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Comment by fritigern | Hacker News Reader

I guess the boomerang or blowback effect applies to countries with either/or commodity or human resources. Easy to forget when you sanction and starve poor small countries like Cuba etc. and face no real consequences except for missing out on good cigars.

Except Russia isn’t really a “large country” here - its economy is comparable with Italy, but given its lack of technology and know-how it’s more like Nigeria with nukes.

Russia has around 140 million people, is a one of the major exporters of oil, natural gas, wheat and fertilizer.

Thats why things like this are happening: https://www.reuters.com/world/india/russia-becomes-indias-se...

Nigeria has even more. But it doesn’t make them a superpower that could just shrug off the sanctions.

Russia just did.

Not really :-D Russia did have _some_ economy before the sanctions; now all they are left with is gas. Even China doesn't want to cooperate.

now all they are left with is gas

And wheat, and titanium, and neon, and rocket engines, and metallurgy, and hypersonic technology, and .....

Wheat, true. It’s questionable if they can still do much in titanium. Neon is mostly Ukraine, Russian rocket engines are pretty much done (they spent everything they inherited from USSR), and hypersonic appear to be a scam.

Here is what they can’t manufacture: electronics. Or planes, or tanks, or even ordinary cars.

> Here is what they can’t manufacture: electronics. Or planes, or tanks, or even ordinary cars.

They'll just buy it from China. Like everyone else does.

Assuming China will want to sell them (and it might not want to; it’s not just Apple that you can’t buy in Russia anymore) - sure. But they doesn’t change the fact that the entire Russian economy is on life support.

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