I just returned from visiting Russia - a journey that took me from the grandeur of St. Petersburg to the bustle of Moscow, through historic Kostroma, and finally to my grandmother’s village in Tverskaya Oblast. City to country, by plane, train, and automobile.

Leaving was bittersweet, but the trip sparked a wave of creative energy. I came back with notebooks full of ideas for new content and features that I cannot wait to share with you. For now, I want to start with something many of you asked me about: what it felt like to be there.

So many people messaged me wanting to know what life under sanctions was like. And the truth is — as a Russian — much of the day-to-day felt fairly unremarkable. Shops open, kids playing, families eating out. At a human level, we are more alike than not.

But there were details worth noticing, details that reveal how policy plays out in practice. Here is a taste of my observations.

When we talk about sanctions, we usually do it in macro terms. GDP shaved off. Inflation spiking. Imports falling.

But what does it actually look like to live in a sanctioned country?

During my time in Russia, here’s what stood: from the busy St. Petersburg streets to the the humble village storefronts.

1️⃣Symbols vanish, but systems remain.

The billion-dollar riverfront is free of Cheesecake Factory, Starbucks, or McDonald’s — at first it feels refreshing. But step closer and you see it is more cosmetic than structural.

McDonald’s is still there, just rebranded under a new logo with the same kitchen staff and menu. Burger King never left. Even card games adapt: Uno becomes “Color Play.”

The result is a reminder that systems prove remarkably malleable. Technology, supply chains, and consumer habits bend just enough to preserve the familiar, even when the symbols on the surface disappear.

2️⃣ Substitution is the default

Kids cannot play the full version of Roblox, but they still encounter English words in games. Instagram is blocked, but the New York Times is accessible. The culture of adaptation is everywhere: when one door shuts, another, slightly less polished, opens.

My 11-year-old cousins were glued to their Roblox screens and even asked me to help translate the difference between “shirt” and “sweater” as they modified their skins.

This means the intended isolation is never absolute. People still find cracks in the wall, and those cracks shape how youth learn, socialize, and imagine the world beyond their borders.

3️⃣ Affordability is distorted

Life feels cheap in some ways. Cappuccinos for $2. A full room renovation for $30.

And yet, soldiers are paid generously to go to war and are even given free housing. The state can direct resources where it wants, raising the question: where is the money coming from?

From a tech standpoint, it is striking how subsidies can bend the digital economy too — streaming, mobile data, and even AI-powered tools remain accessible, revealing how the government prioritizes stability in communication and information channels while constraining other parts of daily life.

4️⃣Culture takes the deepest hit.

This is where sanctions bite most.

The radio loops TikTok covers. Theaters show Soviet classics or uninspired domestic dramas. International variety — Brazilian soap operas, Turkish series — is absent.

The result is a cultural regression. A generation grows up with a smaller window onto the world, unable to even know what questions to ask about what lies beyond their borders.

5️⃣Media diets shape perception - everywhere.

Russia’s problem is lack of variety, narrowness. You could say that the US has the opposite problem: abundance without substance.

In America, our media can sometimes feel like fast food: abundant, filling, but calorically empty. We gorge on celebrity gossip, sports, finance news cycles - but how much of it is intellectually nourishing?

In Russia, the diet is bland, repetitive, thin. Both distort reality, just in different ways.

And from a tech standpoint, algorithms reinforce these extremes. U.S. feeds can reward endless novelty without depth, while Russian platforms recycle a limited stream of state-approved content, narrowing the window of perspective even further.

Closing thought

Sanctions are not an iron curtain. They are more like rocks in the path of a mountain bike: you can still ride, just with more discomfort.

But over time, the bumps add up. And the heaviest price is paid not in balance sheets, but in culture: in a youth shaped by limited options, limited questions, and limited horizons.

I have been thinking a lot about new ways to make this newsletter more interactive — and bite-sized learning kept coming up.

Starting this fall, I am launching 30-minute, bite-sized webinars on different investing topics. Think of them as a quick lunch-break download: practical, sharp, and designed to give you frameworks you can actually use.

I asked which topics you wanted first, and the top result was AI (no surprise), followed closely by real estate. So those will kick off the series.

👉 Subscribers to this newsletter will get free access, plus first dibs on discount codes for friends. Stay tuned for dates in the next edition.

🎧 New Money Memories episodes are on the horizon. In the meantime, listen and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, including Apple and Spotify.

If you are attending any of these upcoming events, let me know. I would love to find time to connect:

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📌Millionaire apologises for snatching Majchrzak’s souvenir cap from young fan at US Open I guess the ire of the internet proved too much.

Till next week,
Ilona

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