One of Russia’s toxic TV presenters recently cackled that Western sanctions ‘have only helped Russia wean itself off dependence on foreign imports and given a boost to our own producers’. At a time when Russia’s third quarter growth has actually exceeded expectations, hitting 5.5 per cent, it is worth noting what sanctions can and cannot do. The bottom line is that sanctions have not failed – but were never going to be the silver bullet solution to Kremlin aggression some claimed at the start.

As in so many aspects of the West’s response to the 2022 Ukraine invasion, unrealistic early boosterism has led to subsequent, and arguably equally unrealistic, despondency. Daleep Singh, US deputy national security adviser for international economics, had claimed that the Russian economy would quickly be in ‘freefall’. Certainly there was a serious initial impact: Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov recently admitted that ‘there was a threat of a collapse, we really had to mobilise all resources and internal forces in order to prevent this collapse’. But Russia’s technocrats have proven themselves rather more competent than its generals, and although no one had anticipated the scale of the Western response, they had been wargaming such a situation for years.

This is the point: sanctions are adding costs and bottlenecks to the Russian war economy

As things stand, the Russian economy seems to be doing inordinately well. Even though this year’s massively-increased defence spending may account for a third of the federal budget, the economy could grow by 3 per cent this year, even above of the 2.2 per cent the International Monetary Fund anticipates.

Much of this growth, however, is down to ‘military Keynesianism’ – the massively increased spending on the war. There have also been all sorts of indirect effects, with salaries inflated by the need to lure more workers into the factories, to the way the substantial bonuses paid to the families of fallen soldiers have tended to boost consumer spending in the impoverished regions from which so many of them came.

Capital flight from Russia, though, is undiminished and the value of the ruble on international markets has plunged. The interest rate, meanwhile, has reached 15 per cent as the Central Bank tries to get a handle on inflation. More to the point, while sectors connected with the war may be booming, others are near collapse, and the scope for further expansion is limited, not least by a dearth of investment capital.

It is clear that personal sanctions on various Russians have had no real impact on policy. But it is foolish to try and make some simplistic judgement as to whether or not the wider sectoral sanctions on the economy have ‘failed’.

Have they destroyed Russia’s capacity to wage war or forced Putin to withdraw from Ukraine? Patently not, but the experiences of Iran and North Korea should have demonstrated to everyone that authoritarian regimes can withstand sanctions for a long time, not least by transferring the pain to their cowed and controlled citizens.

That does not mean they have not had an effect, though. Russia is, for example, able to bypass the G7+’s attempts to impose a $60 (£48) per barrel price cap on its oil exports by selling outside the bloc and using gambits such as its ‘ghost fleet’ of unregistered tankers. However, this has entailed all kinds of additional costs and risks, from paying hefty fees to rogue traders to using uninsured vessels. Likewise, Russia is still managing to source microchips for its drones and cruise missiles, but through a complex network of third-party re-exporters or by buying modern fridges and the like through ‘grey market’ channels and removing and repurposing the hardware. This works, but is an expensive, time-consuming and inefficient way of acquiring essential components that Russia itself cannot make.

This is the point: what sanctions are doing is adding costs and bottlenecks to the Russian war economy. Of course, the Russians have a track record for ingenuity in responding to tough circumstance, from Central Bank chair Elvira Nabiullina’s firm fiscal policy, through the smugglers and facilitators bringing in sanctioned goods, to the entrepreneurs exploiting new markets, from pseudo-McDonalds to domestic clothing lines.

Systemically, though, this cannot go on at this pace for ever. There is no real spare capacity for the further expansion of the defence-industrial economy, for example, with unemployment down to a record 3 per cent low. Although the National Welfare Fund is officially worth $145 billion (£155 billion), there are questions as to its real value. In September, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov set out plans to borrow $42 billion (£33 billion) from it, and said that only $69 billion (£55 billion) would then be left. Perhaps most strikingly, the 2024 budget is built on the assumption that defence spending can be cut back in 2025. If, as most now assume, the war rolls on, the Kremlin will be scrabbling for funds to pay for it.

There are new measures being proposed, such as the EU’s efforts to prevent Russian diamond exports. But there are no further substantive sanctions the West could probably place on Russia that would not have a seriously negative impact on our own economies. However, there is much that can be done to tighten up the existing ones, closing the loopholes that ingenious sanctions-busters have found. Above all, though, the sanctions need us to be patient. In and of themselves, they were never going to win the war – but over time, bit by bit, they will help Russia lose it.