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Comment by relix | Hacker News Reader

There needs to be an escalation path. Sanctions should always be able to get worse, or else Russia would no longer have anything to lose, and Europe won't have anything left to threaten with. Once in that situation it would be a recipe for a hot war between NATO and Russia.

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Russia knows exactly how to play this game though, especially with the cooperation of China. They know Germans, in particular, would rather give up all of Eastern Europe than risk harming their own economy.

The idea of an EU without a mutual defense treaty is so absurd

The idea of an EU defense treaty is also redundant after NATO.

The idea of a NATO is redundant after the end of USSR.

A defense treaty is never redundant. Case to the point.

Considering one of the "official" casus belli is that Ukraine might join NATO, is it?

That is quite clearly not true

Not true when two of the three muscular nato powers aren't in the EU

EU have the resources and manpower to be muscular.

Indeed, they could. But they don't have the structures in place to act it.

there already is one

but Putin would probably be pretty safe to assume that the germans wouldn't risk a war for a small part of Estonia/Lithuania (and then another small part, and so-on)

(and that's why no-one outside of france and germany wants the EU army to replace NATO)

> but Putin would probably be pretty safe to assume that the germans wouldn't risk a war for a small part of Estonia/Lithuania (and then another small part, and so-on)

Right. He's been carefully boiling that particular frog for a very long time.

The idea of an EU is absurd.

For the European continent to keep up with countries like the USA and China it makes absolute sense and I don't see how anyone could see it any other way other than Russia or a similar country that would love to see a weak European continent that would be easy pickings.

The axiom "we are stronger together" is only true if participants all want the same. That is not the case at all. They all have different priorities; different geopolitical views. Are you telling me that Israel should merge with the 20 states around it, or that Singapore should do the same, just because "it is small" ?

The idea that even two countries would ever "want the same" is absurd. They just need to have close enough interests. Most EU countries do, believe it or not.

Even the most pro-europe people here in europe would disagree and consistently complained about never finding consensus (needed by the 27 member states as per EU treaties). Eastern countries want 0 migrants. France, Germany, want plenty. Poor countries want common debt. Northern countries do not. France tends to be less Nato-aligned than Poland or others, who will sign-off anything Washington says. Germany and Netherlands want austerity. The "PIGS" do not. Germany wants commercial partnership to develop the European GPS. France does not: that explain why there is still no European GPS. Germany wants a strong euro that suits its economy as a massive exporter. This has destroyed the competitiveness of Spain, Italy, France. France, Italy, Spain, want an EU policy which favors their agriculture. Northern countries could not care less. France is a nuclear power, with a massive nuclear electric parc, which it wants to favor. Germany wants windturbines everywhere. I could go on like that for pages. In fact, studies have found than the eurozone is one of the least homogeneous economical zone.

Are you sure? Someone German would have to do the cheap labor in that case.

This time even China isn't on Russia's side, though: https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-chinas-warning-against-a...

I think China (with the exception of Taiwan) likes to win economically and apply that sort of pressure. They don't want an invasion happy country sitting just north of them.

Of course they're on Russia's side. China knows they're next in line.

Russia is stuck playing the mid 20th century game

If you believe that something has changed in the methods of global politics since the mid of 20th century, then you haven't been curious enough to look at the state of the world beyond convenient western news coverage. It's still the rule of powerful and able, and it's not the power to produce and create, unfortunately.

The states who play these games have terrible economies to show for it.

doesn't seem to hurt Saudis much as long as their ruling classes can arrange meetings in the cabinets of the US and the UK governments.

You seem to be missing something key to this discussion.

The game changed in the mid 20th century with the rise of mutually assured destruction.

Isn't saying that energy sector won't be touched a few days before Putin's latest declaration showing our hand too much though.

Don't those natural gas pipelines go through the Ukraine? Regardless of how they get destroyed, when they do, Russia will have everything it needs to justify a full invasion.

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/photo/europe-map/

Wasn't that the whole point of NS2, to have a pipeline that doesn't go through Ukraine?

Right. And that is why many in germany oppose it. With the recent developments, it might be dead completely.

It’s already complete, Germany is also opposing any economic sanctions that target Russia’s energy sector.

> that is why many in germany oppose it

Hm... why? Because the Germans, out of goodness of their hearts, want the Russians to keep dumping the annual $1.5bil+ transit fees into Ukraine? It's the same exact dependency on the same exact gas, just delivered through a bunch of countries each grabbing a cut, instead of directly.

Maybe because some of them (like here and everywhere) put sometimes ideology before the wallet. We're to see though how many and how consequently.

Easy to say for those who can absorb the higher energy cost. Millions of Germans can't.

I expect that Germany (the state) will shoulder some of those costs. But I'm not a German so I'll have to see what happens, because right now the project was officially put on ice.

NS2 has always been a carrot that Russia was never going to get.

This map is not current. It lacks NS1 leading from Wyborg, Russia, most eastern Baltic Sea to Lubmin, Germany, since 2011, right next to Rostock in the western Baltic Sea(in the scale of that map). And NS2 mostly parallel to it, with the exception of starting in Ust-Luga, Russia.

Maybe try https://www.gie.eu/publications/maps/ for a more complete view.

Sanctions obviously isn’t a viable deterrent against Russia, so sanctions at this point is just giving the optics of action.

The underlying problem is no doubt the dependency on Russia for energy. Europe will have to fix this problem as soon as possible.

Sanctions targeting oligarch wealth (making it impossible to move more money out of Russia, or targeting Russian businesses in which they hold stakes etc.) might well work. As would international restrictions on the movements of oligarchs, politicians and their families.

It seems to me that this move from Putin is rather more unhinged than normal, and a lot of people around him will be looking for the exits. Denying them the exits so they have to stay home and do something about it might be a better strategy.

I think we will see some quite inventive sanctions rolling out from tomorrow.

They'd be doing him a favour if they target these oligarchs, and that's why they haven't done it yet. https://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/20/putin-urges-billionaires-to-...

The sanctions won't let them bring that money back at all -- they will likely prevent large transactions full stop, so oligarch money can't return.

It will stop them exfiltrating further wealth, and that ought to scare them enough when the walls start closing in, as they will.

There will come a time when Putin threatens an escalating global conflict and that is when they will finish him. Perhaps literally.

The extraordinary extent to which huge chunks of London and the political alt-right across Europe and the USA relies on Putin's (and other oligarchs') laundered wealth is really a brake on any ambitions that sanctions will work.

You can't stop Putin's illicit private wealth (he's probably the richest man in the world) spreading through the West because it already did.

There will be no co-ordinated all-party pushback against Russia in the USA or the UK, because big chunks of the political system of both are aware of the side on which their bread has been buttered for some time.

And a lot of alt-right figures who have spent years saying that it's a lie that they have Russian support, but at the same time that Putin is a strong leader the West can learn from, are either going to go silent, obstruct or outright attack any sanctions measures.

I don't just mean the obvious people. It's going to be very, very illuminating.

And that is before you look at the soft power issue of, well, exported power in Europe.

Aren't sanctions rather used to punish the people, until they rise up against the leader we want to get rid of?

In the specific case of Russia, and other examples in the last several decades, there have been specific attempts to direct most of the pain at the rich and powerful classes in the target countries. You could argue (somewhat cynically but perhaps correctly) that these represent the only demographic capable of pushing change.

Put more succinctly than I managed!

Yes and no -- current sanctions against Russia are aimed at illicit wealth, and they likely still will be.

Western governments will probably try not to use sanctions that primarily hurt the Russian people, because there is little hope that will work; Putin has spent a decade building an explicitly backward-looking, history-whitewashing kind of nationalism, and people might tire of that, sure, but he's also been very good at very publicly helping his opponents more fully experience the view from high windows.

Remember Don Jr's meeting with the Russians that was supposedly about adoption? It was actually the Magnitsky Act the Russians really wanted to talk about (they want it gone). He said as much himself, and it's clear that even the people advising the Trump campaign were decidedly chilly on the idea of getting rid of it.

Global Magnitsky legislation is why Russia is upping the ante. While I'm no scholar of it, I would expect the West to start with strengthened Magnitsky-type sanctions that prevent oligarchs from getting their money out before things go bad.

Because it is the oligarchs who can uproot Putin most quickly.

Putin is personally weak and isolated at this point -- clearly either clinically vulnerable or otherwise terrified of catching Covid, and distrustful of everyone around him. He's clearly acting more emotionally and less rationally.

Sanctions that target -- or isolate -- the wealth of his closest circle of oligarchs are more likely to get somewhere, because they will gnaw away at his sense of invulnerability.

Yes, and that has never actually worked, so recently there's been a change of tactic and new sanctions mostly target rich and powerful people and organisations.

This is often wildly overblown. Of 700 offshore companies found to own UK property, only 5% of them are controlled by Russians. Also of 94,000 properties registered as owned by foreign companies, only 4 were Russian.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/60348046

Bilateral trade is more significant, uk companies own over £23bn in assets in Russia, and total Russian investment in UK companies comes to £11bn, but let’s put that in context. Russia isn’t close to being in the to 10 contries that trade and invest in the UK.

I said "London", not the UK as a whole.

An enormous number of high-value residential properties in London lie empty because they exist only as a store of wealth for Russian oligarchs.

Something like a fifth or more of the £4.5bn of likely illicit -- literally unexplained -- wealth stored in residential property in London is from Russian oligarchs. It's a huge deal because it is targeted influence; big landlords back the tories. Any really serious attempt to hit that wealth will see pushback in private.

https://bylinetimes.com/2022/02/18/startling-facts-about-lon...

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/oligarchs-and-unexplai...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35757265

This is a surprisingly pernicious influence on our politics. The current government have sat on a completed report into Russian influence in British politics for some time.

> An enormous number of high-value residential properties in London lie empty because they exist only as a store of wealth for Russian oligarchs.

Which is a shame because it would be better if they were put yo use, but it’s not a threat to the UK economy. No jobs depend on those properties. If there is a war and sanctions, we’ll, that’s why those oligarchs own those properties, to protect their wealth from Putin. They’re hardly going to sell up and move that wealth back to Russia, and if they did, so what?

These sorts of Russian backup plan investments are always trotted out as this spooky big dependency we have in Russia. It’s utterly bogus, fear mongering founded on a fundamental misconception of how economics and finance actually work. Hardly surprising as it mostly comes from Marxists. We do have economic ties with Russia through UK companies doing business there, that’s where the risk is because that’s where the jobs and investments in jeopardy are.

Money laundering is money laundering, so matter what jobs it might create. And the Russian oligarchy mob is a reality as well. So I'm not sure what kind of point is followed here... that one should accept their illegal stuff in their countries because, uh, whatever waves hand?

Rather than inventing an agenda for me from whole cloth, you could try just reading the comments I’m replying to and refuting instead to understand hat I’m saying in context.

Maybe I’m wrong, perhaps there’s stuff I’m missing. That’s fine, but please don’t just flat out slag me off like that please.

So already today there are criticisms of how weak Boris's sanctions are:

https://twitter.com/Peston/status/1496140100316639247

He's also blunderingly claimed Roman Abramovich is subject to sanctions, to make a load of noise -- and Abramovich has clearly threatened to sue, so he has desperately retracted.

His sanctions are as I expected, but thinner -- some notable banks, three oligarchs who may or may not have much money in the UK.

They will clearly let some people move money out of the country, and the Tories are already on the back foot, including from The Spectator(!)

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/britain-s-sanctions-are-...

https://twitter.com/PeterStefanovi2/status/14963889675157954...

A reminder of who Boris's friendship circle includes, and his willingness to avoid scrutiny on the subject:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/26/boris-johns...

Here is the obvious truth: the London Laundromat is at least a serious enough problem that it casts a shadow over our ruling government and our politics as a whole; enough to question whether it has weakened us in the way the US believes it has.

> we’ll, that’s why those oligarchs own those properties, to protect their wealth from Putin.

By no means all London-investing oligarchs are on the run from Putin; several are close, like Roman Abramovich.

Other oligarchs could well be investing Putin's huge fortune on his behalf. Either way there is considerable concern over the long term corrupting effect of this capital (and its influence over those who cast a blind eye over its arrival, in the Tory party and elsewhere)

> Hardly surprising as it mostly comes from Marxists.

Not sure I bothered replying if this is your angle, mind you.

But here's a non-Marxist view of the threat to sanctions, enforcement, and corrupt influence presented by the London Laundromat:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_Britis...

The chair of that committee has announced he would seek election as prime minister if there's a Tory leadership campaign.

Here he is again:

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/uk-stop-russians-launderin...

To quote from that article, it's about Putin-adjacent cash: When the intelligence and security committee released its 2020 Russia report, it concluded - as many campaigners warned - that Russians who owed their fortunes to connections with President Putin and the Kremlin had embedded themselves in London assets using suspect money from the state.

Money is speech, remember. All that cash is influence, it's not just hiding.

Here's the US angle on our situation in the UK:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/russia-ukrai...

Here's the Economist:

https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2022/02/04/...

Here's a discussion of pressure from a Lib Dem peer (hardly Marxist):

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/30/calls-for-uk-t...

> The extraordinary extent to which huge chunks of London and the political alt-right across Europe and the USA relies on Putin's (and other oligarchs') laundered wealth

in what way exactly is it more extraordinary than all these alliances with middle-eastern "governments" (or rather ruling classes) that are known to commit atrocities of all sorts, including local invasions and coups?

Well there's a lot of that money in London too.

But a fifth of the total of unexplained wealth coming from Russia -- a country that is not an absolute monarchy, should not have a "ruling family", and is down in the mid-seventies in the rankings of GDP per capita -- is kind of extraordinary.

This is not a wealthy small monarchy or a tiny little dictatorship, it's a large, poor country with an extraordinary, demonstrated level of kleptocratic exfiltration of wealth. A lot of it comes to London, and a lot of it comes to (mostly but not exclusively alt-right) populist, disruptive politicians and media figures across the West, through a variety of influence channels.

We're going to find out who those people are; some of them will surprise us, and some of them will not.

Finally, the topic is Ukraine, and unless I'm mistaken, kleptocratic middle-eastern monarchies aren't that interested in it.

The last decade or so hasn't been enough an escalation path?

I think we could start now by freezing ALL known russian oligarch assets in USA, Europe and friendly countries and anywhere else we can persuade countries to do this. They are the only ones who can apply pressure to Putin.

Hurting and wiping out oligarchs would be a great favor to common Russian folk!

So then it's funny how it's clearly not a huge concern for him right now? I wonder why.

I mean, it's not like he makes today's announcement, and then says, oh snap, I didn't think of all my oligarch friends, they are the only ones that can apply pressure to me, I shall change my mind immediately.

They are the only ones in the country who have any influence on him and his attempts at expansion.

You're talking about possibly a trillion dollars there, much of it very well-embedded and passing through funds from banks like Deutsche.

It would be difficult to do this retrospectively with anything like enough speed to have an effect.

The fresh money they want to funnel out of the country before the roof caves in, yeah. And you can probably carefully target a few oligarch-controlled Russian businesses to make it difficult for them to find further legitimacy in the West. They will start doing that tomorrow, by the looks of it.

And there are probably a few visas that are due to be extended that might come under some scrutiny -- particularly in the UK, Spain and Malta.

Who cares how much it is? Just freeze it. I didn't say sieze it (yet) . This is their fault for coddling a guy who has progressively gotten unbalanced as he's gotten over. I bet Putin won't let any high level person (oligarch) scurry out of the country right now.

I don't mean it's too much money to freeze.

I mean it is too much money to quickly find to put a dent on things, and in most cases it is well-embedded in funds, buildings and and businesses who will be compelled to fight the government for proof.

Even proving that properties in London are owned by oligarchs is difficult.

Sure, there are unexplained wealth order cases in the UK that can be targeted, and a few existing prosecutions maybe, but in most cases this money has gone through some hoops, legitimate and illegitimate, to end up in its final form.

It would take ages; not something you can do quickly enough to stop an invasion because you'd need to show some proof it would have a rapid effect. The speedy thing to do is to block the new flows of cash, the running business and the people.

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