Sanctions have little effect on everyday life initially. People can just keep coasting just like the character that ran past the edge of the cliff.

For example why does the average person care if car manufacturing has halted? They have a car already! Chances are that the car they ordered months ago was completed anyway with parts in stock.

It’s when the Kuka robots and Siemens machinery starts breaking down in factories that things start heading downwards.

Still… a downwards trajectory isn’t the same as an instant change! It takes years for the impact to really bite.

Smuggling will help cover some shortages, but at a cost.

Real exchange rates will get increasingly bad.

Russians will simply skip their holidays next year, hold on to their phones and computers a bit longer and live life like normal…

… until they realise they can’t legally enter half the countries in the world, flights are unaffordable and take a route via China, and replacing their dead laptop costs a year’s wages.

Just like the good old communist days Putin longs for.