Welcome back to the podcast, Bride, Swindler Steel.

I'm Alexandra Ragi, and today we're talking about the shifting landscape, sanctions, and due diligence in Russia and the former Soviet republics.

My guest is Pavel Wierknyatsky, and he is based in Kiev, where he is the

managing partner of COSA solutions with particular expertise in sophisticated due diligence

and cross-border investigations. Pavel, thank you for joining me.

Thank you, Alexandra. Thanks for this invitation. Nice to be here.

I realize that your focus is broader than this, but today I'd really like to focus on Russia.

Are international sanctions working?

Well, that is a great question, Alexandra.

And despite the fact that many people expected Russian economy to collapse due to the sanctions,

realistically, most of the experts in the field

realized that that would not happen, at least that would not happen that quickly. Moreover, the aim of the

sanctions is not to destroy the Russian economy totally. That's simply not that easy in the first place with such a large

country and a country that has certain allies that could support its well-being for a while.

But the main idea was to slow down and disrupt Russia's capability to wage the war against Ukraine and actually other potential wars.

In this aspect, I think that the sanctions were quite successful since, for example,

military-related components and critical resources that Russia sourced from around the world, including

Western states, has significantly decreased and became much more costly. So the cost of war for

Russia is rising. Secondly, the revenues from the main product, Russia benefits from,

oil and gas, it has significantly decreased as well. By significantly, I mean that it decreased,

but due to the fact that Russia is a huge percentage is reliant on the oil and gas and other natural resources,

the overall economy has definitely suffered from the loss of the European market in the first place.

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