This is just an excerpt from Rebel Roundup. To see new, ad-free episodes, which air Fridays @ 9 p.m. ET | 7 p.m. MT, become a subscriber to RebelNews+. This episode originally aired on December 16, 2022. 

On last night’s episode of Rebel Roundup, host David Menzies spoke to Rebel reporter Jeremy Loffredo about his reports in Russia and how the country’s citizens have been affected by the economic sanctions imposed on it by the west.

Jeremy spoke about the media frenzy in North America when many significant U.S. companies announced that they were shutting down in Russia, and how many of these companies have stayed but are now operating under Russian influence with slight name changes. An example of this is Russian Starbucks still selling the same products, but now under Russian ownership and the name "Stars." 

“It’s simple economics, when you sanction a country that is a primary exporter of food and industry, you might as well be sanctioning yourself because you’re now going to have to pay a lot more money for these things. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going on, we just don’t know how to punish this giant country that’s the size of a continent and has more resources and more productivity than a lot of other places. We don’t know how to shut them out of the global economy, and shut them out of their own economy,” said Jeremy.

He also talked about the popular idea that the people of Russia are a political monolith because they’re surrounded by Russian propaganda but said this isn’t necessarily true, and actually talking to Russians reveals that much like Americans, they have many different views on many different things. Some oppose the war because the sanctions from the West impact their lives, others consider themselves “Russian patriots,” and others are neutral and say they remain unaffected by the war and economic sanctions.