From The Christian Science Monitor
Why Russia isn’t flinching at snowballing US sanctions
Russians have been living with escalating US sanctions for more than four years. For many, it's become a dismal fact of life, like the Moscow weather.
And this week, a new wave of US sanctions hit Russia, with more in the pipeline. But while there's little sign that the American deluge will abate any time soon, Russia seems to be better prepared than ever before to weather the storm.
Many things have changed since the United States and its Western allies imposed comprehensive economic measures against Russia's Kremlin-friendly oligarchs and state corporations back in 2014. Those were meant to
punish Moscow for its annexation of Crimea and force it to change its behavior in Ukraine, and the Europeans remain on board.
But the US is basically going it alone with its new sanctions, which seem aimed at a wide variety of alleged Russian misdeeds. The latest salvo bans certain technology exports to Russia over
the attempted nerve gas poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England last March. It also promises much tougher measures if Russia doesn't certify that it has stopped using chemical weapons and allow on-the-ground inspections by November.
A more serious battery of measures, which aims to punish Russia for its alleged election interference in the US, is pending. It would block US investments in Russian energy projects and effectively ban major Russian banks from conducting transactions in US dollars. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has admitted those measures might really hurt, calling them “a declaration of economic war” against Russia.
COMMENT:-
For some reason "Do what we tell you to do, OR ELSE!" doesn't appear to be working as well these days as it did when the US was (effectively) the world's only economic superpower.
There is no doubt that the Grade Six bully can beat up the individual kids in Grade Three.
On the other hand, ALL of the kids in Grade Three can __[fill in the blank]__ out of the Grade Six bully if they act in concert.
This is why the Grade Six bully prefers "bilateral" relations with the kids in Grade Three rather than "multilateral" ones.