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Comment by gattilorenz | Hacker News Reader

> France [and the rest of the EU] announced they were going to stop buying Russian oil and gas, blocked Russia's access to the world banking system so Russia couldn't receive payment for their gas in $$$ or €€€, then refused to pay for it in Roubles instead.

As far as I remember, it was still possible (in terms of banking systems/santions) to pay the gas in Euros as usual; Russia decided, unilaterally, that they would require the payment to be in Rubles (to try and limit its plummeting value). For ther rest, you're correct.

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Your recollection is correct. He is falling for the same thing he accused op of.

Why would Russia want to be payed in EUR when their foreign assets were frozen? Russia relied on foreign financial infrastructure which has proven to be unreliable for them.

It's a funny twist of logic to say the Russians found the foreign financial infrastructure to be unreliable for them... When they were booted out for attacking a neighboring country, isn't it?

It's so unreliable! All they have to avoid is invading their neighbors, but they couldn't manage that. Russia is the unreliable party.

Unfortunately to make sense of any of this one needs to understand how people include some implicit framing.

For Russia (and many Russia apologists) Ukraine is not an innocent neighbor or not even a neighbor in the first place (not a "real country", part of mother Russia, part of the empire or part of the legitimate sphere of influence, legitimate by destiny...), and Russia is liberating Ukrainians from their current leaders or at least liberate the Russian speaking subset of the population.

Clearly if you're not sharing this worldview/framing it seems clear that Russia is just paying the obvious consequences for their actions, and that they are morally on breach of contract.

Unfortunately in practice the contract doesn't matter. There are no courts, there are no normal arguments to be had here.

Russia made a choice and are bearing the consequence. Other countries made their choices and are bearing the consequence.

Some gambles have been made, some have failed, others have not yet played out fully.

It is much easier when you don't reiterate propaganda. Or should I go and tell Russian speaking Ukrainian refugees in my area that they are in fact being liberated and as soon as liberation is done they can return back home to the new Russia that they dreamed of?

I find Russian propaganda shallow and obviously nationalistic crap.

But I can't ignore the fact that it works on some people.

Also, once a person holds a POV aligned with that propaganda, having a discussion with another person that has another POV is extremely difficult unless the two parties are at least aware of each other's fundamentally different points of view.

I’ve seen people from Kherson and Mariupol in a filtration center recently. I can’t even pretend to imagine what they’re going through. There was an expression of deep trauma on their faces. It’s truly tragic.

But you can’t deny no diplomatic attempts were made to prevent the conflict by either party. I’m not putting all the blame on one side, that’s a gross oversimplification.

That there was no diplomatic attempt on either side is true, however what would it look like in practice? Ukraine being pressed by the world to concede part of its territory to Russia to stop the violence (after it already lost years ago, at least in practice, Crimea)? That’s literally (yes, actual literally, not metaphorically), the appeasement strategy that led to the invasion of Poland and, ultimately, WWII.

The democratically elected government of Mexico has been overthrown by a populist uprising and has been replaced by a government which is staunchly pro China and wants Mexico to appy to join in a military alliance with China.

Being a stalwart defender of 'free-dam & deee-mocracy' the US shrugs and says ' Oh well. It was the will of the people. Nothing we can do about it'

</Jackanory>

That's, basically, Cuba. Don't remember when did the US invade.

There’s some truth to what you’re saying. I also think there was a chance for this war to be prevented or stopped early on, if EU acted as a whole and lived the proclaimed values.

It’d be great if people could stop pretending there’s “right” and “wrong”. The EU and the US governments don’t care that people die, they don’t impose sanctions because of that. Like, nobody sanctioned the US for invading other countries.

So, you’re either against all the wars, or you’re a hypocrite. There was no reason for Azerbaijan to restart the Karabakh conflict. But MasterCard and Visa still work in Baku.

Not saying that what’s happening in Ukraine is good, but let’s not pretend. According the to the West, there’re “good” and “bad” wars.

Right, it's possible to pay the gas in Euros. But can Russia then spend those Euros?

  >As far as I remember, it was still possible (in terms of banking systems/santions) to pay the gas in Euros as usual; Russia decided, unilaterally, that they would require the payment to be in Rubles (to try and limit its plummeting value)...

That's a bit disingenuous, ins't it?

Maybe you're right and EU/UK could still have paid in Euros but, with Russia being frozen out of the world's banking system, they [Russia] wouldn't have actually been able to access the money. So it pretty much amounts to the same thing. They'd be giving the gas away.

If you were working on a job for someone and suddenly had your bank accounts frozen, it wouldn't be unreasonable for you to tell the person employing you that, while you were happy to keep on working, since you couldn't access your bank account, you'd need to be paid in cash for the rest of your time.

And you'd rightly feel aggrieved if that person refused, but then put it about that you were an unreliable worker who'd walked off the job.

I’d say it’s more disingenuous not to consider that, if they had retired from the sovereign ground of Ukraine, they could have easily spent that money.

But in any case, as disingenuous as it might be, it’s more factually correct than the post I was responding to.

I wonder why Russia "unilaterally" decided to demand payment in rubles after the western politicians were seriously floating ideas about immediately freezing funds received by Gazprom as a payment for Russian natural resources. /s

And payment in rubles has nothing to do with supporting its exchange rate. It does not matter who does the conversion. It could be Gazprom or a European company, the result for the exchange rate is the same. It's all about removing dependency on the western financial system and bolstering a bit the domestic one.

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