The sanctions on Russia have been pretty brutal. The ruble is down 92 per cent against the euro, most international payments have stopped, container ships aren’t sailing, its central bank can’t sell its reserves, there are queues at ATMs, foreign assets have been frozen, a Ukrainian sailor even tried to scuttle his Russian boss’s yacht. These sanctions are tougher than Putin will have expected. They’re tougher than most people expected when the invasion started on Friday. But the EU, to its credit, discovered its backbone. What’s striking is that, for all the pain being inflicted on Russia, European and American markets have taken all this in…

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