Visa, Mastercard block Russian financial institutions after sanctions
reuters.com
reuters.com
It also promised to contribute a $2 million for humanitarian relief.Does Putin strike you as an overly emotional guy who gets frustrated easily?
My take is that he is cold and calculating. Not one I’d take lightly.
Like, I've seen arguments that the whole "Ukraine joining NATO" justification is just a pretext. But if that's just a pretext, what's the actual reason? I haven't seen a good answer yet.
I honestly don't think we'll know the true story for decades.
The power gained in this case is attempting to rebuild the Russian empire by "liberating" areas that have since become independent countries and want nothing to do with the Russian rule.
It was auto published on 26 on ria and bunch of other sites and than purged. It explains everything
see the idea ?
kinda brings up a phrase that was thrown by some russian official or tv person a few years ago: "what's the need in the world that doesn't have russia in it"
It does not represent real thoughts of those in power.
one extra point: this book is written by somebody who is considered to be putin's guru. wiki article contains summary of the book. go through it and for every bullet point that you find something corresponding in today's reality, get yourself a candy :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
i also found today's interview with author of this book. interview pretty much exactly echoes sentiments of the article (google translate is your friend). https://bloknot-voronezh.ru/news/nikakogo-yanukovicha-2-0-po...
it's not propoganda. it's just batshit crazy people who are obsessed with rebuilding russian empire. is it so hard to believe when we have qanon on display for past few years ?
Maybe was tricked into war by .. I don't know .. and the war is just collateral demage.
Maybe his information had been so wrong because he and all people around him lives in a bubble.
What putin is doing now is something along the Kosovo playbook... someone has interest in some area somewhere (us in kosovo, putin in donbas/lugansk), they help the separatists, the main country fights back, and then they start war (bombing in case of yugoslavia, this now in case of ukraine), to get what they want. Putin also mentioned weapons of mass destruction in ukraine ("the iraq playbook" USA used), but the theory didn't get a lot of traction.
Also, it's just the beginning of the war, so you can expect the propaganda machines to work 24/7 on both sides, so what the truth is, will probably never be know and will be rewritten by the winners and CNN.
Yeah it is, the Baltics are already in NATO. Ukraine joining would not significantly change the balance of power in the region.
Cuba on the other hand was far more significant because the Soviet Union did not otherwise have assets so close to the US.
Also the US never invaded Cuba in the way Russia invaded Ukraine. Their actions were more comparable to Russian support of DPR and LPR.
USA definitely had the plan for a war with cuba, but it luckily didn't happen. They did start many other wars in the meantime, mostly on the other side of the world.
> USA definitely had the plan for a war with cuba, but it luckily didn't happen
This is a really weird way to write “USA decided not to fight a war with Cuba”, everybody makes all kinds of plans.
And there's a difference between a "lets prepare, just in case if cuba attacks" and "let's make a false flag attack, and kill our own people, so we can attack cuba".
NATO has has only engaged in non-combat missions in Iraq, in support of the local government. NATO has never fought in Iraq.
The US is not NATO, it would do you well to do some basic research before throwing around misguided criticism.
Well, for a defensive alliance it sure has been on the offensive for the best part of 50 years
E: Unfortunately can’t reply below because of HN throttling, but yes, a month ago I moved several of my employees out of Ukraine because of Russian troop buildup on the border.
Wars don’t start overnight, everyone who hadn’t buried their head in sand knew this was a likely outcome.
Yes, at their own borders. Their jurisdiction ends there.
All other nations have the right of self-determination and don't have to care about Russia's thoughts.
If they won't like it, they could sanction Ukraine or something, don't you think?
I live in a small balkan country, and we also have our soldiers in kosovo, syria, libanon etc... what right do we have to point the finger at russia? USA is currently bombing somalia. China is looking greedily at taiwan... etc.
If "everyone else" can do it, why not putin? If not putin, why do we let usa do it? Ukraine is just another equivalent of iraq, afghanistan, etc.
This would be a great time to say "stop" in nato, start acting as just a defensive organization, stop all the nato members meddling abroad, and say "NO" to both putin and USA, and everyone else who wants anything outside their own borders.
This is bordering on dishonest. US is supporting the legitimate Somalian government against a terror group famous for it’s attacks on schools.
You could sort of compare this to Russia supporting the Syrian government, despite their legitimacy being questionable. This is something they have hardly faced international criticism over, beyond downright war crimes.
Just look at a map. There's a reason "Turn the map around" is a mantra in professional military officer schools in the West: it's essential to understanding your adversary.
Russia's land border with Estonia and Latvia is ~325km long, straddling Lakes Peipus and Pihkva. This is a small frontage, and fairly easy for Russia's massive army to defend.
There is only 1 MSR/highway (M-9) that leads to Russia from these Baltic States, and the distance is just about 570km. The operational combat range of an M1 Abrams or Leopard 2 MBT is ~450km. So they can't reach Moscow from NATO territory without stopping to refuel a good distance short of the capital.
Now let's add a NATO-member Ukraine to the mix. Not even including Crimea, the Russian-Ukrainian land border is over 1200km long. That is a LOT of frontage to protect. It features 2 MSRs/highways with direct access to Moscow, 3 if you took a detour to secure Voronezh (not an easy task). If you use subsidiary roads from the closest part of Ukraine's border, before merging onto the M-3 highway, you can get to Moscow in about ~475km, JUST about the maximum range for tanks.
So Russia would be risking shorting the invasion distance to their capital by 20%, putting it in range of a mechanized lightning thrust. It would also massively complicate their ability to mass combat power on their border because their NATO front would quintuple in length. It would give the US the option of putting anti-ballistic missiles in eastern Ukraine, closer to potential Russian launch locations and probably making it easier to achieve boost-phase intercepts of ICBMs. That undermines the strategic deterrence balance of power/MAD. US ABMs in Eastern Europe is something Russian leadership has been bitching about for 15 years. For some reason we keep pretending to not consider their concerns legitimate.
That's a WHOLE lotta downsides. What is the UPSIDE, for Russia, of a NATO-member Ukraine, though? Pretty much nothing. So Russia's leadership did some risk mitigation calculus and they figured that immediate economic damage was more acceptable than the highly-negative long term Expected Value of a NATO Ukraine. Even if the probability of NATO attacking is low, the damage potential is astronomical. Keep in mind this is a country who's arguably most important holiday commemorates the war where they lost 25+ million lives fighting off an invasion from a hostile alliance on their western border. That's still in living memory for them.
Where they miscalculated was a) Putin's perceptions of the Ukrainian popular sentiment and b) their military's actual ability to pull off a nearly-bloodless blitz of Kiev to facilitate a regime change. The Russian military is looking hella-incompetent right now. I think if Kiev had fallen in <72hrs, there wouldn't even be sanctions against Russia today.
Because in Putin's mind, "Soviet" and "Russian" are synonyms. In other words, the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 was to him the breakup of Russia, and as a Russian nationalist he sees that as a great tragedy. He blames it on the Communists for adopting a constitutional structure which contained within it the seeds of separatism; the Communists only ever meant it as lip-service, and as long as they remained in control that was all it was, but as they lost control those seeds began to sprout and 1991 was the result. To him, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians, etc, are not neighbouring foreign nationalities, they are Russians, they are traditional ethnic minorities of the Russian nationality, just as he views Chechens, Tatars, Tuvans, etc, as being.
He wants to "Make Russia Great Again" by reversing the breakup of 1991, or getting as close to that goal as he possibly can. And annexing large parts of Ukraine and installing one or more puppet governments in the rest is, in his mind, an important step towards that ultimate goal.
You can hear threads if this in the speeches he gives to Russian audiences where he argues that Ukraine isn't a real country.
He's actually going further back than that, to the various Rus empires that predated the modern countries of Russia, Ukraine, etc.
To some extent I think the extensive propaganda about numerous political/celebrity figures being great and powerful and capable has been a sham from the beginning. I would call the war on Ukraine 'put up or shut up' time, where reality tests the value of the claims that have been made for many, many years.
I think we've all been told a lot of lies for a long time.
History's monsters so often seem to be dumb, deeply fallible, weak humans in the wrong place at the wrong time, doubling down on wrong decisions. I've seen people being unsettled and afraid and going 'but what if it's a feint and then the REAL Russian Army comes to obliterate everything', in the face of the shitshow we're seeing.
Not an accident: the effort that went into putting forth that narrative has been extensive. But once tested, we see where reality lies.
Hitler was an example of this. He cleverly came to power, astutely conserved himself in power for years, but then badly fucked up almost from the beginning once he embarked on major military adventures. However, many people kept believing him even militarily clever because of previous political cleverness. I believe something similar is the case with Putin (This is not a comparison of Putin with Hitler in moral terms, just an example)
Today Lavrov again repeated the RF's demands for removal of US's nuclear weapons from Europe.
(And yes, I too believe we are not privy to what has transpired in the past few months, if not past year between the various powers. And there is no way short of collective madness in Russian leadership that this "operation" will be limited to Ukraine.)
One does not avoid a war by starting a war
He's a hardliner, I would not say that he could be frustrated easily but this absolutely is not an easy situation. His currency has collapsed and his country is on the brink of defaulting on foreign debt. He has no support anywhere but from his puppet dictator Lukashenko.
I think Putin did not expect such coordination and global effort in sanctioning Russia over Ukraine invasion. I believe that he wanted to take over Ukraine in just a few days and was surprised by Ukraine's defence and multiple desertions in his own army. He has decisions to make and choices are poor.
Everything I have read that isn't heavily biased anti-Russia propaganda says Russia has exercised enormous restraint so far in this invasion. There's no reason I see to believe Putin's been surprised by Ukraine's defenses, it's not as if all of Russia's forces at the border have been deployed and overwhelmed. Last I read not even half had mobilized. It's more like Putin pushed forward what he hoped was enough to compel a low-casualty outcome in his favor.
What happens next seems likely to be substantially more painful for the Ukrainians, but I hope I'm wrong.
Implying Putin held back for the sake of the ukranian people is misleading.
I hope you'll never have to deal with Russia's restraint.
By Russian standards? Yes. Absolutely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grozny_ballistic_missile_attac...
1) He has sent in his shit soldiers and equipment first, to sacrifice it and wear down Ukrainian forces.
2) All of his equipment and soldiers are of equal shitness.
If it is 1, then he could not have expected a quick win in Ukraine if he was sending in sacrificial troops first. If he did expect a quick win then 2 is the most likely option.
However this raises the question about his air force, they have not been involved and would surely have made a huge difference to their objectives. So again there are a few main reasons:
1) They are not as good as they should be (some reports of pilots having around 100 hours annual flight time, vs RAF and US Air Force where they pilots complain that less than 200 flight hours per year is not enough to remain combat ready).
2) He needs the for stage 2 of the plan which would mean fighting NATO when he tries to invade Poland or other neigbouring Baltic state (There is no way he can get his forces from Ukraine to Finland without Finland having lots of notice and preparing... posssibly by joining NATO anyway)
3) It might be “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” If his air force flew and we saw they were in as much dissaray as his land troops there goes any concern over Russian air superiority.
Given his age, it's certainly within the realm of possibility that he is suffering from cognitive decline.
>Western intelligence agencies have good visibility into Putin right now and are closely watching his moves for any significant behavioral changes, several current and former officials said. Four U.S. officials said there is no intelligence saying he is mentally unstable, but they said he has displayed a different pattern of behavior from in the past.
>The U.S. has solid intelligence that Putin is frustrated and directing unusual bursts of anger at people in his inner circle over the state of the military campaign and the worldwide condemnation of his actions, one former and two current U.S. officials briefed on the intelligence said.
>That is unusual, they say, because Putin, a former intelligence officer, usually keeps his emotions in check.
Dangerous ofcourse, but a mastermind he isn't.
I mean... yes, clearly! Obviously, there's the Ukraine thing, but even before that, look at photos and footage of him when slighted at conferences and so on. He's not as emotionally open as a Trump or a Burlusconi, but he's no stoic as politicians go.
It should have taken hours to break through. The operation was a shamble, even if it might succeed over time.
In 20 years of NATO operations over 5 different war theatres there have been 74 captured soldiers (src: https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/prisoners-in-the-war-o... ). Here there have been 10's in a matter of days.
Either he's gone full potato, or he's still very calculating but everyone around him is feeding false information upwards to "look nice" and because they can't say no. Neither scenario bodes extremely well for his chances of success.
The picture he had portrayed of him doesn't match reality.
Just look at how scared he is of catching COVID. Since 2 years, almost no one is allowed near to him.
The amount of COVID tests his bodyguards and others need to do daily is pretty insane too. Everyone he sees/greets needs to be in isolation for 2 weeks upfront to get near.
https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/10/02/thanks-to-covid-...
And many other sources for many years. Here's a video from him in a hazmat suite, one of his last public appearances - https://abcnews.go.com/International/putin-dons-hazmat-suit-...
Fyi, sitting at a 20 meter table is not a public appearance and Putin has met his big/important friend Xi only virtually as far as I'm aware the last years.
I don't think he's calculated at all. Many things have wrong that he didn't suspect:
- Their 'advanced' malware was finished off by Microsoft within 3 hours
- Their 'advanced hacking culture' has been reversed within days, state tv programs and websites have gone offline within hours.
- Their decade long effort of a propaganda machine has been severely reduced within days ( RT, ...)
- Their portrait of having an 'advanced military' has been decimated. The world now knows that his army is mostly old, rusty, unmotivated and his troops are clueless.
- He miscalculated Ukraine, who he practically trained for 8 years. He also raised serious awareness under Ukrainians what happens with inaction.
- He's giving up his independence, isolating himself from the world and it seems that he's fully aware of that.
- He is constantly ( for years) angering his biggest and most profitable clients ( Europe).
He overstepped his carefully crafted image and failed every step on the way. Not even taken into consideration that he literally had 8 years ( or more) to plan this.
His image of being a world power ( while Russia has the same GDP as 30 years ago and America has grown 14 fold) is just an illusion, but real for him. We have given him too much attention on the world stage.
He has nukes, not brains... Should have been known years ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679110 ).
Europe is prioritizing energy independence now, Russia still had multiple decades to profit from that to improve their situation.
Now, they became 100% China dependent.
But in reality, he's just a short, puffy old man, living in ridiculous kitschy palaces, sitting on ridiculous long tables because he's afraid of even his most loyal underlings.
With attacking Ukraine, he made a huge mistake. He simply counted on the west doing nothing, as usual, but this time he went too far. But because he's just a powerful man, not a great man, he's unable to admit that.
Looks like he was right.
I don't think a man who has run Russia for decades will suddenly have a brain fart and attack another sovereign state on a whim. Think carefully.
Think very carefully.
Enumerating the effect of the sanctions is not. We do not need a thousand articles stating that companies have complied with the law. We already know all of this.
A donation of $2m for humanitarian aid is similarly not noteworthy, for exactly the reasons described above.
— Mark 12:41–44
The coinage in question was about 1⁄64 of a labourer’s daily pay, in current terms in the vicinity of $2, depending on where you are.
Since Meduza was declared a "foreign agent" by Russian authorities (there's such a heavily burdening law here), they lost most advertisement and changed their model to donations.
I'm afraid they wouldn't survive this.
And government-owned media will continue to receive their subsidies from a country budget.
I feel like some things done these days are inflicting more collateral damage than supposed effect.
Is there any way I can help?
I just wanted to add another view on some sanctions effects from inside the country that attacked their neighbour (I still have a problem beleiving this).
All of them don't work for you?
BTW: Putin seems to be able to defend the Ruble for now at the 1 cent mark. This seems quite hight to me and I'd be concerned for how long they can hold this if I'd be holding RUB...
P.P.S: Please note that the payment setting on the site defaults to monthly.
It wasn't my intent to compare incomparable hardness of time in Russia and Ukraine.
I didn't aim to campaign for Meduza support either. (Anyways thank you).
I wanted to show that blocking communication channels may do more harm than anticipated.
Current title: Visa, Mastercard block Russian financial institutions after sanctions
they can do 30/50% less fees than incumbent visa/MC and still operate in the ecosystem because all local gateways and tech stack has been built to incorporate Rupay card system same as visa/MC. the end result is, suppose tomorrow USA orders visa to quit india, beyond a few hiccups, there is a good chance india can weather these american companies leaving the domestic ecosystem. that way, the indirect control USA has over the financial infrastructure of entire nations is reduced to a great extent. seems russia has done the same so this is moot now but think of it this way.
visa/MC often cry to mommy USA about unfair advantage to rupay cards in india and the US tries to intervene. suppose india bans Visa tomorrow, why is the US government so inclined to intervene in that case? unless this is their way of maintaining a degree of control
Every country needs to stop letting US tax all the transactions. Not because sanctions - if you act like North Korea you'll be treated like North Korea - but because it's just stupid policy.
I understand your point, those services might be used by Russians against the war, but they can also be used by Russians who support the war. There's nothing good about any of this, the harm being done to ordinary Russians by sanctions isn't good, or desirable, or even deserved. Nobody in the west wants to be doing this. It is necessary though, unfortunately.
First thing you have to do, is to place website in a zone not controlled by government aligned register (So they cannot easily undelegate it).
Second, you use hosting abroad to prevent equipment seizure or adminstrative hosting provider compromise.
Chinese alternative for MasterCard/Visa is UnionPay
Chinese alternative for SWIFT is CIPS
This only prompts Putin ratings to grow.
It frustrates the opposition (30% of Russians).
But it also makes the supporters hate the west even more.
So if all these sanctions are there to frustrate people to create a coup and a revolution - its currently working in the opposite direction.
EDIT: I don't mean it as something that I wish, just stating an opinion from locals I have spoken with.
Edit: added "be"
I don't think we tried to push for Ukraine as neutral state, like Finland, did we? Does EU/NATO really NEED Ukraine to join them?
Seems like it would be a simple peaceful discussion worth having rather than risking more suffering. Discussion might not work... but the fact it's not even on the table is absolutely insane.
Escalated an existing war that has lasted more than 5 years, and which certain NATO members have been very clear is why Ukraine wasn't being allowed to advance in its quest for membership.
Aggression is very very clearly ONLY coming from the Putin inner circle thugs who sacrifice Russian lives to kill Ukrainians and unlawfully attack a sovereign state, recognized as such by the entirety of the UN.
All under the guise of idiotic lies that stink to the Moon. It's incredible how any Russian still listens to Putin, Lawrow and the rest of these thugs. They must fear a lot of repercussions. Russia could be rich, connected and prosperous instead.
The subject of the sentence that I posted the correction to was “Putin”, not “Ukraine”, and the correction was to the verb phrase, from “started a war”, to “escalated a war...”, not to the subject.
So, no, I’m directly stating that Putin escalated war he’s been waging since 2014, not “implying” that Ukraine escalated anything.
During this period, our politics underwent 'Finlandization', basically giving USSR veto powers over our internal policies. It probably was a necessity to avoid an invasion, but certainly nothing you'd recommend to anyone.
Yours is an imperialistic attitude. The question is not, how could EU or US or NATO or Russia push Ukraine about. The question is, what do the Ukrainians themselves want or need.
The situation is incredibly complicated, but I see a few scenarios:
- Russia succeeds in their siege and installs puppet government, however with a lot of casualties. The west and NATO probably convey their disappointment, continue with sanctions and the diplomatic divide. Ukraine will be split. At least with LDR / DNR with Russian interpretation.
- Ukraine succeeds in holding off the pressure, NATO involves themselves more directly (already partially happening). Russia will unleash their anger - this is the worst case which comes with a lot of unpredictability in terms of destruction and casualties.
- Ukraine / Russia come to an agreement of neutrality. This is becoming highly unlikely as Ukraine will seek revenge for what has been happening till now, Russia will have to remove some of the officials and install theirs - this will never happen under current rule. So the above two scenarios are more likely :(
EDIT: indentation
The people most hurt by these sanctions are those closest to Putin, the people who have made themselves fabulously wealthy by maintaining close ties to the government. Their quality of life has been most severely impacted by this move.
I do not believe that is the purpose. I think the idea is to make it costly for Putin to go forward. Sadly this is at the cost of the well-being of the russian population.
Fifty years ago, the dollar had value because America was the one-stop-shop for everything. Cars, electronics, appliances, all of it.
Nowadays, that's China. China makes everything, or the parts to make everything, and increasingly to a higher standard than can be produced in the US. Go watch Project Farm and think on those results.
The dollar has value now because it functions as a medium of exchange. That's it. The machinery of international purchasing and banking works in dollars, but that's not a given.
Kicking Russia out of SWIFT undermines that entire system. Doesn't matter if it's expedient or warranted or if you just really fucking hate Ivan. It is now very clear to every single bank on the planet that the USG is willing to use commercial entities as a weapon against your country. Not just banks, either: technology companies, medical suppliers, all the rest.
That has very real long-term consequences, and I wouldn't be surprised if China and Russia jointly rolled out a competing standard within the next decade. The combination of "you're using this if you want to buy from us" and "can you really trust the Americans?" is not going to have good consequences for the USD.
I don't see this as driven by the US government and as something that will be held against the USD, it is just as much motivated by the Europeans and the Euro. The point of these sanctions is to say - a country is not allowed the benefits of integration with the global economy if they are willing to use military force against it.
History disagrees.
> The point of these sanctions is to say - a country is not allowed the benefits of integration with the global economy if they are willing to use military force against it.
What happens when that country is no longer interested in the trade-offs required to "integrate into the global economy"?
Instead of hurting just Russia, this is literally hurting every country.
I really hope we can do something good for everybody, but my fallible mind has its limit.
Regardless, manufacturing isn't the primary measure for economic strength anyway.
But the US also couldn't act unilaterally in these sanctions so I'm not sure that comes into play so much
It's not like everyone woke up this week and realized these economic levers exist. Look at Huawei, the EUV blockade, Russia using gas for politics, etc. SWIFT is a relatively weaker lever in that the US is not able to unilaterally impose this, it took EU signing off - and pre-war, this wasn't a very likely outcome.
Assuming dollar hegemony forever without using it as a weapon also isn't very truthful. With the rise of China that you point out and with the decline over long timescales of oil, it's going to wane in importance without more levers like silicon.
Russia may buy things from China, but they need to sell energy and goods to Europe. In particular, it is difficult for Russia to send a good chunk of their energy output to China. Energy is a bulk good, and thus sensitive to transport costs.
China and Russia are not liberal economies. A side effect of that is that their own markets do not offer enough liquidity to support an alternative exchange medium. It really is as simple as that. China has advanced in strides, but it will take true liberalization before it can wield economic weapons on a global scale. Its society will need to mature more before that happens, and then it will be a different day.
I'm not going to rah-rah let's beat Russia – or China – those are nationalistic attitudes I won't partake in. At the same time, I really am very negatively against this war, and just as much, I believe the systems should be impartial as they can be. With all that said, your analysis simply does not hold weight, and given the European consensus behind blocking the Russian government from SWIFT, I don't think the legitimacy or effectiveness of that system is significantly compromised either, for all practical purposes.
Modern Russia, and Modern China are as tight as ever. Being driven closer by the West.
Maybe Russians will get AliPay and WeChat in the near future...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93China_25-year_Coo...
Russia and China have their backs against the wall, and have moved back to back, along with Iran and Pakistan.
Russia is not even a Top 10 GDP economy.
If this isn’t obvious you’re either not paying attention, or you are missing key info.
China and Russia won't succeed at launching a competing standard though. Autocracy may promote economic growth at home, but it cannot credibly protect the financial interests of foreigners from its own impulsive and selfish desires. You deposit funds into Russian and Chinese banks at your own risk.
You're getting money to Chinese banks because presumably you are buying something from someone that has an account there, not for safeholding.
Those Chinese banks can’t even be used for traditional style fx management because you’ll have to double fx from local currency to yuan and yuan to ruble. The yuan fx scene is much less efficient and liquid as well.
What this more likely does is set Russian & Chinese firms to trade with each other. That looks a lot like the North Korea relationship.
Chinese banking has actually spread around the world a lot more than you'd think. They aren't starting from zero.
And also, CIPS software-wise is designed to be a plug-in replacement for SWIFT.
I work in the industry and have seen Chinese banking normalize a bit especially in Africa but comparatively it is tiny and hard to manage. Singapore for instance is a more likely spot to setup banking operations for most companies.
The issue is that these are long term trends. It will take decades to make China a finance nexus on the order of modem banking centers in the west and that presumes China continues to liberalize their currency and finance regime which is not the current trend.
Moreover, Russias currency and market have been in a downfall for a month, not a week - that its actions _have_ long term consequences is exactly the point.
Now, please remember, there's a whole planet out there, and Russia has a GDP that equals _Italy_ or Benelux - it's just, in the grand scheme of things, not important enough to justify its repeated demands to be able to invade soverign nations without consequences.
Russia is still free to settle its debts through the thing it has: physical goods. SWIFT is a messaging system - not a payment system - they're still free to use faxes and carrier pigeons. The world need not let you participate in modern conveniences if you're just a bully.
They have a shit ton of dark money that isn't calculated as part of GDP. Their economy is also in much better shape even with the smaller official calculations, having external debt equal to 38% of GDP compared to 102% for the US.
(As italian, neapolitan)
https://qz.com/212962/drugs-prostitution-and-smuggling-italy...
I've seen people point out that when discussing the conflict, it makes more sense to use PPP adjusted GDP. The rationale is that for a lot of stuff needed for state security, the production is done internally, and thus the currency exchange rates don't matter as much. (This is particularly true for Russia, since they build a lot of their weapons, compared with other european countries which buy weapons from the US)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
Russia is ahead of all European countries, except Germany.
I hope there will be a cease fire soon, enough people suffered already...
Anecdotally: Russian outdoor equipment has gotten seriously acceptable in the past few years, and that's not a bad proxy for their military gear. Laugh all you want, but ten years ago, I wouldn't have trusted Ivan to build a tent that didn't (a) weigh several tons; and (b) fall over in a light breeze.
Looking at the gear they're fielding, they're maybe a generation behind NATO on everything except NVOs (the US is 2-3 generations ahead there), and the Russian military has massively more inland combat experience than anybody else in Europe save the French, and likely as much UW/FID experience as the US. Difficult to assess where Russia lies in terms of training and tactics given all the noise, but they appear to be far more competent than I expected.
People are seriously underestimating what Russia can bring to the table, sort of like how folks laughed at the strides made by Chinese manufacturers.
Numbers are useful when they're qualitatively comparable, but in this context, I'm not sure what number of troops should say you're allowed to bank wherever you want.
Don't both of them have competing SWIFT systems that don't talk to each other?
Not in this case given that Belgium and the rest of Europe also wants it. ...but I distinctly remember us not wanting to ban Iran from SWIFT and bowing to US pressure on the matter
Those shiny MacBooks and iPhones were all designed in California but made in China.
If you act like North Korea you'll be treated like North Korea.
Forced technology transfers, bad monetary policy, quotas for US tech, cars, etc in their domestic market. Japan was forced to take it all as they had no comparable export market to switch to (the USSR and co were a nono, china and such poor), no independent army and foreign policy of their own and all in all no way to resist and was thus very susceptible to a tradewar.
It isn't the solution. please use cash or PayPal instead (try in another country)
> The crypto project has had 13 years to try and find a problem to solve. It has not found one.
You've posted this link under the news article to which crypto has proven to be THE solution (non-censorable, cannot be weaponized).
The other points from the blog post are equally hilarious. You can't shout "It's not money!" and hope that it doesn't become one. If people value it, find use in it enough to accept it, it can be treated as money.
Cash is also subject to hyper inflation which is likely given the rapid drop in the value of their currency, making it a poor store of value.
Payments networks inside Russia is another matter altogether, but I assume like most countries they also have a local card network (Edit: found it, it's called Mir[0]). In that case, the issue will arise only when trying to use russian cards outside Russia.
Unfortunately, the war machine is in overdrive and lots of wicked parties are using media propaganda to escalate emotions amongst people. The only outcome of this high temperature is more war and suffering for all, which again benefits the wicked parties (military corporations and others), while regular people everywhere will suffer.
So write to your government, turn off the media, and if you believe, pray for peace. That is the best way to help.
The best anyone can do to make the world better place is support the world again the Russian aggressors and war criminals. People "asking for peace" and "deescalating" are just on the side of the aggressors and war criminals.
Don't behave like the real world is a Marvel movie filled with heroes and supervillains. If you truly want to help, write to your govt representative. Anything else you do as a civilian or private business is vigilantism, and will have no impact on the actual conflict at hand.
Hindsight being perfect, one of the worst blunders the US ever made was turning their backs when the Soviet Union collapsed. That was their one chance to jump in and shape things in their favor, instead they opened Pizza Huts.
Bonus round 2 right before our eyes! assuming Putin doesn't nationalize stuff. Everyone else is literally helping you have diamond hands because you cant sell until the sanctions are lifted haha, which I mean, they will eventually. Undervalued, revenue producing assets aren't going to be ignored for long. BTFD.
Just assume that you're going to the front lines soon unless you have enough money to donate enough to an Ivy League school for admission and draft deferral, like last time. The people that couldn't afford have no lineage as their bloodline ended, and the people that could afford it are current politicians and Presidents on all sides and their genes and ideas do pass on. Makes it easy to rationalize taking asymmetric financial bets during a time when people think they don't want to talk about it.
The folly was the communism, the unbridled accumulation of revenue producing asset was just waiting for the communism to fall apart, I think it is shocking I also think I do not have sympathy for it.
Time to do it again. Cheap revenue producing assets.
After enduring the communist hellhole for 70 years they should at least have been able to enjoy the fruits of all that labour.