The effects of Russian sanctions as portrayed in YouTube videos

Last month American provocateur Tucker Carlson visited a Russian grocery store. Because it was filled to the brim with food, Carlson claims that western sanctions placed on Russia aren't having an effect. "We've been told sanctions on Russia have had a devastating effect on its economy," writes Carlson. "We visited a grocery store in Moscow and found a very different situation."

Tucker Carlson We've been told sanctions on Russia have had a devastating effect on its economy. We visited a grocery store in Moscow and found a very different situation. pic.twitter.com/oPF1WUE6Ec

— 1776 (@TheWakeninq) February 15, 2024

Carlson's video is just one of many in a strange genre of "sanctions aren't working" videos produced by Westerners visiting or living in Russia. (Here is a good rebuttal to Carlson's video by Russian YouTuber NFKRZ.) In another video, Dutch-Canadian farmer Arend Feenstra, who has recently moved to Russia with his wife and nine children, walks through a hardware store full of tools. "Sanctions???" he quips.

Don't let the videos fool you. Sanctions have had a big effect on Russia. And by sanctions I'm referring not only to the official sanctions levied by coalition governments, but also self-sanctions imposed by Western companies. Self-sanctioning occurs when companies like Lego, Coke, or McDonald's choose to leave Russia, not because their government says they must, but because their customers and employees have pressured them to leave, or out of a general sense of solidarity with Ukraine. (Here is a list of companies that have left.)

While Carlson and Feenstra's videos of store shelves suggest prosperity, what they don't show is how many resources Russian businesses have been forced to sacrifice in order to re-order their affairs so as to provide Russians with full shelves. These businesses have had to go out and build new relationships with manufacturers in places like China or Turkey. The alternative products that have been introduced often aren't as good, or as familiar, or as useful to customers. 

Many of the "sanctions don't work" videos spotlight the contraband Western goods that are often found on Russian store shelves. This video, for instance, shows Coke being sold at Spar, a grocery store. Coke is banned in Russia, so the message here is presumably that the sanctions are a waste of time. But what they don't show is that the prices for these contraband goods will be higher than before. The Coke products in the video are no longer made in Russia but must be smuggled in via third-parties such as Poland, Afghanistan, and Kazakhstan, the extra shipping and handling costs being incorporated into their final price. Think of this as a sanctions-induced smuggling tax.

Put differently, coping with sanctions and self-sanctions is costly for Russia; in Carlson's videos we only see the final product, full shelves, but not all the hassle and resources that have gone into producing that state of affairs. Nor is the set of full shelves on display in his video necessarily as desirable as the set of full shelves that existed prior to sanctions.

A much more realistic illustration of the effect of sanction is provided in a recent video by Arend Feenstra, the Dutch-Canadian farmer, of a visit he makes to a Russian tractor dealership.

I watched it so you don't have to. What follows is a quick summary of the relevant bits. It starts out with an excited Feenstra driving out to is what he believes to be a Case/New Holland dealership. Since the Case and New Holland tractor brands are popular in Canada, Feenstra's previous home, he will get to see some brands that he is familiar with. Ah, nostalgia.

(A side note: As a Dutch-Canadian myself, I find it jarring that someone of my ilk has decided to emigrate to Vladimir Putin's Russia. But digging deeper, we learn that Feenstra is a bigot: he doesn't like the LGTBQ community. Given that Russia's regime considers the "international LGBT movement" to be a terrorist organization, I suppose there's a natural fit for folks like him in Russia.)

Unfortunately for Feenstra, when he arrives at the dealership he discovers that it no longer sells Case or New Holland tractors. Both brands of farm equipment are built by CNH, a UK-headquartered equipment manufacturer, and along with most other Western farm companies CNH pulled out of Russia in 2022, effectively ending all its Russian dealership relationships. 

The only new tractors that the dealership has available are Chinese-built YTOs, which the dealership was forced to turn to in 2022 to fill the sudden gap in its show room.We learn in the video that YTOs are a regression in terms of technology. Feenstra points out throughout that the Chinese tractors have less electronics than their western equivalents and more mechanical parts. Instead of electronic shifting, for instance, the YTOs use mechanical shifting. The fuel pumps are mechanical too. It's like stepping back in time.

A regression to mechanical components is a nuissance, but it's not awful. However, things get worse. Enter the triple mower problem.

A tractor with a triple mower

Prior to the sanctions, we learn that the dealership's most popular tractors were larger horsepower products like the New Holland 210. These larger tractors are particularly desired by farmers in the region for their ability to accept an attachment known as a triple mower, says the employee. A triple mower is designed to cut a wider swath of grass or crops compared to a single mower. This allows farmers to cover more ground in less time, improving overall efficiency during harvesting or haymaking operations.

Alas, the Chinese-made YTOs can't use a triple mower, the employee tells us. The dealer is in talks with the manufacturer to make changes to the frame to accommodate them, but there's no indication when this will occur. Feenstra is not impressed by any of this.

Feenstra checking out a YTO tractor

In the meantime, the dealer tells Feenstra that if he needs a new tractor with triple mower compatibility, he will have to import a Western one via the parallel market. This will involve buying a tractor in Europe and sending it through a third-party transit country, like Turkey, then moving it to Russia. But the whole process will be expensive, warns the employee, including paying VAT three times.

Russian farmers who bought New Holland or Case tractors prior to the sanctions are no better off, we learn, because they now face hurdles getting spare parts for their tractors. Prior to the self-sanctions they could rely on the Case/New Holland dealership for a steady supply of Case and New Holland parts, but with the dealer having lost its relationship with CNH, the only way to get parts is by smuggling them in. Alas, smuggling adds uncertainty and a higher price tag.

Another conversation between Feenstra and the employee centres around a piece of machinery known as a baler, which can be attached to the back of a tractor in order to convert a row of hay into a convenient bale. According to the employee there are a number of Russian companies that make balers, but they are "not very good". The video reveals that one Western-made baler brand is available for purchase, a German-made Kuhn. (Is Kuhn one of those rare European farm companies that has chosen not to self sanction?) But the Kuhn baler it is quite expensive, more than the cost of an entire tractor.

Stepping back, Feenstra's video is great illustration of the costs imposed on Russia by sanctions and self-sanctions. The dealership is struggling to fill the void left by departing Western brands. Its customers, Russian farmers, are stuck with the option of an inferior replacement for Western-made tractors, like the YTO, or a more expensive smuggled products. The dealership and its customers seem to be getting by, but they are clearly worse off than before.

Feenstra isn't the only western farmer in Russia to be producing "sanctions don't work" videos. An Australian family that has moved to Russia in order to start a farm also makes YouTube videos on the topic. "So, the sanctions really haven't been bad for Russia," says the family patriarch, John, standing in a Russian mall. "If they have done anything, they have been great for Russia."

But another video (see below) suggests the opposite. In it the Australians are paying a visit to a nearby John Deere tractor dealership. We learn from an employee that this particular dealership is part of a Russian dealership network that, prior to the sanctions, was the largest John Deere distributor in all of Europe. John Deere is a U.S. equipment manufacturer.

Near the start, John optimistically films a large sign boasting the dealership's many relationships with western manufacturers, including JCB, Pottinger, Väderstad and Haybuster. But as he learns later on, the sign is no longer meaningful. Along with most other farm product companies, John Deere and JCB exited Russia in 2022. The dealership has lost its dealer status and can no longer sell either John Deere or JCB products, nor most of the other brands that are advertised on its sign.

To fill the void, the dealership now offers Turkish-made Basak tractors and Chinese-made Noma tractors. An employee who shows the family around the dealership grouses to John about the quality of the Chinese tractors that he stocks, saying: "I don't know what we will do with it, because if I sit inside of the cabin and look down I can see the ground because there in a gap in the floor." The tractor is the technological equivalent of a first generation John Deere, he complains.

Interestingly, the owner of this particular network of Russian dealers, known as EkoNiva-Technika, is based in Germany and produces public financial statements. I dug through the numbers to get a better feel for how the dealership is doing. 

In 2021, prior to self-sanctions, the EkoNiva-Technika dealership network sold 403 tractors. Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and the dealership's sales fell to 263 tractors in 2022. In 2023 it sold just 131 tractors. That's a big fall.

The German parent blames the decline in tractor sales on a "significant drop in demand" for new agricultural machinery by Russian farmers, as well as the loss of its main suppliers, which were replaced by alternatives from China and Turkey whose "products fell far short of the previous sales figures." Meanwhile, the dealer's spare parts business saw a big jump in revenue thanks to an intensification in demand for Western parts and higher parts prices, no doubt due to having to resort to costly transshipment routes. Spare parts have gone from 24% of the dealership network's revenues prior to sanctions to 49% of revenues in 2023.

Back to John, the Australian farmer. When he does eventually buy a tractor, we find out that it's a used Japanese-made Yanmar tractor. All the controls are written in Japanese and he can't read the manual. Compounding matters, Yanmar has officially left Russia, so John will likely find that getting parts is a pain. Again, that's the nuissance of sanctions. Rather than getting the first-best, the only option is often second- or third-best.

John and his new Japanese tractor

Given all the anecdotes I've assembled, what is the bigger picture?

Prior to being sanctioned, Russia's farming sector had evolved towards a particular pattern of specialization and trade comprised of middlemen dealerships, their relationships with Western manufacturers, and the farmers they served. The sanctions (and self-sanctions) immediately upended that pattern, forcing dealers and farmers to undergo a massive and costly recalculation event.

The new pattern of specialization and trade that the Russian farm sector has arrived at doesn't appear to be as good as the initial pattern. 

To begin with, the alternative brands that have filled the void seem to be a downgrade. The Chinese YTOs that the first dealer is selling won't accept a triple mower while the tractors the second dealer stocks have holes in the floors. Spare parts that were once widely available thanks to dealerships' stable relationships with their western suppliers are harder to come by. Dealership resources are now being diverted to smuggling in contraband parts, which means higher prices for farmers. Finally, as suggested by the dealership's financials, farmers are refurbishing old tractors rather than investing in new tractors. This slowdown in capital investment will presumably hurt crop yields in the long term.

In sum, contrary to Tucker's video and many other "sanctions aren't working" videos on YouTube, the videos made by expatriate Canadian and Australian farmers suggest that the opposite: sanction are having an effect. And it isn't a good one.