Ordinary Russians were already worried about rising food prices. Then came war and sanctions.

The situation is reminiscent of the hyperinflation of the early 1990s, when President Boris Yeltsin liberalized prices as a prerequisite for the creation of a market economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a worried Muscovite confided in 1992 in a journal that is now preserved in an archive of diaries by ordinary Russians: “Prices are outrageous! From 2 to 11 rubles [in one year] for a loaf of black bread.”

Rising food prices and food insecurity were the most obvious signs that something was going wrong on the path toward democracy and prosperity charted by Yeltsin.

In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, high-quality food staples became more widely available and relatively affordable. After 2015, though, inflation began creeping back due to low oil prices and Western sanctions for Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Prices rose further during the pandemic due to global supply chain disruptions.

By the time the war started, Russians were already vulnerable to food price inflation. In a July 2021 survey, 60.4 percent of respondents said they spend about half of their monthly income on food. And the cost of food was a concern for nearly every family. The survey said 96.3 percent of respondents drew attention to the rise in food prices. “In their opinion, vegetables, fruits, dairy products, meat, and vegetable oils have risen most of all,” the survey found.

The concern about the cost of basic staples and the frenzied efforts to convert cash or virtual savings into commodities with lasting value are thus familiar to Russian citizens. What remains unpredictable is how sanctions will affect ordinary Russians as the situation unfolds.

This is the case due to two competing economic facts. On the one hand, the Russian economy and Russian citizens’ daily economic realities are closely tied to global financial markets — leaving them vulnerable to pain inflicted by sanctions.

On the other hand, the Russian government under Putin has been acutely aware of the political danger of inflation and has worked hard to insulate the Russian economy and Russian people from global economic shocks.

Whether the severity of the economic hardship or the cushioning from policy measures prevail is anyone’s guess. Putin is banking on the latter. Citizens are bracing for the former.

Here is the logic of why Russia’s integration into the world economy has the potential to make sanctions hurt. Although sanctions are currently focused on Russia’s ties to global financial markets, for regular Russians the effects of sanctions look similar to price shocks in global energy markets.

Russian firms produce a variety of goods and services, but the economy is overwhelmingly dependent on hydrocarbon revenue. Russia is a petro-state in the sense that its gross domestic product, export earning, tax income and government’s ability to spend depend to a large extent on the proceeds of private and state-owned oil and gas companies.

Global markets for energy, however, are extremely volatile. The price of Brent crude is generally seen as the benchmark for energy prices, and it has varied from over $140 (in 2008, just before the global financial crisis) to under $20 (some years in the 1980s and ’90s).

Upheavals of all kinds — the Asian financial crisis of the late ’90s, the collapse of the U.S. subprime mortgage sector in 2008, the pandemic — have led to global recessions that reduce demand for energy, which in turn drives down energy prices.

The value of the Russian ruble reflects these crises. It has generally lost value as demand for oil and natural gas dwindles, and strengthened during periods of global economic growth when demand for energy is high. While this might seem like an obscure dynamic, Russian citizens are intimately familiar with the impact of global energy markets on household finances — especially food prices and above all, bread.

As a commentator for Argumenty i Fakty, one of Russia’s most widely read news magazines, noted during the ruble crisis of 1998, the low point of the economic crisis of the Yeltsin years: “Bread seems to be just a regular product. In actual fact, it is a special, political one. Insufficient bread in the city immediately affects every family. A price increase is a hit on every wallet.”

Over the last 30 years, the Russian economy has become more integrated with global markets, with Moscow liberalizing capital markets to attract foreign investments and reducing trade barriers to import cutting-edge technologies from abroad. Yeltsin was unprepared to react to the economic pain that an open economy can inflict on regular citizens during times of crisis.

The Putin government, by contrast, took steps to insulate Russia’s economy from the ups and downs of commodity and financial markets. These mechanisms might now help cushion the effects of Western sanctions.

The stability fund that has helped shore up the ruble is the most well-known of these policies. But there are others aimed specifically at keeping food prices low. The “Food Security Agenda,” first adopted in 2010 and updated in 2020, seeks to increase Russia’s self-sufficiency in grains, meat, dairy and other staples.

The Putin government has deployed other measures to keep food prices low on occasions when political concerns appeared more important than letting markets determine prices. During the run-up to the 2021 parliamentary elections, government imposed steep export duties on wheat, effectively diverting grain from global markets to domestic markets to cap food prices at home.

Why do these competing economic forces matter? They matter because they will affect how economic sanctions that limit the Russian economy’s ties to global markets are felt by Russian citizens. Even though Russia is an authoritarian state, and sanctions are meant to primarily target elites, the West is also counting on ordinary Russians who are feeling the fallout from sanctions to act as catalysts for change.

The Russian opposition has been almost entirely suppressed by the state, with antiwar protesters arrested by special police forces and the opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, in prison. Meanwhile, a large share of the population is influenced by state-owned media outlets that portray the war as a liberation and do not report on casualties.

But if the cost of the war becomes increasingly painful and obvious to see for everyone via the price of food, the silent and patriotic majority might be more likely to join the small minority who call for an end to the war. Or at least that is the West’s hope.