Stanislav Usaty, owner of a marketing agency in St. Petersburg, said he expected to lose many of his clients because of the higher exchange rate, especially companies selling imports; he said he would probably need to lay off staff. Aleksandra Gridina, the owner of a travel agency in the city, said she would need to raise prices for international tours that her clients had already booked.
“It’s a catastrophe for our business,” she said.
Still, while there was confusion at the subway turnstiles and lines formed at A.T.M.’s and banks, there was no full-fledged financial panic among the general public. And it was far from clear whether the sanctions would help turn more Russians against the war — or whether they would only increase their resentment of the West, confirming the Kremlin narrative that the United States and Europe were determined to dismantle their country.
“Times change, much has happened, but one thing has not changed,” a reporter on the state-run news channel Rossiya 24 said on Sunday. “When a united Europe tried to destroy Russia, this always ended up bringing about the opposite result.”
The backbone of Mr. Putin’s power is made up of security officials who rarely leave Russia and stand to gain from greater state control over the economy. In the broader public, he draws his core support from pensioners and state employees, who are less sensitive to economic volatility than those in the private sector.
Shopping for groceries in Moscow on Monday, Valentina V. Petrova, 85, who said she used to work on Russia’s Proton space rockets, said the economic troubles did not faze her.
“I think the president did everything right,” she said.
Mr. Petrov, the engineer who flew to Egypt, said his parents also supported the war. And older Russians, he noted, had seen their share of ups and downs.
