Russian Economy General News: #12

The thing with Tetra Pak is not the product per se. It is the business model. They basically work with the customer and deliver an optimized solution to them. They setup the production line and ensure it works smoothly without the customer having to bother doing it themselves. The container is a laminated product with paper, plastic, metal, etc layers. The way the container is done this depends on the product. Milk and juice containers will have different composition for example. It needs to keep the product shelf stable and have minimum interference with taste.

But this has to be done with attention to costs. Tetra Pak spend more time and resources on optimizing the production line and process of the customer than the packaging itself. Depending on volume and cost they will optimize your production line. Their people work on this judiciously. That is why the competition who mostly focus on packaging innovation typically loses out against them. It is all about customer service. i.e. to the factories. Agile and quick delivery of a packaging solution and constant effort to deliver on changes.

Other companies who think they can just deliver a solution and keep it as is, end up losing against them because of this. Tetra Pak will come in, and change the package, deliver at lower cost or whatever, then steadily raise the prices up. They keep doing this over and over. They do not make packages. They lease and adjust production lines to make packages.

Sberbank announced the dedollarization of deposits of Russians, 15.06.2022.

Sberbank fixes dedollarization of Russians' deposits. This was announced by the first deputy chairman of the board of the credit institution Kirill Tsarev on Wednesday, June 15.

“Four months ago, our share of rubles in the liabilities of individuals was 83%, today it is already about 89%. We are now seeing a certain de-dollarization of the economy and household deposits,” he said in an interview with RIA Novosti on the sidelines of SPIEF.

On June 9, Raiffeisenbank and Tinkoff announced the decision to introduce negative interest rates on foreign currency accounts , RT reports . Rosbank is also going to set a commission for storing dollars and euros, its size may be 0.5% per month of the amount exceeding the limit.

https://iz.ru/1349776/2022-06-15/sberbank-zaiavil-o-dedollarizatcii-vkladov-rossiian

The Russian Central Bank and the finance sector should offer clients securities backed by gold or other precious metals for people who want to hedge against inflation or currency depreciation without using dollars. The use of the dollar needs to be phased out as much as possible. Like I said before, the government should not go into cryptocurrencies, those should not be banned but highly discouraged. The current cryptocurrency technology like Bitcoin is a waste of energy and it gives an advantage to however has the best chip technology. Thus it is a bad idea to go into it. Still, some features of cryptocurrencies like smart contracts might be useful for the banking sector and should be adopted by the Russian fintech sector.

Just more Western countries shooting themselves in the foot again

Carry on

The thing is this.
The whole "Neoliberal"/"Western"/"Capitalist" model supposedly is based around rules.
That you must open your borders. And that "the market finds a "solution" to everything. And if you break the "rules of the market" then you are a wrongdoer and should be "punished" (by the "leader of the free World" ie Uncle Sham).

The final rule is that "intellectual property" (controlled bty Uncle Sham and his minions) must be "respected", even if it means many millions dying because they can't access drugs that cost thousands to buy, but cost virtually nothing to produce.

Once Russia was realigned enough to join the WTO etc, America began rewriting the rules. Or to put it more accurately, smashed the rulebook into smithereens.

But America hasn't thought this out. If one party won't respect the rules. Why should anyone else?

China and Russia should have no problem ignoring the "intellectual property" that is the basis of the American fluff and air economy.

Even the claim US Dollar reserves are "as safe as houses" is a demonstrable lie.

Ultimately the era of American hegemony is over.

Europe needs to wake up and smell the coffee. And start reading up on the "Central Island Theory". The theory that Russia-China-Europe should be a fundamental of the World economy.

America's attempts to avoid a realisation  of the Central Island phenomenon has actually hastened its decline.

Patent protection, which is what the x86 ISA relies upon, "only" lasts 20 years. Any patents for the original 8086 processor design have long since expired. The problem is that they keep adding new instructions and changes to the architecture. So you are trying to hit a moving target. 20 years ago, 2002, is basically before AMD Clawhammer and Sledgehammer with x86-64 came out. So even the 64-bit instructions are still under patent. Without a license you would be restricted to making 32-bit x86 processors.

Now, in the past AMD licensed the x86-64 patents to anyone who wanted them, including VIA and Transmeta. They even licensed Hypertransport, the CPU bus, to anyone who wanted it. But technically you still have to license it. And Intel typically never licenses their technology to anyone, other than AMD, and that is only after a long history of lawsuits. Intel and AMD got a patent crosslicensing deal which means they can use each other's patents. Intel tried cutting AMD out of the cross licensing deal around the time the Itanium came out. Itanium was supposed to be a ploy to cut AMD and the RISC vendors like SPARC, MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC out of the market. But AMD came up with x86-64. And Microsoft basically forced Intel into adopting x86-64. Microsoft told Intel they would not support any more x86 ISAs and though luck. So Intel had to license it and renew the patent cross-licensing deal.

For example we all remember how CPU prices crashed around the time Doom 2 came out. What a lot of people do not remember is that PC prices crashed because that was roughly when AMD put their 486 clones into the market and CPU prices crashed. For a long time AMD could only make Intel 286 copies. And after the 486, they had to make their own CPU designs, and could not just copy the design Intel made. For example Intel introduced the 386 in 1985, but AMD could only release the Am386 in 1991, after a really long court battle with Intel. Between 1985 and 1991 the prices of 386s were ridiculous. I still remember that. There were all sorts of shenenigans involved.

The fact x86 clones even exist is because when IBM made the IBM PC they forced Intel to license production of its chip designs to a slew of companies back then as second sources. These included AMD, National Semiconductor, and other companies. Cyrix got around Intel patents by making their chips at National Semiconductor or IBM fabs. Back then chips were highly unreliable to produce. And IBM typically didn't want to be restricted to single vendors for anything. However with the 386 Intel tried to squirm out of the deal by claiming the license did not cover the microcode. The microcode is covered by copyright, just like source code, not by patents like hardware. Copyright, unlike patents, lasts for lifetime of author + 80 years. Basically forever. Microcode is basically software built into the processor which might be used to work around bugs in the hardware or implement more complex instructions without functional units for them. AMD came up with its own microcode but had to battle Intel years in court to be able to sell their processors. To cut out AMD from being able to continue making copies of Intel CPU designs, Intel basically renamed the 586 as the Pentium. Since the license only covered x86 and its derivatives, by claiming the "Pentium" was not a x86 derivative, Intel got out of the original deal. Just a bunch of lawfare.

Zhaoxin is using a license belonging to VIA, which inherited its license from Cyrix. This was done via a US court order after a prolonged battles. But this license I think it expired like last year. So they are also screwed. Because you can bet Intel and AMD will keep adding more instructions to x86.

I know this IP regime sucks. But it is pretty important for Russia to continue with this charade. Just remember that without playing by these rules, you will be left out of the Western tech transfer pool, and this is something which severely hurt the Soviet Union in the long run. You can mitigate the worst of these effects by weakening IP law without removing it altogether. For example India used to have more related patent law for medicine. Until like 30 years ago you could not be penalized for copying software in Nordic countries. And a lot of countries want to put consumer protection laws, like right to repair, where an owner of a piece of hardware without technical support can break whatever patents or copyright the hardware has to keep it operational. I think Russia needs to be smart and relax the law without removing it completely.

The problem is you do that, start copying Western IP without license, and then your own research or development stagnates.
Because it is much easier to copy you never develop your own stuff. Then when Russia gets back into the market, they can't sell any of the infringing stuff in the global market and they get cut out of it. Which is what happened to the Soviet semi industry for example. I honestly do not know what is the big deal about x86 in the first place. Russia does not need it.

Any such infringing products will be unsalable outside Russia, Syria, Iran, and North Korea. Such is the way the global IP protection racket works. That alone is enough reason not to do it unless said product is necessary for strategic reasons i.e. the military.

And like I said I see no reason to infringe on these patents in the first place. Just think about it. How many things developed in the last 20 years do you really need for civilization to work? Would you be dismayed by going back to 2002?

https://tass.com/economy/1466295

Four more countries may soon accept Russia’s Mir payment card — Bank of Russia

Currently, Mir cards are accepted in 10 foreign countries: Turkey, Vietnam, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, South Ossetia and Abkhazia

https://tass.com/economy/1467541

Putin suggests launching industrial mortgage for companies at 5% per annum

"I suggest launching a fundamentally new instrument for the domestic business to be able to quickly start making required products - the industrial mortgage. This refers to new long-term loans at the rate of 5% per annum," Putin said.

From the Kremlin web page:

St Petersburg International Economic Forum Plenary session
The President attended the plenary session of the 25th St Petersburg International Economic Forum.


Plenary session moderator Margarita Simonyan: Good afternoon, or almost evening.

As you may know, we had a minor technical issue. Thankfully, it has been dealt with quickly. We are grateful to those who resolved this.

We are also grateful to the audience.

We are grateful to our leader, President Vladimir Putin, for traditionally fitting this forum into his schedule so that he can tell us about economic prospects and other plans.

We are grateful to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev for attending our forum. We know that it is not an easy thing to do. Thank you for supporting our forum and our country. We really appreciate this.

We will have a lot of questions today. You may not like some of them, and I may not be happy to ask some of them. We would be much happier to speak only about good things, but this is impossible today.

Mr President, I would like to ask you to take the stand and to tell us what lies in store for us all. Thank you.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Thank you very much. President Tokayev, friends and colleagues,

I welcome all participants and guests of the 25th St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

It is taking place at a difficult time for the international community when the economy, markets and the very principles of the global economic system have taken a blow. Many trade, industrial and logistics chains, which were dislocated by the pandemic, have been subjected to new tests. Moreover, such fundamental business notions as business reputation, the inviolability of property and trust in global currencies have been seriously damaged. Regrettably, they have been undermined by our Western partners, who have done this deliberately, for the sake of their ambitions and in order to preserve obsolete geopolitical illusions.

Today, our – when I say “our,” I mean the Russian leadership – our own view of the global economic situation. I would like to speak in greater depth about the actions Russia is taking in these conditions and how it plans to develop in these dynamically changing circumstances.

When I spoke at the Davos Forum a year and a half ago, I also stressed that the era of a unipolar world order has come to an end. I want to start with this, as there is no way around it. This era has ended despite all the attempts to maintain and preserve it at all costs. Change is a natural process of history, as it is difficult to reconcile the diversity of civilisations and the richness of cultures on the planet with political, economic or other stereotypes – these do not work here, they are imposed by one centre in a rough and no-compromise manner.

The flaw is in the concept itself, as the concept says there is one, albeit strong, power with a limited circle of close allies, or, as they say, countries with granted access, and all business practices and international relations, when it is convenient, are interpreted solely in the interests of this power. They essentially work in one direction in a zero-sum game. A world built on a doctrine of this kind is definitely unstable.

After declaring victory in the Cold War, the United States proclaimed itself to be God’s messenger on Earth, without any obligations and only interests which were declared sacred. They seem to ignore the fact that in the past decades, new powerful and increasingly assertive centres have been formed. Each of them develops its own political system and public institutions according to its own model of economic growth and, naturally, has the right to protect them and to secure national sovereignty.

These are objective processes and genuinely revolutionary tectonic shifts in geopolitics, the global economy and technology, in the entire system of international relations, where the role of dynamic and potentially strong countries and regions is substantially growing. It is no longer possible to ignore their interests.

To reiterate, these changes are fundamental, groundbreaking and rigorous. It would be a mistake to assume that at a time of turbulent change, one can simply sit it out or wait it out until everything gets back on track and becomes what it was before. It will not.

However, the ruling elite of some Western states seem to be harbouring this kind of illusions. They refuse to notice obvious things, stubbornly clinging to the shadows of the past. For example, they seem to believe that the dominance of the West in global politics and the economy is an unchanging, eternal value. Nothing lasts forever.

Our colleagues are not just denying reality. More than that; they are trying to reverse the course of history. They seem to think in terms of the past century. They are still influenced by their own misconceptions about countries outside the so-called “golden billion”: they consider everything a backwater, or their backyard. They still treat them like colonies, and the people living there, like second-class people, because they consider themselves exceptional. If they are exceptional, that means everyone else is second rate.

Thereby, the irrepressible urge to punish, to economically crush anyone who does not fit with the mainstream, does not want to blindly obey. Moreover, they crudely and shamelessly impose their ethics, their views on culture and ideas about history, sometimes questioning the sovereignty and integrity of states, and threatening their very existence. Suffice it to recall what happened in Yugoslavia, Syria, Libya and Iraq.

If some “rebel” state cannot be suppressed or pacified, they try to isolate that state, or “cancel” it, to use their modern term. Everything goes, even sports, the Olympics, bans on culture and art masterpieces just because their creators come from the “wrong” country.

This is the nature of the current round of Russophobia in the West, and the insane sanctions against Russia. They are crazy and, I would say, thoughtless. They are unprecedented in the number of them or the pace the West churns them out at.

The idea was clear as day – they expected to suddenly and violently crush the Russian economy, to hit Russia’s industry, finance, and people's living standards by destroying business chains, forcibly recalling Western companies from the Russian market, and freezing Russian assets.

This did not work. Obviously, it did not work out; it did not happen. Russian entrepreneurs and authorities have acted in a collected and professional manner, and Russians have shown solidarity and responsibility.

Step by step, we will normalise the economic situation. We have stabilised the financial markets, the banking system and the trade network. Now we are busy saturating the economy with liquidity and working capital to maintain the stable operation of enterprises and companies, employment and jobs.

The dire forecasts for the prospects of the Russian economy, which were made in early spring, have not materialised. It is clear why this propaganda campaign was fuelled and all the predictions of the dollar at 200 rubles and the collapse of our economy were made. This was and remains an instrument in an information struggle and a factor of psychological influence on Russian society and domestic business circles.

Incidentally, some of our analysts gave in to this external pressure and based their forecasts on the inevitable collapse of the Russian economy and a critical weakening of the national currency – the ruble.

Real life has belied these predictions. However, I would like to emphasise that to continue being successful, we must be explicitly honest and realistic in assessing the situation, be independent in reaching conclusions, and of course, have a can-do spirit, which is very important. We are strong people and can deal with any challenge. Like our predecessors, we can resolve any task. The entire thousand-year history of our country bears this out.

Within just three months of the massive package of sanctions, we have suppressed inflation rate spikes. As you know, after peaking at 17.8 percent, inflation now stands at 16.7 percent and continues dropping. This economic dynamic is being stabilised, and state finances are now sustainable. I will compare this to other regions further on. Yes, even this figure is too much for us – 16.7 percent is high inflation. We must and will work on this and, I am sure, we will achieve a positive result.

After the first five months of this year, the federal budget has a surplus of 1.5 trillion rubles and the consolidated budget – a surplus of 3.3 trillion rubles. In May alone, the federal budget surplus reached almost half a trillion rubles, surpassing the figure for May 2021 more than four times over.

Today, our job us to create conditions for building up production and increasing supply in the domestic market, as well as restoring demand and bank financing in the economy commensurately with the growth in supply.

I mentioned that we have taken measures to reestablish the floating assets of companies. In most sectors, businesses have received the right to suspend insurance premiums for the second quarter of the year. Industrial companies have even more opportunities – they will be able to delay them through the third quarter as well. In effect, this is like getting an interest-free loan from the state.

In the future, companies will not have to pay delayed insurance premiums in a single payment. They will be able to pay them in equal installments over 12 months, starting in June next year.

Putin proposed launching industrial mortgages at 5% per annum. Vedomosti. 18.06.2022.

Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed launching an industrial mortgage at 5% per annum. Enterprises that are ready to build new production facilities will receive the right to such a mortgage, the head of state said in his speech at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum ( SPIEF ).

According to the head of state, in order to increase the production of domestic industrial products of mechanical engineering, service equipment, and household appliances, it is necessary to create comfortable conditions for the operation of enterprises and ensure the availability of production sites.

“I propose to launch a fundamentally new instrument: industrial mortgage. We are talking about preferential long-term loans at a rate of 5% per annum. Enterprises that plan to buy ready-made areas for production will be eligible for such loans. I ask the government to work out all the details with the Russian banking sector without delay, so that industrial mortgages will work in full in the near future,” Putin said.

The head of state also asked the government to present the key parameters of the new mode of operation of industrial clusters by autumn. Putin noted that manufacturers in industrial clusters should receive preferential loans.

“What is important here? Financing. Projects launched in such clusters must receive a long-term loan resource for up to 10 years and at a rate of no more than 7% per annum. We discussed all these issues with our economic bloc - everyone agrees. We will do it,” the head of state said. The second point of the favorable functioning of industrial clusters, Putin called taxation.

“It is necessary to ensure a low level of taxation, conditionally constant taxes, including insurance premiums,” the president said. The third area of ​​support for industry, he called the state's efforts to provide support "at the starting stage."

“Formation of a package of orders, including the provision of subsidies for the purchase of finished products of such enterprises,” the president said. Another item related to industrial clusters, Putin called simplified administration, "including a minimum or complete absence of inspections." According to the president, industrial clusters should start operating from January 1, 2023.

Earlier today, Putin said that he considers it possible to reduce the rate on the main mortgage program with state support from 9 to 7%. At the same time, the duration of the program remains the same - until the end of this year. VTB and Sberbank have already promptly responded to the proposal of the head of state to reduce the rate on subsidized mortgages to 7% per annum in rubles.

https://www.vedomosti.ru/economics/news/2022/06/17/927197-putin-predlozhil-zapustit-promishlennuyu-ipoteku-po-5-godovih

That's all fine and should be beneficial. Their main work in macro economical framework should be around weakening ruble. In ideal world, that would be via lowering interest rates to, at least, 5% in mid term. Too strong ruble could posses a threat to nonenergy exports. It would produce, so called, "Dutch disease" effect on economy. Ruble around 70 should make them much more comfortable. Another thing to watch is too look at imports and their recovery from current, depressed, levels.

Crisis Decades in the Making: Why Fed's Rate Hikes Can't Save the Day for US Economy, by Ekaterina Blinova for Sputnik news. 18.06.2022.

On June 15, the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates by a whopping 0.75 percentage points. The largest hike since 1994. However, the Fed has signaled that it will continue lifting rates to at least 3 percent this year, regardless of recession fears, as inflation rages in the US.

Tom Luongo, a financial and political commentator, argues that the Fed has no other alternative but to opt for aggressive hikes, as it has to "reverse the mess created by Congress and US politicians since the 2008 financial crisis."

"The US economy is a mess because of years of zero-bound rates," says the commentator. "The bust that the Fed is engineering is the cure for the disease of malinvested capital because of [former chairs of the Federal Reserve] Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke’s horrendous policies which allowed Congress to run up a massive debt which cannot, in most versions of reality, ever be paid back."

According to Luongo, the unfolding crisis was "manufactured" by the US political leadership, which stepped up spending and funneled billions to fund wars as inflation and the national debt continued to rise.

"Biden and his merry band of vandals want to remake the US economy into something less efficient and driven by their Climate Change ideology which is a cover for destroying all vestiges of capitalism via commercial banking in the US, if not the entire world," argues the financial commentator.

Alarm bells over inflation started to ring in autumn 2021, but the early warning signs were ignored. In September 2021, inflation barely registered as a top concern, but the next month consumer prices went up, with inflation hitting a 31-year high. The Fed had long shrugged off the disturbing trend as a "temporary" matter. However, at the November 2021 meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the officials admitted that inflation was intense and could be long-lasting.

The January 2022 Consumer Prices Index (CPI) indicated that year-over-year inflation rose to 7.5 percent, its highest rate in 40 years, and continued to rise, prompting the Fed to start gradual interest hikes in March 2022.

"The common tendency is to think of inflation as caused by too much money," says Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, US economist and ex-assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. "In this way of thinking, the reason to raise interest rates is to make credit more expensive, thus causing less demand for loans and in this way reducing the growth of the money supply which, in turn, reduces inflation."

While it is true that the US has had amazing money growth, very little of this money got into consumer prices, according to Dr. Roberts. In fact, the Fed created trillions of dollars (QE, Quantitative Easing) to bail out large banks from their bad investments.

The Fed-generated money didn't find its way into consumer prices but the prices of financial assets, such as stock and bond prices, and real estate prices, according to the former Treasury official. As a result, home prices were driven up, but low interest rates lowered the carrying cost of mortgages.

"The current 0.75 or three-quarters of one percent rise in interest rates cannot impact an inflation rate of 8, 10, or 12 percent. The real rate of return on debt instruments is hugely negative," argues Dr. Roberts.

According to the economist, the principal effect of the Fed's interest rate rise will be to price some home purchasers out of the mortgage market, and enable private capital companies to acquire homes for rental income.

"The result is to reduce US home ownership, to increase rental income to the rich, and to deprive citizens of the main source of middle class wealth accumulation – the rise in housing values," he says. "In other words, the Fed's policy is just another attack on the middle class, further reducing its numbers and thus consolidating more power in the hands of the rich."

Yet another effect of higher interest rates is the curtailment of liquidity, according to Dr. Roberts. The equity and debt (stock and bond) markets rise with liquidity and decline when it's curtailed, the Fed's current policy will send stock and bond prices down and paper wealth will be reduced with their fall. Dr. Roberts warns this causes losses to pension funds, thus endangering pensioners' prospects, adding that the loss of wealth, in its turn, reduces consumer expenditures.

"This is another factor in addition to the higher consumer prices in curtailing consumer spending, thus placing the economy into recession," he remarks.

"The open question is whether the large banks are now strong enough or whether they will be endangered by the decline in paper wealth," says Dr. Roberts. "A few years ago the Fed tried tightening and had to abandon the attempt. This time the Fed might stay with it."

According to the former Reagan official, the Fed's policy signals that the US "ruling elite" has decided that "Biden has to go": "Inflation and unemployment are efficient means for the monied elite to get rid of a president," he says. "The Fed, of course, is the servant of the monied elite."

"Western World Committed Economic Suicide'
Galloping inflation threatens to deprive the Democratic Party of its slim congressional majorities in the House and the Senate in the upcoming November midterms. Meanwhile, 95% of registered American voters say that inflation is a "serious issue", according to a May poll conducted by Harvard CAPS-Harris. For their part, researchers behind the GenForward project at the University of Chicago found that inflation is now the greatest concern among American voters and may play a crucial role during the forthcoming elections.

US President Joe Biden has repeatedly tried to publicly shift the blame for the raging inflation on Russia, the US oil industry, and the Federal Reserve, stressing that it's up to the latter to tame inflation. However, the plurality of American voters believes that the Biden administration is responsible for the unfolding situation, surveys show.

The Biden administration did a lot to upend the US economic growth and drag the country into the inflation abyss, according to Dr. Roberts.

"There is another way to think about inflation – an insufficiency of supply," he explains. "Two major events have reduced supply relative to demand. The Biden regime's COVID lockdowns stopped much production, destroyed supply chains, and resulted in the permanent closing of many businesses. On top of this supply reduction, the Biden regime's sanctions against Russia and the world further reduced supply by prohibiting existing business relationships. Thus, supply has had two major reductions. Moreover, higher interest rates themselves raise costs, thus further restricting supply."

However, it's not only Biden's fault but decades of self-harming policies by the US ruling elite that inflicted damage on the US economy, according to the former official. The crux of the matter is that "for the past 25 or 30 years US manufacturers seeking lower labor and regulatory compliance costs moved their production for the US economy offshore to Asia, principally China," he notes.

"To move production for your own consumers to another country is an insane policy," Dr. Roberts says. "But Washington is prone to insane policies, and we are now paying the consequences."

According to the economist, high value-added, high productivity jobs were moved offshore at far lower costs, thus raising the profits and share values of offshoring corporations, but reducing the income growth of the working population.

"'Globalism' was a cover for this desertion of American workers and the tax bases of cities and states, which to survive began selling off public assets to private interests," the former Reagan official stresses. "The question before the US is: 'How does a country recover when it has placed so many of its own high income jobs into the economies of foreign countries?' As far as I can tell, the Western world has committed economic suicide."

https://sputniknews.com/20220618/crisis-decades-in-the-making-why-feds-rate-hikes-cant-save-the-day-for-us-economy--1096440903.html

GarryB wrote:@caveat emptor

I agree with your post except the last line...

If they want a weaker ruble then why would they want to increase imports... a weaker ruble will make imports even less desirable because they will be more expensive.

Raising imports will point to establishing new supply chains for the economy. For example, in case of Lada Granta, they'll have to bring back ABS, power steering and whatever else is missing atm. They can't replace and start to produce everything , especially, not in short and mid term. Raising imports will point to that. Also, it would weaken ruble somewhat due to less positive current account.
There are good and bad imports. Electronics, machinery, medications, components for industry, some food will have to be imported. Normalised Russian imports before the war amounted to about $400 bn. Currently, they are very depressed. As they are finding alternatives, raising imports will point to that.