Hello and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, your daily politics dispatch from Tara Palmeri, Tina Nguyen, and myself, with the occasional and much-coveted Peter Hamby cameo.

If you haven’t yet, check out me and Peter talking about Russian elites hitting the proverbial crack pipe on The Powers That Be. These people are truly living in a parallel universe, getting high on their own supply.

The Russian budget is operating at a deficit not seen since the financial crisis of 1998, which immolated the country’s economy. This year, the Russian economy contracted by two percent, a small but not insignificant decline. Meanwhile, prices have gone up. Many of the most beloved, recognizable Western companies—McDonald’s, Starbucks, IKEA—have expatriated and been replaced by...