Scott Detrow

How long can Russia keep this up?

The U.S.

and allies quickly imposed unprecedented sanctions, which shuttered the Moscow Stock Exchange for weeks and sent Russians scrambling to their banks as their currency tanked.

Here's how former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Juan Zarate put it to NPR at the time.

It did not change Russian President Vladimir Putin's calculus, and neither did the brain drain of Russians fleeing the country because they opposed the war politically or feared being conscripted.

Russians like Ivan Moshkin, who spoke to NPR after escaping to Armenia.

Putin weathered that exodus, too.

And when he eventually did mobilize 300,000 reservists in September of 2022, he cracked down on the protests that sparked.

The head of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said the war in Ukraine was launched on falsehoods.

And the Ministry of Defense was deceiving the public.

He led a column of fighters toward Moscow in apparent rebellion.

Here's then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

But the rebellion very quickly sputtered.

Prokhorin went into exile in Belarus and died in a plane crash two months later.

Putin's war continued.

Now, four years into the full-scale war, the U.S.

is attempting to negotiate an end to the fighting.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio admits it is still not clear whether Putin, who has pushed through a gauntlet of challenges to keep the war going, is ready to stop it.

Consider this.

Russians are paying a steep cost for Putin's war in Ukraine.