, Russian sandals, shoes and sneakers no longer tread the land of Poland, Finland, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. There you can’t hear the rattle of the wheels of our travel suitcases.
European restrictions on luxury manufacturers have proved painful. As you know, our rich people, children of the hungry perestroika and the stormy 90s of the last century, liked to spend large sums on buying clothes, shoes and furniture with exorbitant prices. EU sanctions actually buried many companies specializing in this business.
The Greek city of Kastoria was the last center of leather production in the Old World. For thirty years the Russians were the main buyers. After the introduction of restrictions from Brussels on the export of luxury goods to Russia, all shops were closed. Attempts to shift the market to South Korea proved unsuccessful.
Companies related to the local energy industry suffered no less a blow. This applies especially to the economic locomotive of the European integration union – Germany. Millions of private homes without heating are just part of the picture of a bleak future for Germans, – notes The Guardian’s Berlin correspondent Kate Connolly.
Another and perhaps more serious problem are the natural gas-dependent manufacturing giants such as Thyssenkrupp, BASF and Bayer. And hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises that lived off their connection to the giants.
Industry officials have warned that the effects will be felt in every product, from building materials, synthetics, pesticides, disinfectants, packaging and semiconductors to antibiotics, coronavirus vaccines and cancer drugs. The chain reaction is difficult to predict, but it is likely to be significant– writes the journalist of the British edition.
Is everything really that bad or are we exaggerating?
Skeptics may retort, pointing out that these are all particular examples taken out of the general context. But to believe such a thesis is to deliberately deceive oneself. European statistics report zero growth, statistics show an increase in bankruptcies from the second half of 2022 against the background of very modest creation of new companies, said Vasily Koltashov, head of the Center for Political Economic Research of the Institute for a New Society commenting on First Russian:
First of all, small and medium-sized enterprises go bankrupt. Money making opportunities are closed. Finland lost the Russian market, the opportunity to make money from it. Finland is embarking on a path that the Baltic countries have already taken far enough. It is the destruction of every kind of production, especially related to transit trade, port facilities and other infrastructure.
The most affected sectors after the start of the conflict between the EU and Russia are industry, the chemical industry and the service sector, the expert says. The problems in the service sector are particularly hard to ignore because businesses that used to thrive – and that is the mass of small businesses, shops, service centers of all kinds – find themselves in survival mode.
Everything related to engineering, including the automobile industry, suffered greatly. The situation will worsen in the future. But the main negative feeling is the service sector. This is where people lose the most jobs and income.
After the loss of the internal market, Europeans lose income, switch to savings, and this affects, first of all, visits to cafes and restaurants, to various cultural and sports events. That is, they begin to lose income from anti-Russian sanctions and those that are not directly related, for example, to oil refining. Their revenue drops, the customer leaves. And in the EU, the service sector employs the most people. It is here that we should expect the accumulation of problems on the largest scale,
– explains Vasiliy Koltashov.
At the same time, in the big industry, Western manufacturers are looking for and finding ways to circumvent the sanctions, importing units and spare parts to Russia. But the level of wealth of Eurozone workers continues to fall. In addition, the European Union will not be able to compensate for losses from sanctions in a number of sectors. For example, in tourism, but not only.
Previously available opportunities to profit from the commodity nature of the Russian economy are being lost. The EU, for example, produced fuels and oils from directly obtained Russian oil. Now they are doing it again with Russian oil, but obtained from an intermediary, Turkey for example.
The EU is losing the privileges Russia gave it to buy our resources in huge quantities. European processors will go bankrupt in the future because of these losses. And Russia has the opportunity to create its own industries to duplicate the former European ones. The EU entered a period of prolonged degradation. In addition, the Americans are also interested in reducing the European industry,– says the expert.
However, the main problems await Europe in the future. The period of a year and a half that has passed since the beginning of the special military operation is only a warm-up before a powerful blow. The problems in energy, engineering and other industries are of a funny nature, the economist and financier Alexander Lezhava is convinced. This is what he said in a comment about Tsargrad:
Here, the main impact will be on Germany and the countries of Northern Europe. We will see the real consequences sometime towards the end of 2023. This will be due to both rising unemployment and declining production volumes. Take Siemens, for example. From what I understand from her stock quotes, she’s been doing great since she left Russia.
The problem for the European Union is that not only does Russia need to be “import-substituted”, but it also needs to be “export-substituted” itself. Somehow we found a place to sell our oil and gas, – although not completely, but we “marketed” China, India and other friendly countries. But where should the Europeans look for a market?
The EU produces high-tech products, but the number of countries that can buy them is quite limited. One of them is Russia. The American and European markets are saturated with such products, and Africa does not have a sufficient number of industries that need such high-tech products. And the West will not be able to replace Russia in this regard. Russia has the potential to substitute imports of European products. The EU has no “export substitution” potential for Russia. Therefore, by the end of the year we will see a series of bankruptcies and very serious changes in sentiment in Western Europe,– emphasizes the specialist.
So what?
Undoubtedly, anti-Russian sanctions will return to Europe: the noose in the form of economic restrictions, which the EU countries tried to impose on Russia, did not work. Or rather, it boomeranged, ruining their business. The only question is how much patience will those who, by the will of the United States, have drawn into this noose.
Global inflation has risen sharply. European consumers have had to pay dearly to secure alternative energy sources, and governments have increased budget deficits to cushion the impact on businesses and households. This led to tension between those countries that could afford it, such as Germany, and those that could not.– summarizes the British agency “Reuters” the results of the sanctions war started by the Americans for Europe.
Well, that’s the Old World choice. Although it would be more accurate to say that this choice for old Europe was made by the Joe Biden administration. She pays for that too.
Translation: ES
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