Curbs on the Russian central bank have come to little. The country does not need to tap its frozen foreign reserves to defend the currency as long as revenues keep flowing from the sale of hydrocarbons and metals at today’s windfall prices, and as long as Gazprombank is exempted from SWIFT sanctions.

“The fundamental underpinning of the rouble is Russia’s current account surplus,” said Christopher Granville from TS Lombard. 

The Institute of International Finance expects the surplus to rise this year to $200bn-$240bn due to higher energy prices and the compression of internal demand. That will probably surpass the entire surplus of China in 2022. 

The Russian finance ministry says the country sold its Urals crude at an average $89 a barrel in March, which amounts to bumper prices even after offering a sanctions discount. The Kremlin is certainly in trouble on the battlefield but it is not yet running out of money.

A greater test comes this month as pre-invasion sales contracts fade from the picture and shippers struggle to secure insurance and financing for fresh Russian cargoes.

The International Energy Agency says sales of crude and petroleum products could fall by 3m barrels per day in April out of total Russian exports of 7.8m barrels per day. 

But as long as Europe is still buying Russian oil, it is politically impossible to pressure India and the consuming states of East Asia, let alone China, to forgo discounted barrels on the open market. The oil will make its way out somehow. 

Germany’s corporate elites are fighting a rearguard action to head off further sanctions, warning of a dangerous chain reaction if governments succumb to the mood of the moment. 

“Emotionally, one can understand an embargo. But if it comes, it will very probably tip the whole European economy into a recession with long lasting consequences. We mustn’t let this out of our sight,” said Christian Sewing, president of the German banking federation (BdB).

Martin Brudermuller, head of the chemical giant BASF, predicted a catastrophic wave of bankruptcies. “If gas supplies from Russia were cut off overnight, it could push Germany into the worst crisis since the end of the Second World War. Do we really want to destroy our whole economy?” he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine.

Mr Brudermuller said BASF might have to shut down its plant at Ludwigshafen, the biggest integrated chemical plant in the world.

Consumers would learn a hard lesson in supply chains. “People seem to make no connection at all between a boycott and their own job. As if our economy and our prosperity were set in stone,” he said.