In early March, as the U.S. and its allies unleashed a wave of sanctions on Russia, President Joe Biden stood in the White House and said they wanted to deal a "powerful blow to Putin’s war machine.”
But as the war in Ukraine approaches its 100th day, that machine is still very much operational. Russia is being propelled by a flood of cash that could average $800 million a day this year — and that's just what the commodity superpower is raking in from oil and gas.
For years, Russia has acted as a vast commodity supermarket selling what an insatiable world has needed: Not just energy, but wheat, nickel, aluminum and palladium. The invasion of Ukraine has pushed the U.S. and the European Union to rethink this relationship. It’s taking time, though the EU took a further step this week by hammering out a compromise agreement on Russian oil imports.
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