Comment by pandaman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pandaman | Hacker News Reader

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Well, this the question, why would it end badly for Russians? I mean, the Twitter difficulties are definitely a thing but as far as I can tell in reality Ukraine has its cities encircled or lost, its military either hiding in the encircled cities or being ground down in cauldrons, Ukraine has not succeeded in any significant counter offense, it's out of fuel even to retreat and regroup.

And Ukraine had an army better than any EU country other than Turkey and Russia had not been waging a total war (thus the forces hiding in cities are not being burned with tactical nukes/thermobaric munitions). Russia is not Syria, it has air force and navy, great anti-air and anti-ship capabilities, military intelligence of all kinds (and nukes, of course). What is going to ensure the Western victory, angry twits? As far as I know, Twitter is banned in Russia already. More sanctions? These seem to hurt the West more than Russia at the moment and Russia has not even started turning off oil, coal and gas.

>>More sanctions? These seem to hurt the West more than Russia at the moment

Source? Because on the face of it, that sounds actually crazy. Russia has been reduced to economic rubble already. By summer, they won't be able to run their farms that operate foreign equipment, their planes can't fly anywhere but even if they could that's a moot point because very soon they won't be able to maintain them, tens of thousands of Russians are fleeing the country every day(and I can only imagine a lot of them are the best and brightest and also people with means to actually escape). It looks like the best they can hope for is for China to buy them out and that they can become a slightly better equipped North Korea 2 - a chinese vassal state.

>>Russia has not even started turning off oil, coal and gas.

I'll give them one thing - Russia has been better at sanctioning themselves than "the west" could ever hope for. Just today they announced a 10 year ban on any foreign company that doesn't return by 1st of May, in addition to the legislation that is getting rid of copyright as well as patent protection for foreign companies in the country. Why would anyone do any business with them long term.

So yeah, I absolutely expect them to destroy whatever sliver of economy they still have and actually turn off the gas. I can't wait actually.

>Russia has been reduced to economic rubble already

Sure, this is what Obama said in 2014. Since then Russia modernized its military: deployed the new MBT, 5th gen fighter, hypersonic missiles among many things (and actually used the latter in combat just recently) and waged two successful military campaigns (Syria and Ukraine). What did the Western military do in the same time? Managed to screw up the retreat from Afghanistan and the West-backed forces in Syria lost/defected. Any successes of the Western military might I had missed?

And the WH Press Secretary had been telling us that the inflation the US is suffering is caused by Putin so I am guessing it's the effect of the sanctions since I doubt very much Putin is in control of the US economy just yet (that's assuming WH is not blatantly lying and there is some link between Putin and inflation).

>>Sure, this is what Obama said in 2014

Maybe you missed it, but the sanctions imposed on Russia in the last two weeks are nothing like we've ever seen. The position Obama was in 2014 is not even comparable. Also, has he really actually said that? I find that hard to believe.

Are you denying Obama proclaimed Russian economy is "in tatters"? Is the current state of "being reduced to economic rubble" even worse than being "in tatters"? I'd like to see the whole scale, please. I am curious what's next after "reduced to rubble" since that is what will be needed if the EU/US are going to fight Russia. I just hope it does not push my gas prices over 20 $/gal.

I'm not denying anything - I'm asking you for a source where he said that, because I'm genuienly not aware of him doing so.

And like I said, current economic sanctions are worse than anything we've ever used against a developed country in terms of economic punishment. So whatever image you have of Russia in 2014 - now is worse.

>>I just hope it does not push my gas prices over 20 $/gal.

I don't see how it would.

One good source is his speech at the State Of The Union in January of 2015 (though he had been claiming it as soon as they imposed the sanctions in different words perhaps). I am sorry, I thought you are feigning ignorance since you seem to be speaking with authority on the sanctions effect on Russia yet appear to be ignorant of what the POTUS who imposed those sanctions had to say about their effect.

> I don't see how it would.

Figures. As I said further up thread, many people seem to be applying their ignorance to analyze a complex geopolitical situation.

The entire world is not just America you know. I'm not American so I'm not particularly aware of what your president said in 2014. America isn't the only country imposing meaningful sanctions on Russia. I don't think that's ignorance either - you probably don't know what was the Polish presidential stance in 2014 either and I wouldn't call you ignorant because of it.

And I looked up the transcript of the State of The Union address you mentioned and he does indeed say that. Thanks.

Sure I don't even know that Poland had a president. But I don't claim authority i.e. I am not saying "Russia is going to starve this summer because the mighty Polish sanctions deprive it of strategic sunflower seeds" or "Russia is going to crush Poland by sending 10M Africans through the Belarus border!". I just notice that economic claims, especially formulated in such imprecise terms as "tatters" and "rubble" seem to appear the result of political posturing and not an actual analysis of economic effects. There are no effects of the sanctions wrt the campaign in Ukraine, at least ones that I can observe, so I don't see how any hypothetical sanctions could have stopped the hypothetical future military conflict between Russia and NATO.

> Is the current state of "being reduced to economic rubble" even worse than being "in tatters"?

Probably far worse, though actual measurements will take time; also, if the sanctions are maintained equally well, given how much more comprehensive they are, it will be much harder for Russia’s economy to reconfigure and bounce back as it did post-2015.

Except the 2014 sanctions have not ended and Russia had been cutting ties with the West ever since then. New sanctions might be harder but Russia is also much less vulnerable to them.

I am sure the sanctions will hit hard people who still have ties with the West e.g. people working for the Western companies or doing business with Western companies but I don't see how this can affect Russia's military capability. Some "model" not getting paid from Instagram/OnlyFans is not going to slow down military production and deployment.

Obama did in fact say that in his 2015 SotU [0]. And he was right, while it rebounded after 2015, the Russian GDP/capita dropped almost 12% in 2014 and almost 34% in 2015.

[0] Here's one piece of analysis after, and referring to, the description: https://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/21/obamas-remarks-on-russias-ec...

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