I’ll be honest, until a few days ago, I didn’t expect Russia to do this. I started to change my mind when I saw the mean way how Putin destroyed one of his own members of the cabinet, in a very public way. That insane look on his face while he did it.
Time to face reality: he’s about to morph into a full-scale tyrant. One who won’t care to sacrifice thousands of lives or more in order to invade other countries. If he invades the whole of Ukraine now, then who’s to say where he’ll stop. This is a bad, bad situation I’m afraid.
If you see a situation developing where the British eventually exterminate millions and millions of innocent Russian civilians then you make a good point.
So your saying if Australia and Italy ended up at war with each other, and the Aus gavernment decided to round up all Italians and those with Italian heritage in Aus and to confiscate their wealth that you would be ok with that?
He won’t be the only one. Politicians in all countries often get involved in these sorta schemes. Hunter Biden’s position and dealings with Ukraine for example.
I’m not even talking boots on the ground. Nor is Ukraine to be fair. They’re talking proper sanctions. Like removing Russia from the swift system and dollar backed transactions.
And what next. What kind of signal does this send to that other great tyrant Xi Jinping. What’s to stop China from attacking Taiwan when they know no one will do anytjing.
Don’t think China’s military is that strong YET for Xi to take a unilateral decision. I do say that China will invade Taiwan but I don’t foresee this happening in the next 4-5 years atleast
They will probably do this shortly. Problem is that Russia has already removed itself from a great part of dollar backed transactions. Among other issues, that’s what has led to tensions between US and Russia since a long time already. I read somewhere that Russia’s transactions in dollars have been reduced to 10% of their overall transaction volume (without guarantee that this is accurate, I’m no financial expert).
That’s just not possible. Maybe theyve reduced sovereign borrowing in dollars but almost all of the world’s financial transactions at some point in the chain happen in dollars. Oil is almost exclusively bought in dollars on the international market.
I worked at a huge worldwide bank that was brought to its knees by the US DOJ threatening to bar it from dollar backed transactions.
But doing that will cause oil prices and metal prices to spike and ultimately hurt the richest coproations. That’s what I mean by it being cynical.
But your average Russian citizen as fuck all influence on Putin and his decisions. Targeting them will just play into his hands giving him creedence in the Russian publics view.
Target specific people that can influence Putin is how any sanctions need to be used. Targeting the general population is not the way forward
With alternate currencies being used and the russia becoming increasingly non-reliant on the USD as the standard form of currency, I’m not sure what effect it will have.
Even extreme sanctions like the one on nordstream etc do not have much effect on Russia. A Russia isn’t a country where Sanctions have any effect. If anything, Sanctions might well boost internal trade and make the macro economy even stronger (even if there’s a short term effect).
Russia has about 20% reserves of rare earth metal deposits of the world right now and hasn’t even begun tapping into that. Countries like Germany will be more hit by any sanctions to Russia than the Russians itself. That’s what happens when you have achieved self sufficiency as a country.
Oil and oil aggregates are more than 50% of Russia’s exports. Being suddenly unable to meet its consumption and borrowings would lead to a BoP crisis. Russia isn’t Iran where religious jingoism can sustain a regime despite general hardships. Putin will be put on the spot.
Sanctions won’t do much, but they are necessary symbolically. If Russia decides to fully invade and set up a puppet regime, we can look forward to a long drawn out guerilla campaign funded by the West.
Russia still has coutnries which are reliant on them for their oil needs. They export 45% of their total oil percentage only. Most of the countries purchasing Russian oil won’t be stopping their purchases. I don’t even think you can stop Turkey from purchasing russian oil.