Well supposedly over 200,000 left since the start of the war. If true, while it might not seems like a lot in relative terms, this is still a pretty huge deal. These people are likely generally more productive and educated than an average Russian and if this trends continues it does not bode well for the Russian economy. Of course politically this might benefit Putin since those people are very likely opposed to his regime. In any case Russia’s demographic situation is not great so an additional few million young people leaving might have huge negative consequences in the long term.

> West just taxed the rich of Russia and reduced their power to remove Putin?

Arguably no. They’ve lost access to some of their wealth in the west but their actual power relvant (in the form of companies they own in Russia is still in Russia). So the expectation is that loosing access to the west would incentivize them to use any power they still have to get rid of Putin. Considering how intertwined their sources of wealth and power are with current regime I’m not sure how likely is that. But basically the west wants to make it so that keeping Putin in power would seem more expensive than replacing him with something/someone else.

> You can't eat dollars.

Individuals still want to buy foreign good (while they might be harder to access or more expensive it’s still possible to acquire them).

Also most people would probably prefer to store their savings in USD/CHF/EUR rather than Ruble since it’s value is going to collapse the moment Russia lifts capital controls. This arguably only increases the demand for foreign currencies.

Main categories of goods imported by Russia in 2021 were: ‘Machinery & Equipment’ and ‘Medicine’ and it’s not like Russia can just stop importing these of they want to keep their pump jacks and hospital running.