But among the Russian people, conspiracies are beginning to fester as an automobile factory owned by Oleg Deripaska, who was recently coerced into selling his controlling stakes in Rusal and En+ by the Treasury Department over his alleged involvement in the Russian electoral interference (which has since been disproven by the Mueller report), is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. If it goes under, it could destroy 40,000 Russian jobs and become the first major bankruptcy of a formerly thriving Russian industrial firm since the first round of sanctions was imposed five years ago.

Employees at the GAZ truck and van plant in Nizhny Novgorod are beginning to grumble that the Treasury Department's refusal to grant a waiver that would allow it to avoid bankruptcy is part of a 'conspiracy' to force it out of business with the aim of allowing Ford to wrest control of a larger slice of the Russian commercial vehicle market, according to the FT.

Plastic sheets cover idle machinery and a production line is eerily still, laying bare the damage US sanctions have inflicted on one of Russia's biggest automotive factories. And among workers at the GAZ truck and van plant in Nizhny Novgorod - which survived Nazi bombing raids during the second world war but is being pushed toward collapse by the US Treasury measures - conspiracy theories abound.