Last Day of IKEA in Moscow
novayagazeta.ru
novayagazeta.ru
What's happening in Ukraine is a tragedy, but what's happening in Russia as a result of sanctions is quite tragic in itself.
Currency is in free fall, hundreds of companies closed shops and offices, many will lose their jobs, etc.
This will hit marriages and relationships. Men become depressed and paralyzed when they lose their incomes. So just like in the 90s, the economic collapse will hit women of Russia hard.
The smartest and most beautiful women - aka the ones used to live in abundance who got all the attention, etc will try to leave the country. 'Russian' is now quite a bad word for anyone in Europe, so women will have a hard time finding and maintaining European men (of course any men will take a beautiful woman for sex, but providing for her long term is another thing).
They say war is men protecting their women and children from the invading men. But in this situation there will be Russian women who leave their men for foreign men.
As much as I disagree with Russia's actions and even if the majority of Russians support the war (are afraid of the criminals running the country), I still feel sad for what these families are about to experience this year.
Also, this should be a warning to any people who currently feel the temptation to elect a government which is basically fighting democracy. The effect in Russia is obvious, but it isn't as if there aren't such tendencies in other countries. Just watch which political parties try to discredit free media and you have a good first indicator.
Unfortunately, so far in history Russia has only been a one huge long tragedy. Navalny gave a speech at his kangaroo trial that his wish is that Russia be happy. Maybe some day they might eventually figure out how to make that happen. But maybe not. 50 / 50 chance perhaps. But the next best thing would be that Russia does not spread tragedy to all other countries with radioactive fallout, and also no way to say for sure if that might happen or not, but does look likely.
Yes, men protect their women and children during wars. Sounds raw and simple, but that is the truth. I advice you to think about it.
Looks like you never dated a Russian woman. Beware! You may end up totally dominated and providing her long term :).
Jokes aside, poverty combined with increased materialism and class division was indeed a big problem in Eastern Europe after the fall of USSR. Lots of women simply wanted "something better", which is to be translated that they valued money a lot more than true love. Social values were turned upside down. Thieves and crooks became the new social reference for success. You could no longer impress a girl with just a smile and a guitar. It was somewhat normal to prove your masculinity by fighting on the street or spending lots of money in a stupid way. Police rarely bothered, unless someone "important" person was involved. Crime proliferated to unbelievable levels. People were stealing things like tires, fuel and windshield wipers. At some point I had to lock the battery of my soviet car with a padlock (battery costed nearly half of monthly income and for some people over here it still does). Oligarchs were born out of criminal activity and questionable privatization of government property, such as factories and land. Later it turned down most of oligarchs had connections to the ex-secret service ranks. Some of them were loyal to the US, others to Russia. Most medium to large business is still controlled by such people or their offspring. Foreign investment often needed their blessing. It is a long story indeed, but I feel that after more than 30 year of "transition" to the new form of rule, people are slowly returning to some of their previous values, such as family, friends and other non-material things.
You can't prove anything based on physical evidence if you dig deep enough. Anything can have an alternative explanation, however unlikely. Aliens, quantum fluctuations, you name it.
Also, you probably never dated an Eastern woman, they are not weak at all :)
There is an article in the Atlantic how this could cause a depression in Tajikistan.
This couldn't possibly be at a more fragile global economic time either after 2 years of COVID.
The economic damage of this is not going to be isolated to Russia. We have practically injected the global economy with an unknown economic poison and we have no idea what it is going to do or how far it will spread.
No, it's not. Your actions have consequences. Russia has been attacking neighboring countries and taking parts of their territories.
Moldova 1992.
Chechnya 2000-2009.
Georgia in 1992 and 2008.
Ukraine in 2014.
They are using the standard scheme of "oh, this part of your country decided to become independent, we will flood it with our troops and defend them, and then install russian puppets to rule over it".
Enough is enough. Russia needs to understand that this will not fly. You lose your job? Cry me a river. Look what you did to Ukrainian cities.
(i'm a russian immigrant to the US)
In time of peace, value of human life is infinite, thus fredom of someone ends where freedom of somewhere else starts. Nobody can cut basic freedoms of someone else without court decision.
In time of war, this freedom creates vulnerability, so modern democraties have utalitarian laws designed to maximise survivability of nation as whole instead. It's not so important for behemoths, but it's essential for smaller countries. However, even in large and powerful democraties there are loopholes around basic freedoms for desperate times, such as natural disaster, or assault, or war, etc.
For example, it's not allowed to shut somebody else, except when defending or to save life of someone else. It's not allowed to force somebody else to keep silence, except when it puts lifes of others in danger, such as hate speech, or division by race, color of skin, nationality, religion, income, etc.
Russian outlets are doing just that. They are trying to portrait other nations as evils. They are telling to Ukrainians that Jews are rulling our country (half truth, many politics in Ukraine are Jews), then they tell to Jews that Ukrainians are Nazi, to induce fighting between nationalities, to start civil war.
This creates danger for everybody, so we cried for years to shut down Russian propaganda. Nobody listened to us until today.
Ideally, any limitation of freedom is there to actually guarantee freedom, e.g. your freedom is limited in the form of an obligation to come to a police station to submit an explanation, but thanks to that the police can protect people from those that would otherwise limit their freedoms.
In similar vein, freedom of speech has to be limited, when some propaganda could lead to the decrease of the freedom.
It is tricky of course to judge what limitations are justified, but I find the sanctions against russian news sources on the quite safe side.
It's always preferable to counter propaganda with free speech. Even liars deserve the opportunity to speak. This is especially true when there is no formally declared war between the US and Russia.
But there is a big difference between excluding one source (which is directly and formally controlled by the Russian state).. and putting 15 year sentences on "publishing things that are not coming from the state news agency" (TAS)
BTW, and just FYI, if you want you can still read rt.com using 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8
It is true that in the US, if you want to live in a bubble, you can. However, that's a choice. There are many, many other information channels. And they are free to say whatever they want.
The real issue in the US, is the fact that so many people choose to live in a bubble. I bumped into this Vox piece the other day, "How American conservatives turned against the vaccine", that illustrates quite well how it really is destroying the US
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sv0dQfRRrEQAll these rubbish on freedom of speech ignore the key difference. Individual still matters.
1. NATO is solely a defensive organization. Libya is the clearest counterexample but there others.
2. NATO never gave assurances it wouldnt move east. There are a number of recently released diplomatic caches that prove this to be false https://larouchepub.com/other/2021/4824-chatham_house_lies_a...
https://news.antiwar.com/2022/02/21/uncovered-document-revea...
2 is sometimes done selectively (by saying NATO never gave legal guarantees) but sometimes not.
2. The Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore. Even if such assurances had been made, a number (most by now?) of former parts of the Soviet Union have stepped away from it and applied for NATO. Why should Lithuania be eternally bound to an assurance made to the Soviet delegation, which at the time represented Lithuania? Even if all former members of the USSR applied for NATO, should they be denied because of the alleged assurance in the past to an entity that no longer exists?
Yes, and the contents of those discussions have been released under FOIA.
>This was such a minor topic that Gorbachev didn't even recall it ever having been on agenda.
I have no idea why Gorbachev's memory failed but it's clearly there in the minutes. In many discussions.
Pretending that it never happened is a lie.
>The Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore
Russia is the successor state.
Russia has used this polarization to its advantage in recent years by adding its own targeted misinformation to the mix designed to further increase polarization (as opposed as to merely convincing people of their notion of the truth). Weaponized propaganda basically. Divisions in society erode the strength of alliances like NATO, it causes people to vote for outlier politicians, etc. Zelenski is a good example of such a politician where this actually backfired: he really stepped up. But the strategy was perhaps successful in the sense that Ukrainian governance has probably not been that great in recent years. The usual mix of populism, inept politicians, corruption, and mismanagement.
The Russians are world leading experts when it comes to mass delusion, propaganda, and misinformation and they completely control domestic media and information distribution. As far as many Russians are concerned this is a peace mission that is being frustrated by armies of neo-nazis sponsored by evil westerners. That's the official narrative right now. It's bat shit crazy of course but it follows many years of misinformation, indoctrination, and propaganda in a country that hasn't had a free press for a long time to correct any of these believes.
Also a note of caution: The Russians are extremely clued in and all over public fora like this. So, beware that what you read might be written by them. It might look and sound reasonable to you but that doesn't mean it isn't carefully designed to manipulate you into disagreeing with others. It would be preying on your confirmation bias. It doesn't matter what that bias is, they'll feed it. It's a divide and conquer strategy. They'll happily feed inflammatory opinions to both sides of a debate just to make them hate each other some more.
If you hadn't noticed, politics were kind of intense lately.
Is it? Or is it just like the documentary you mention, somehow factual but leaving you only with contempt and outrage?
Actually best to observe is at the Olympics, there is across competitions and therefore across commentators, a very consistent national hierarchy for which athletes the moderator will make excuses or for which athletes the moderator seeks to qualify the performance. (Think of doping for example.)
And chief editor of this newspaper has this prize: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2021/muratov/facts/
Did you say something positive (judged by the state)? It is not fake news.
Did you say something negative (judged by the state)? It is fake news.
It is a simple erosion of citizen rights, giving the state vastly more power over its citizens than previously.
Where they explain what "fake news", according to the governement, is.
https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2022/03/01/o-rabote-v-uslov...
The problem is that people expect (and rightly so) that the news is reporting what is important right now, so if one area is not being reported on it sends the message that it is not important. Censoring one story basically says that either it is not happening or that it is not important in the eyes of the journalists.
In which way, so far only a single country has used nuclear weapons in war, and it’s not Russia.
It’s much preferable that it happened with a 20kt bomb, as opposed to a 20Mt one.
It was threatened this week, though. I don't think that has happened in a long time.
This would explain the over abundance of people on this website that care more about access to digital bits than they care for sanctioning a dictatorship who attacks a neutral country.
No, I don't think Russians have much, if any, agency in the path their nation takes. For that matter, I don't think many Australians have much agency of Australia - all we get is representative democracy, and the selection of candidates seems to be almost entirely self-serving to the point of no longer even pretending to acting on behalf of those they represent. I understand that I'm able and capable to do more, I just not that interested in public life, I have an unsavoury criminal record, and the local media, owned by a media giant, already is quite fond of reminding everyone of things that happened nearly a decade a go any chance they get.
I think one of three things is going to happen in Ukraine: either Putin gets what he wants, and Europe are ok with that; he doesn't, and a protracted proxy & guerilla war carries on for possibly decades; or lastly he is deposed by what amounts to an inside job. In neither of these three eventualities does and one, or a group of, average Russian's actions have much, if any, impact.
My personal take is that within about three months Russia will have a new leader, although as often is the case in these situations, the new one will likely be worse than the old one.
No, I think you're delusional.
Do you really blame them?
I have a lot of compassion and empathy for the situation the Russian people are in right now, but they did make the system they are currently living in. If they want it to stop, they are going to have to stop it.
Again, I don't want this to sound like a blame you. I understand that real life is more scary than some intellectual debate on HN, especially coming from a dude in western Europe, but philosophically I don't see who else holds the blame, because it's sure as hell not ONLY Putin.
The alcoholic "President" before Putin had actual tanks firing at congress when things didn't go his way.
Before that, communist supreme rulers who murdered those who opposed them. And their own party members to get the throne.
Before that, Tsars, imperialist supreme rules who murdered those who opposed them. And their own family members to get the throne.
And any sensible and rational being with non-zero knowledge of Iraq and Saddam's transgressions against humanity should support the Iraq war which was all about toppling him. Since you're clearly not one of those, here's some homework to get you started: Halabja massacre, Kuwait invasion.
Those events you mention are also a full 13 years before the war in Iraq started, why the delay, why end the gulf war? If my memory recalls, there was a lot of noise around WMDs at the time and questionable evidence for justification.
Also, chemical weapons are WMDs - something Saddam had and used. More homework for you: Operation Opera. Left alone, this guy would be a more psychotic ME DPRK. It's hard to imagine that DPRK itself doesn't come close to Iraq under Saddam.
Ukraine is not an exception.
On the other hand: Lots of people protested the Iraq war. Lots of governments in the west did not participate in the coalition of the willing and protested (I know Germany under Chancellor Schröder did). Should we have done more against it? Probably. I still would justify it with it being a 9/11 aftermath thing, where the USA was on a rampage to get revenge and at the same time being absolutely unchallenged 10 years after the end of the cold war. They couldn't have been stopped by anyone.
Agree for the former, but not with the latter. Though scientific and military advancements by Russia were possible during the cold war, in its current state and with the new sanctions, I don't think Russia will be able to cope with the rest of the world.
IMHO it's more like there will be either a regime change or a new North Korea.
So the most likely scenario is that the status quo remains until he passes away. At which point there would be an opportunity for a clean reset in relations.
Because a lot of death occurs young, brining the average down. But if you survive into adult hood you have good shot at living longer.
Plus he has way more resources than the average Russian.
That avg expectancy of 73 includes all the people that die young, etc.
"Actuarial tables" is the term you're looking for, if you're curious how long a particular person at a particular age might live.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
In the US a person who is currently 69 years old will live, on average, for another 17.53 years.
In Russia the average expectancy is a little shorter, but also Putin is not an average person. By all accounts he seems pretty healthy, and obviously he has unlimited access to the best healthcare money can buy.
No. All major industries are breaking up contracts with the Russians. SWIFT took a century to build. None of that is coming back. Russia can never trust Europe again, and no country can trust Cloud products anymore, seeing how many Russian people are getting HTTP 410 from Cloud products.
Having a team of private doctors, access to the best hospitals, access to Western medicine, even being able to leave Russia for medical care will probably mean he lives longer than average.
It looks to me like our European leaders are escalating in a specific way that ensures we are locked in a feud with Russia for decades to come, in such a way that we can’t renew relationships even if Putin dies and if they pay war damages (which they won’t be able to pay because of their damaged economy - Ow, sweet irony of 1928…).
I wonder whether we, European people, have an interest into making a 50-years war with Russia, like our leaders are deciding.
Or, in other words, where can I emigrate, from France.
I think you're in the minority if you're against sanctions
Russia poked and prodded NATO for years (Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea) and watched the European powers stand idly by with maybe some words and small sanctions
This caused them to miscalculate and push too far. But the escalation is Russia's fault, nobody made them invade anybody
By the way, the elimination of Western influence at all levels has been the goal for at least 15 years. It happend much earlier higher up.
We're back in 1961.
“We cannot negotiate with people who say what's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable."
And frankly said, if the performance of the Russian furniture industry is similar to that of the Russian military, I wouldn' buy a doorstop from them.
Russian military doorstops are a dime a dozen right now in Ukraine.
Lavrov said, they didn't threaten with nukes.That means they did. That creature was bred and selected over decades for such jobs.
Actually I just indulge in fantasies of burning bastards.
Russians are in favor of Putin. And of course, the apparatus has been driving up approval ratings for him for months before this stunt. And now most Russian don't know anything from independent sources, some probably didn't even heard about that Ukraine Peace Operation. A lot of them just believe the whole narrative, because, well, it's the decadent West that says otherwise and 'they want to hold us down. They always do.'
So even if there is a fraction in the apparatus at all that would or could act, there alway looms the danger of a civil war for them.
They have set the anchor in these negotiations between us and them. They want status quo ante 1997. They will at least get Ukraine. Perhaps Moldavia.
And they created chaos. Which always also bears opportunity.
And China will wait.
They can want whatever they want, doesn't mean they are going to get it.
> They don't fight us, they fight the Ukraine.
They don't fight us, they fight Poland!
This sort of thing doesn't really work.
>> They can want whatever they want, doesn't mean they are going to get it.
They won't.
>> This sort of thing doesn't really work.
They somehow missed that.
They will pay.
Fog of War.
One of about 8 people seemed to genuinely support Putin (something like "he knows what he's doing, this is necessary").
Obviously just a vox pop but in general it seemed few supported the aggression and most were just afraid to talk about it.
https://breakingdefense.com/2022/03/no-the-us-air-force-isnt...
But, hey, there are flight simulators out there, aren't there?
THE WORLD: gasps
UK: These guys were on a holiday there
THE WORLD: claps
Or as the saying goes "Rules for thee and not for me".
We all have to thank the Russians to have shown the world in 2014 how to do it. And before that. And also to give us a great opportunity for Whataboutism.
Sigh, I probably still have those Bezmenov brochures from the early eighties lying around somewhere.
"Bombing civilians" is unacceptable if they are from "Europe" like Ukraine.
"Bombing civilians" is fine if they are savages from Middle East, Africa or "not-Europe", like Russia.
But then again, do you really think anybody is still reading this deep in the thread? They're already bored, no shiny tech, just endless babble.
But okay, your next move, Godwin’s law.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%E2%80%99s_law
Game over.
Yet here you are.
> your next move
But.. you invoked it yourself.
"Game over"
PUTIN: These guys were on a holiday there (but actually conducting a war of aggression).
THE WORLD: Gasps in righteous indignation.
UK: These guys were on a holiday there (but actually defending against a war of aggression).
THE WORLD: Claps at the brave defenders.
There, fixed that for you.
(OK, except for the "saying"; I just made that up. But, something along those lines. As is, it seems to fit both Putler's blatant immoral lies, the West's equally blatant but morally defensible ones, and your whataboutish equivalizing of the two.)
But you tried nonetheless, I give you that. Brave but dead.
Otherwise they will find that planes not flying in/out and container ships not delivering will make it hard to import anything at scale. Not that they could pay for goods anyway.
Also I suspect China may use its new found leverage to flood the Russian market with their goods.
Beyond just economically, perhaps potential big gains politically by using money & leverage to become the controlling mother that Russia is to Belarus, making russia the dependent & ruled child.
Several nations seem to be setting themselves up for irrelevence by undermining democracy, usually at the behest of powerful groups within the country, but to do so they basically need to pay a bunch of people to tell lies. They've then created a network that external corporations and government actors can take advantage of. If the Russian news suddenly started telling the truth mixed with 30% Chinese propaganda, then to the average Russian that would be noticeably more true than what they are getting now.
Would the presenters tell blatant Chinese lies to decieve their people? Well apart from the chinese bit they obviously do, so you basically hope they're all actually insane true-believers, because if theyre just ordinary Russians spreading obvious BS in return for a decent paycheck then thats an obvious weak point for the nation.
And Russia knows this is viable, as they do it to other nations.
You sure? According to the US government, a few hundred thousand dollars on Facebook ads was enough to buy a US President (c.f Trump, Donald J).
Did Trump win the popular vote? Would he have had any chance in a proportional voting system? Or if you had to vote? (He himself says no Republican could be elected if people could easily vote). Who made that possible and why?
(Boing and Airbus already suspended providing replacement parts)
I haven't heard anything about impact on container ships yet, so curious what's the situation there...
Even if all 500 planes are instantly returned at the end of March (how?), there will be reduced traffic to Europe due to the current European bans, and the rest of the traffic will be handled by the remaining fleet. I'm not even talking about Comac or other options.
We'll see in the coming weeks, but the scenario you describe where a catastrophic decline in Russian flights such that there are enough non-Airbus/Boeing planes that can manage them is effectively a collapse in Russian civil aviation sector which is kinda what the thread was implying.
The thread in question https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1498723248183382020.html
> other critical components
Like what? This sounds a bit hand-wavy, what are those critical components, if you don't mind me asking?
Then, how do you picture 500 planes getting returned and leasing companies instantly re-leasing them to other customers to keep their own business afloat? Even if that does happen, worst case, that will reduce Russian air traffic to something like Covid days-level. There are a lot of hypotheticals in this thread, facts on the ground right now are, the planes are flying, cargo ships are delivering and all but 7 banks are moving the money across the borders just fine.
Home-build - maybe, but not without parts from the US\EU, not to mention most of the production equipment is not Russian too and you have to maintain it or replace it at somepoint.
Oh and to build something you need materials - some are local, some will have to be replaced if possible.
This will be a huge problem, especially in a country with strong corruption tradition.
Whatever the US role in the events in Ukraine was, for sure they won't let Russia off the hook easily after this invasion.
Putin will make a law that returning airplanes to abroad is illegal. Foreigners have not been allowed to sell Russian shares already nearly a week. So nothing new there.
They cannot fly to most countries anyway, so the risk of getting them confiscated while landed somewhere is small.
Is there international treaties covering such things?
Mind, I'm from the UK our government just ignore international law when they like and only to please their own ends, not even in times of crisis, so can't see something as simple as breaking a treaty will cause any change here.
Mafia families are not rely upon …
What I can't comment on however is the quality of lumber for construction purposes. Making pellets is trivial. Furniture, less so.
Such a decision would be anything but de-escalation.
Either Russia is not a superpower or it's not that relevant.
Also the Baltic sovereign nations remember very very very well what it was like under Russian oppression. They are not going back to that.
Finnish people remember burning their homes ahead of the advancing tank armies. We remember both wars and many of us have the memories in our blood.
Considering how superbly Russia is fucking up a simple ground invasion, I'd say any threat of nuclear escalation is empty at worst.
Putin says roll tanks into Ukraine? Yeah fine, military commanders oblige. They won't lose much over it. Putin says nuke the world? Well, about that... Even military commanders still want to survive.
examples: Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, ...
Also counter examples of more authoritarian regimes having economic resurgences - south korea, taiwan, to lesser extents china and vietnam... I'm sure there's more.
Unfortunately we really don't have anything that is mass-production and of good quality at the same time, but IKEA is hardly a ray of light in my opinion.
How did the US not selling drones to Turkey made Turkey a drone superpower? Well, Turkey already had a large engineering talent pool and related industries, therefore US not selling drones to Turkey was an opportunity.
Does Russia already have a talent base or flourishing industries for all the stuff they are being denied? I find it unlikely, it's a common problem with natural resource blessed countries destroying high skill sectors because a very few things are as profitable and risk free as digging stuff from the ground, sell them and live off from than money. Norway is being smart about it, countries like Dubai and UAE are also trying to be smart about it but AFAIK Russia is not very smart. They used to have huge talent pool of all kinds during the Soviet times but that is no longer the case. They monetised the remains of the Soviets and used the money to buy yachts, palaces and luxury estate abroad.
What is the last innovation, art or product that came out of Russia and change the world? Probably there are some but not many. They used to be the ones competing with the west neck to neck, bringing in their flavour and coming up with something ingenious.
It's very sad actually, considering what the Russian people have archived in the past.
Maybe Telegram? It has 500 million monthly active users.
However, this does show that if all Meta and Google is banned, they will be fine. Is it going to be the same for other stuff though? Like the IKEA stuff? Like civil aviation?
> Does Russia already have a talent base or flourishing industries for all the stuff they are being denied? (...) They used to have huge talent pool of all kinds during the Soviet times but that is no longer the case.
That's why I brought up programming. If the legendary Russian skills are still extant in that industry, then that's one example of a pool of talent that remained intact. Sure it won't help with a furniture crisis, but programming and IT skills are the core of a modern economy, so they will help with other things.
I'm speechless.
Actually, the most profound examples of stupidity I'm seeng lately comes from programmers and technologist who think they understand everything just because they can read high-level simplified explanation of a concept in wikipedia or some blog post.
This arrogance is deeply concerning for me, it usually comes from people with no depth in anything other than programming. Dunning–Kruger effect? Maybe.
Elon Musk is a good example for high profile version of this. Without knowledge of caves he adventured to build robot to get kids out of a flooding cave, then proceeded to attack the person who actually knew his stuff and saved the kids. Another one is again him, predicting the end of Covid in the US. Another gold from Musk is him insulting medical professionals for not pumping a drug that cures Covid, that later turned out not to cure Covid.
This is Musk but Musk-alikes dominate the programming culture. It's horrible.
Elon Musk takes risks beyond what most are willing to take and that is what separates him from the average technocrats. You don’t like that personality type, but some of us wish technocrats would reach farther than copycat social media and advertising ventures even if they fail sometimes.
Even if you somehow overcome the need for capital, how do you setup the supply chain necessary in a world where you can’t readily trade with anyone but China? Which you may not be able or doing in a month if things turn sour and China also start sanctioning.
Sure Russia has a lot of wood, but Russia doesn’t have the industrial material to transform it into furniture, and right now, Russia doesn’t have access to the high tech commodities required to build an efficient lumber industry, let alone factories to process it.
You’re right of course, this will open up for opportunities in the very long run, but it’ll be very localised opportunities that can’t take advantage of the global supply chain in a country that had an economy which was around the size of the economy of Italy before this began.
If you look at history, then you can’t really build empires in isolation. Even the current “American empire” saw a lot of its economic rise throught things like the Marshall plan, which as an example, lifted my country (Denmark) from what was basically medieval farming methods with lots and lots of manual labour to the average farmer owning tractors in less than a decade. Unless the oligarchs of Russia plan on investing basically all their national profits into building the country’s industry, then I would personally wager that these images are the last chance that a lot of Russian have to but IKEA things for a good while. It won’t stop there either, after a few years of isolation the average Russian won’t be able to buy things like coffee if the sanctions get worse.
War is hell.
They say that foreign companies operating in Russia were required by the Putin's government to change their euros for rubles in three days if they want to stand open. Closing is the logical choice.
I really don’t know what he was going for here.
Are Russia and China on good terms these days? Does Russia have anything to trade with China for yuan so they can buy those Chinese goods?
I guess we'll find out. Or maybe the US tries to sanction China for freely trading with those evil Russians? Interesting times ahead…
But China still can't produce certain high-end things. Say, a high-end server-class CPU is sort of problematic, event though ARM architecture allows to produce capable server CPUs. A powerful enough GPU is even harder to come by. I did not hear about high-capacity Chinese HDDs either. I suppose a lot of industries have such high-end goods that only 2-3 "Western" companies figured out how to produce. The embargo will hit hard in areas where such goods make a difference.
I only hope that the embargo will be lifted soon, because the current regime in Russia seems unsustainable.
Without sanctioning China, I really don't see how the US and her allies can prevent most "normal" goods from making their way (eventually) to Russia. Hell, even IKEA is in China.
Russian business would be crippled overnight, and probably plenty of lower government too.
Firstly, IKEA sells a lot more than furniture. You might be able to make a table at home, but that's one of the simplest things IKEA sells. Making a bowl, or a drinking glass, or a clock is significantly harder. Most people don't have the skills or the equipment.
Secondly, IKEA don't simply sell furniture. They sell furniture at scale. Making a table is pretty trivial, but making 25,000 tables is a lot harder. That requires a robust supply chain, logging companies, wood mills, furniture factories, machines to do the work, even if you're going back to the way it was done 50 years ago rather than the massively computerized way IKEA does it. It isn't really possible in a modern global economy if your local currency has collapsed.
And then you have the problem that people are used to IKEA stuff being the minimum acceptable level of quality. People buy it because it's cheap, it looks OK, and it lasts a few years. So now not only do you need to make 25,000 tables, but they need to be at least as good as what people could buy before. Otherwise they definitely will remember, and they won't be very happy about it.
> And then you have the problem that people are used to IKEA stuff being the minimum acceptable level of quality.
People see the IKEA level -- whatever that is -- as the minimum acceptable level. Anything worse than IKEA is not worth considering.
I’d say IKEA serves as the benchmark of value for money.
Russia's strategy has stayed remarkably true to The Foundations of Geopolitics, a 25-year old book. One of it's core principles is dividing the US from Europe. Nato is a clear threat to that.
>Ukraine should be annexed by Russia . . . Ukraine should not be allowed to remain independent, unless it is cordon sanitaire, which would be inadmissible.
>The United Kingdom . . . should be cut off from Europe.
>France should be encouraged to form a bloc with Germany
>The book stresses the "continental Russian–Islamic alliance"
>Georgia should be dismembered. . . Georgia's independent policies are unacceptable.
>Russia needs to create "geopolitical shocks" within Turkey.
'Делаем честную журналистику вместе с вами'
Tell us you need help, but don't make claims that you clearly aren't fulfilling.
There are over 100 millions over Russians that live in a very different world, for those the percentage will be different.
I've seen people saying that he thought he could force them to install a pro-russian regime (or further split the country) with shock and awe and merely the threat of great violence and underestimated the will and ability to resist, and overestimated his ability to project power, but not that he's totally disconnected from the reality of public opinion in Ukraine.
The whole point, whether the invasion worked really well or not, is that he needs to overule their democratic opinion by force. He seems to grasp that or nothing he's doing makes any sense.
'Look at what you made him do'...
> Yes, but when people like Meirschiemer predicted this a decade ago
Seriously: I'm getting a a bit tired of people who can't even spell "Mearsheimer" are trotting him out at every opportunity to make it clear that he predicted all this and more, and that therefore 'the West is at fault here'.
So what? Seeing Ukraine and the Baltics as the obvious potential flashpoints in Europe does not require any degree of genius. The question that you forgot to ask was: was it inevitable or not? And if it was then whatever the response the West made was irrelevant, dictators do as they do.
I predict that Russia will at some point attempt to take over the Suwalki gap. When I'm proven right that won't amount to a thing, it is as logical as the sun coming up tomorrow morning.
As far as I'm aware, all sides think this is happening for the same reason, they only disagree about whose fault it is.
You raised the possibility that Putin invaded accidentally because someone told him Ukraine wanted to be invaded and he believed them, I don't think that adds up and if anyone is actually saying that it's more likely Russian propaganda than a serious attempt to understand Putin's motives.
I'd heard the Russian conscripts sent in to kill and be killed in Ukraine had been told that was what was going to happen, but not sure how far up the chain the lie is supposed to have started, and how many actually believed it.
To bring bad news to a person like Putin is an act of bravery.
Have a look at that video of him belittling his chief of security and how the guy totally deflates. And that was only on the suggestion that maybe things weren't really going to plan.
I think there is a distinct possibility that Putin did not have all the facts before embarking on this invasion. And with every day that it continues Russia is more rather than less committed to see it through, whatever the price because they need to be able to declare victory in some way, even if that means that in the whole of Ukraine there isn't a single brick standing on another. Rationality went out the window last week, it likely won't be back for a while.
https://euromaidanpress.com/2019/04/09/first-round-of-ukrain...
Elections in occupied territory, especially when there are substantial doubts about the fairness of those elections in those territories (see the article you linked) make it hard to know what is really going on there. And regardless, Russia has already invaded on the pretext that Ukrainians had launched attacks on those regions (which turned out to be staged) so I think we're a bit past that point now.
Furthermore, there is plenty of evidence that the citizens of those regions are far, far from happy with the Russian invasion.
Ukraine may not be homogenous, but it became a lot more united a week ago.
So I dunno, give it to Japan. Or Korea.
Gift Koningsberg to Ukraine.
Also, Russia is too damn big and unpopulated, it would be almost impossible to defend it all without nuclear deterrence. Much like Canada, in that regard.
If Russia complied, and agreed to some international oversight (for example regarding their nuclear arsenal), I'm sure the rest of the world would happily take up trade again. Living in Germany, I see many people are quite upset about the high gas prices, and forgiving a repentant country AND profiting from trade would look very good for the government.
Maybe a lot of these international brands exiting is more useful than some of the other sanctions. It hits the more wealthy, who lose a sense of status and feel left out of the world. That can't be good for Putin who is seeking glory.
I'm sure the PR hit they'd take from continuing to do business is a factor, but I don't think this many large int'l companies would have reacted this quickly to just PR hits.
All international companies really, really, really, really like to get paid for the goods and services they provide. After sanctions that becomes difficult to impossible to do in Russia.
I think their thought process is:
Best case scenario they get paid in rubles which have gone down in value and are likely to go down further or at the very least be very volatile.
Worst case scenario they get $0 USD for their goods and services as they can't get the money out... and they are slapped with further sanctions.
Then, what ducks do they give? [thank you, spellchecker].
it may turn out to be the Paycheck Revolution (assuming rubles are worth anything within the borders in two weeks).