Over the weekend, Insider published a story on five signs that Russia’s economy is “withering.” The first sign is the collapse of the ruble which hit a 15-month low this month.

The ruble fell as much as 3% to tumble past 93 per dollar, hitting the lowest level since March 2022 and extending its year-to-date losses to 25%…

Political uncertainty over political stability in Russia had already caused the ruble to breach the Kremlin’s own “comfort zone” of around 80-90 per greenback on Wednesday.

Another sign is the collapse of Russian oil exports.

Russia’s Finance Ministry said in June that revenue from oil and gas taxes dropped 36% compared to a year ago, while profits from crude and petroleum products fell 31%.

Before the war, Russia was responsible for almost 40% of the European Union’s natural gas imports, and a quarter of the bloc’s crude oil.

Exports to Europe have dropped 90% but China and India have stepped in to buy up the oil at a discount. But it seems India’s ability to buy Russian oil has peaked and won’t be going any higher this year. Another sign Russia’s economy is struggling involves car sales.

Russia’s car industry — one of the country’s most important sectors — has seen a total collapse, according to Yale School of Management data shared with Insider. Plummeting car sales and a dramatic swing in the type of cars locals now purchase point to broader economic woes and a downward spiral with no end in sight.

Before the invasion, about 100,000 automobiles were sold every month across Russia. But thanks to a combination of soaring prices, deteriorating consumer sentiment, and a lack of supply, sales are hovering at about one quarter of pre-war levels, Yale researchers Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian told Insider on a call Thursday.

“Russians are just buying less cars, period,” Tian said. “That speaks to the weakness of the consumer in Russia. This is as close to a proxy to deteriorating consumer sentiment as there is, and the story it tells is profoundly distressing. Russians just aren’t spending money.”

With all of this bad news, Putin has resorted to a form of theft to try to keep his sputtering economy going. Russia has been seizing the assets of foreign companies and then selling them off to the highest bidder.

The Kremlin’s move to seize the Russian assets of Carlsberg and Danone is Moscow’s most brazen attack yet on foreign firms operating in Russia, and is likely to trigger fresh concern among businesses that have continued operating in the country, experts said.

President Vladimir Putin is handing control of the Russian subsidiaries of French food maker Danone and Danish brewer Carlsberg to regime loyalists, according to local media reports and government corporate registries, in a move that amounts to an expropriation of assets valued at well over $1 billion…

Now that the Kremlin has crossed another threshold by expropriating the Russian operations of two major food-and-drink manufacturers and handing them to Kremlin loyalists, it is unlikely to stop there, experts said.

“The second time you do something suggests it wasn’t a one-off, so everybody has to be worried now,” said Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow for Russia & Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

This is how oligarchs are made. Those with wealth and connections can buy up foreign operations at a steep discount and continue to run them. Putin gets money to fund the war and loyalty from the oligarchs he helped create. The companies whose operations were expropriated get nothing.

The article goes on to note that Putin’s expropriation could backfire. The west has been sitting on $300 billion of frozen Russian assets since the start of the war. Some have pushed for this money to be used to support Ukraine but there was pushback on that from those who felt distributing the funds would invite exactly the kind of expropriation of western investments that is now happening.

“If Russia is going to seize Western corporate assets anyway, or put them under permanent threat, then that undermines the argument that some kind of bargain can be reached between Western assets in Russia and the immobilized central bank assets held in Western financial jurisdictions,” added Gould-Davies.

In short, if Russia isn’t holding back, why should we?