NPR.

This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Daryan Woods.

And today I'm joined by NPR's International Affairs Correspondent, Jackie Northam.

Hey, Daryan, good to be here.

Great to have you too.

And today we're going to talk about sanctions, specifically sanctions against Russia.

And there are a lot of them.

The U.S. and many of its allies have slapped more than 5,000 sanctions on Russia since it invaded Ukraine.

And the breadth of these sanctions is pretty stunning. They're targeting everything

from Russia's energy to its oligarchs. All of this is to try to make it more difficult for the

Kremlin to finance the war. Yeah, and they have had an effect. We're seeing cracks in Russia's economy,

and President Vladimir Putin has had to jack up taxes and interest rates, and hundreds of billions of

dollars have been drained from Russia's foreign currency reserves.

And yet, here we are, three and a half years later, and the war in Ukraine is still grinding

on.

And it turns out that those thousands of sanctions have not brought the Kremlin to its knees. Not at all.

You know, that's because there's a lot of hypocrisy out there. You have countries professing

support for Ukraine, but then turn a blind eye when it comes to things like buying Russian oil

and gas. Yeah, and that Russian oil and gas is going for very cheap these days. It's very

attractive for the buyers.

It sure is.

So today on the show, which countries are playing both sides of the fence?

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