Aggressors may impose financial and trade restrictions, block bank transfers, and halt the operation of the Indigenous people's enterprises. This technique is used for preparation for seizure and neutralization of defenses. The artificial strangulation of the economy deprives the colonized society of the resources needed for self-sufficiency and defense, provoking an internal crisis and weakening institutions before the start of an open intervention or in the course of an active conflict.
Part of the amanat-and-tribute system of Pullo, commander of the left flank of the Caucasus Line (a chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), was a regime of economic blockade of the auls of Chechnya that had not submitted. Pullo in a memorandum of 1840: the overseers appointed by the empire over the auls (the pristavs) and the troops "cut off the relations of the submitted with the unsubdued and forbade the former to sell bread to the nemirnye and to pasture their cattle on their fields" ("nemirnye" - in the imperial lexicon, auls that had not submitted to the empire)[1]. The permitted trade was driven under control: "In Kizlyar and at some other points trading fairs opened" - exchange took place only at points controlled by the empire[1]. The workings of the blockade were admitted by its own authors: general Grabbe, commander of the troops of the Caucasus Line and Pullo's superior, in a report to the empire's Minister of War Chernyshev of 23 March 1840, wrote that the mountain auls "could no longer have tillage and pasture on the plain", which "further aggravated the distressed condition of the inhabitants of highland Chechnya"; some of the inhabitants thought of submitting "to avert famine", others resolved "to rid themselves of the Russian yoke"[2]. In a plan for the conquest of the highlanders of the left flank drawn up in 1840 (the "Proposition... for the subjugation of the tribes"), Grabbe formulated how the blockade worked: the pristavs' surveillance "threatened the unsubdued with famine. Shamil took advantage of this disposition of minds" (Shamil - imam, leader of the resistance of the highlanders of Dagestan and Chechnya to the Russian conquest)[2].
In 1841-1846 the empire held Chechnya, which had not submitted, under a trade blockade. On 7 May 1841 general Grabbe, commander of the troops of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), sent to six sector commanders of the line an instruction "to take the strictest measures so that no gunpowder, sulphur, lead or any other supplies be passed to the unsubmissive highlanders, and on our side to keep unflagging and constant watch over the execution of this"[1]. The blockade's effect was admitted by the imperial memorandum "On the political condition of Chechnya" attached to the report of general Neidhardt, head of the empire's troops in the Caucasus, of 20 November 1843: the Chechens lack cloth, iron and salt, and "the cause of this must be sought in the cessation of trade ties with the Russians, and not in a shortage of means of subsistence"[1]. The historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write that the Chechen naibstvos (districts of the imamate governed by the imam's deputies, the naibs) became its economic base: the grain and other farm produce of Chechen peasants gave "the imamate the possibility of living for almost two decades under conditions of a complete economic blockade"[3].
The famine strategy was supplemented by a trade blockade. Vorontsov, viceroy and commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, in a letter to Baryatinsky, who commanded the left flank of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), of 21 March 1852, together with the threat "we will not allow them to sow or to mow," prescribed restricting the sale of salt to those who had not submitted to the empire; the letter is cited by historian N. I. Pokrovsky[4]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov convey, after the chronicle of the Dagestani author Genichutlinsky, a blockade of salt, iron and coarse cotton cloth[3]. In the years of the Crimean War the empire did not loosen the blockade: the same historians write - "Up to 200 thousand soldiers and officers confidently blockade the areas of the highlanders' operations in the North Caucasus - even the heavy defeats in the Crimea did not make the Russian command loosen this blockade"[3].
General Yevdokimov recorded in the journal of military operations up to 22 June 1859 (report to Minister of War Sukhozanet, No. 544): for the refusal to hand over captives "I declared the Benoy people and their neighbors unsubmissive, deprived of the protection of Russian laws, and ordered the surrounding population to seize them as captives and to take away their livestock"[5]. Historian D. A. Khozhayev relays the same policy: "The temporary administration of the surrounding villages was directly instructed to cease all contacts with Benoy, to take the Benoy people captive and to destroy them"[6].
The introduction of the "blackboard" regime - a total economic blockade of settlements. The resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR and the CC of the CP(b)U of December 6, 1932, signed by Chubar and Kosior, prescribed "the immediate cessation of the delivery of goods, the complete cessation of cooperative and state trade on site, and the removal of all available goods from the respective cooperative and state shops," as well as "a complete ban on kolkhoz trade both for kolkhozes and kolkhoz members and for individual farmers"[7].
Direct energy blackmail and the cut-off of gas supplies at the height of winter: on January 1, 2006 - "at 10.00am Moscow time on January 1, 2006, Gazprom cut off gas supplies to Ukraine"[8]; on January 1, 2009 - "Russian exports to Ukraine were cut off on 1 January," after which exports to the EU were "drastically reduced on 6 January and cut completely from 7 January," and in the worst-affected Balkan countries a humanitarian emergency ensued, with "parts of the populations unable to heat their homes"[9].