This is likely related to the US imposing secondary sanctions early this year.
Yandex would lose access to their US/EU bank accounts if they were still operating in Russia.
Yandex would lose access to their US/EU bank accounts if they were still operating in Russia.
Yandex would lose their Russian business in any case.
After 9/11, the US maintained productive relations with the Saudis. They're actively supporting Israel through the Gaza business. They have a long history of propping up dictators and thrashing countries for hard-to-articulate reasons (I still don't get exactly what the point of Afghanistan or Iraq was, even accepting the blunt "oil" that is sometimes given out).
I don't see why relations with Russia aren't normalised now. As can be seen in this very announcement (suddenly international deals are being handled in Yuan), the US appears hell-bent on taking Russia and China then welding them together. That seems wildly stupid to me and personally I think it is a serious foreign policy blunder. The US should have sought a quick peace in Ukraine and normalised relations immediately.
Only problem: I do have a memory and I can remember 2 years ago. So yes very clearly Russia started this war all by themselves despite the US trying to dissuade them from doing so.
In the last census (2001), about 58% of Donetsk/Luhansk inhabitants indicated Ukrainian ethnicity, in comparison to 38% for Russian ethnicity.
Granted, he wasn't any good, but he was likely the best one Ukraine will ever have, and now has no chance of it ever catching up with 2013.
I'm genuinely not sure why you think people can't change their mind. After all, they also voted "Yes" on Gorbachev's "reform and keep the USSR" referendum a year before that.
You've been played by Russian propaganda, and seems to be liking it.
Ukraine was not attacking Russia.
Are you serious? At least on the Afghanistan one? The war in Afghanistan began because the Taliban refused to extradite Osama Bin Laden (and several other terrorist, but Osama was the biggest one), it's pretty straightforward.
* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...
* https://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=80482&page=1
> Afghanistan's deputy prime minister, Haji Abdul Kabir, told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.
> "If the Taliban is given evidence that Osama bin Laden is involved" and the bombing campaign stopped, "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country", Mr Kabir added.
> But it would have to be a state that would never "come under pressure from the United States", he said.
> In Jalalabad, deputy prime minister Haji Abdul Kabir - the third most powerful figure in the ruling Taliban regime - told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, but added: "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country".
> The offer came a day after the Taliban's supreme leader rebuffed Bush's "second chance" for the Islamic militia to surrender Bin Laden to the US.
> Mullah Mohammed Omar said there was no move to "hand anyone over".
If you're referring to the fact that the relatively newly declassified parts of the 9/11 commission report suggest that several powerful members of the Saudi government and royal family were involved in the attacks, then I agree with you that we should have (and still should) insist that the Saudis extradite those involved and take strong military action against the Saudis if they don't. But I don't see how this makes our attack on Afghanistan for refusing to extradite Bin Laden unjustified, it just makes us inconsistent.
It is the kind of inconsistency that makes some people die and some live. One would hope it is avoided to avoid confusion and miscalculations on all sides.
<< Bin Laden hadn't lived in Saudi Arabia since 1991?
Was Pakistan bombed in 2011 then?
I understand what you are saying, but it does not make it look any better.
<< If you're referring to the fact
I was not. I am merely connecting some obvious dots.
<< But I don't see how this makes our attack on Afghanistan for refusing to extradite Bin Laden unjustified,
Hmm. Even the word extradite is obfuscating what happened, but that is beside the point.
Lets adjust this conversation a little as 'justified' is a little loaded. Everyone thinks they are justified in doing whatever they are doing. edit: In fact, there are a few wars happening right now, where people feel very justified.
Lets have a more fun conversation.
Do you think it ( attacking Afghanistan ) over 9/11 ( whether the cause was just or not ) was a good idea for long-term US survival? This is not a bait. I am really curious about your thought process.
Attacking? Yes. Long-term occupation? No. I think we should have targeted strikes directly at Taliban officials until they relented to our demands.
1. When the US actually wanted to get Bin Laden in a country that wouldn't extradite him, they sent a special ops team to Pakistan. They violated Pakistan's sovereignty a little bit and then everyone moved on. So the idea that they needed to launch a full invasion of Afghanistan is just silly and the people who sent the army knew that. They had to have had ulterior motives, or sending the military was so incompetent there would have been a very public purge of the US military leadership.
2. If we're saying the US military is a magic button to override the legal system in another country (which, fair enough, it is) then what is the issue with what Russia is doing? Their interests in Ukraine are more legitimate than the US not feeling like negotiating or due process for Bin Laden & friends. Of course if the US had spent a bit more time doing things legally, the planners would have had time to point out that a full scale invasion was counterproductive, and I think it is less obvious that Russia would have found something similar; I don't see how they could have dealt with what the US state department seems to be doing without an army. But hey, I'm not a diplomatic corps, maybe they could have come up with something.
And if I look at the wiki article [0], we see "The Taliban offered to turn over bin Laden to a neutral country for trial if the US would provide evidence of bin Laden's complicity in the attacks". Maybe 2-5 years of negotiating and some actual evidence would have been justified? The US must have had evidence against al-Q, because otherwise they couldn't have known who was responsible. if they'd negotiated to send him to Pakistan where the SEAL team is comfortable operating then they could have short circuited a lot of death, wasted time and wasted money.
I know you didn't say anything about the Russian invasion, but this is sort of my angle here - the actions in Afghanistan show that this sort of thing is a bit of a non-event as far as international politics goes. It is only a big deal because the US is making it one.
<< I don't see why relations with Russia aren't normalised now.
At the end of the day, people like when the day follows is the same as the previous one. This allows people to plan ahead, live life and so on. It allows business to run uninterrupted. Russia was upending existing post-ww2 order. It was initially doing it slowly. Slowly enough that no one in the west cared to do anything. Obama famously sought a 'reset' with Russia at the time.
Even in Ukraine, it was not until after Crimea that there was even an appetite and realization that it won't magically stop.
<< the US appears hell-bent on taking Russia and China then welding them together.
This is probably one of the few spots where we are kinda close, but US already made BRICS a reality with current sanctions regime making it even more relevant. The decisions being made now are a big gamble and I would like to hope that those are made consciously with some forethought. That said, remembering 9/11 Afghanistan, it is merely a hope.
<< I think it is a serious foreign policy blunder.
That, sadly, we won't know until it all plays out. Who knows what life will look life 50 years from now?
"Anti-war" people always seem to have a curious blind spot when it comes to the countries that actually start wars.
That can't be my position, I don't know what all Russia's demands were. But offering to draw NATO's sphere of influence back out of Ukraine seems like an obvious carrot that should have been offered. Maybe some guarantees to reign in any US interference in Ukraine's politics. Not supplying endless arms and materiel. That would have dramatically reduced all killing and destruction we've seen since 2023.
The comparisons I'm going to draw are Iraq and Afghanistan. Although Russia was probably going to be a lot more careful as occupiers given that this is happening on their border. Eg, not supporting the drug trade so much and hopefully being a bit more serious about rebuilding.
> "Anti-war" people always seem to have a curious blind spot when it comes to the countries that actually start wars.
Who are you talking about there? The US? UK? NATO? Iran? African Nations? That is a wide net.
Sure they do - a big border with the US's main geopolitical rival, China. The US anti-China strategy relies on making it difficult for China to secure resources in the event of a war - blocking sea routes, destabilising western paths that could be used, southern countries being a bit leery of China's military.
They're majorly screwing themselves over by encouraging cooperation through the northern border and giving Russia every incentive to establish what overland trade routes it can. The NATO response to Ukraine seems a bit panicked - they're acting like they suddenly realised they aren't as competitive and secure as they thought. Building up a Russia-China-Iran axis under those conditions is an unforced error that is not clever. If the US had been more reasonable about Ukraine, we could be talking about how China is hemmed in from all angles. Instead the north and west look like they might be opening up to them.
Combine that with the US getting literally nothing out of the Ukraine war except an opportunity to blow up resources that they really needed at home (and reopening old wounds with people who didn't need to be enemies I suppose), and the situation is a bit of a baffler. I can explain it with corruption, I can explain it with stupidity, but I'm struggling to find a "here is how the US comes out ahead" perspective.
I can only guess at what Iran and the Houthi are thinking, but it is interesting that after watching NATO's performance in Ukraine the Middle East immediately starts to flare up. Might be a coincidence but that isn't saying great things about NATO's reputation. I dunno, it might be fine. We'll see.
Edit: it's amazing just how short-sighted people can be. Look, we still bring up the Nazis as an unassailable argument for how something is bad. And yet the war with Germany ended and they are now a US ally fighting Russia. I'm sure in the midst of WW2 the common folk also believed that there can be no peace with Germany, after all the man on the radio said so.
Besides, during WW2 the situation was the opposite: Russia was an ally. And hey, if you study European history at all you'll note that it's a series of wars with shifting alliances.
Relationship between Russia and the west will probably be restored at some point but not without a lot of Russians and to a lesser extent Ukrainian getting killed, their economy and infrastructure gutted.
If you look at Iran, it also has its infrastructure in quite OK conditions - perhaps in better shape than all of their neighbours, and now that may even include Turkey. Russia is larger and has not self-inflicted being a theocracy.
As for the losses of both sides, I'd suggest leaving that to military experts.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/01/25/ukrain...
In either case, even a Ukrainian defeat means Russia will be a pariah state to countries with reasonable governance. Trade will be difficult and diminished, same as it is with Iran.
Putin&Lavrov have clearly made this calculation and decided this is in their own interests. Whether it's in the interest of the Russian people I think is questionable.
If anyone's wondering why Iran has its fingers into Syria and Iraq militias, note they've been invaded (with US support) by one, and are allied with the other.
It's sort of a moving target like "How long would it take for Freddy Krueger to kill all Chinese teenagers"
Rest assured, if the powers that be decide that "Russia is good now" they will convince you of the same within 6 months.
It's very easy for Americans to shrug their shoulders and say "we don't care it's a long way away", regardless of whether or not that would be a historic surrender for the global hegemon, but we Europeans cannot. It's on our doorstep. Russia has not just attacked Ukraine, but all of Europe. There will never be normalised relations with Russia whilst he is in power, just as there never could be normalised relations with Adolf Hitler once he had crossed the Rubicon and started WW2.
Europe’s economy is in shambles, they do not have the power to push back if Russia and the US were to push for détente never mind that the country with the most EU influence (Germany) is a major dove on this issue.
> (Germany) is a major dove on this issue.
No, they're not dovish, they're just not leaders and not willing to take initiative and require others to move first. That stems from their history. They've sent huge amounts of aid already to Ukraine (~1% of GDP versus 0.2% of GDP for the USA).
> Europe’s economy is in shambles
I mean, it's not as good as the USA's, but it's not in shambles. It's relatively OK. I live here. I'd rather live here than in Russia. Russia is a glorified petrol station with nukes and a military. Europe's economy still absolutely dwarfs Russia's. When I speak to my (many) Russian colleagues, it's clear they'd rather be here in Germany than in Russia.
> US were to push for détente
It's not realistic. The only person who is going to do that is Trump. There's no scenario where we Europeans just give up our security and let imperial war conquests become acceptable on our continent (not yours, yank) for the sake of Trump's ego. Why? Because we think he's completely retarded. Only Americans like him. And how would we benefit exactly from trading away our security? How can the US force us? All it would do is seal the USA's historic break from its European allies (And I know it's not popular at the moment in the USA, but any one with a basic understanding of geopolitics knows that the USA's strongest asset its just how many rich and powerful allies it has). Good luck standing up to China alone, in that case. Then the West is truly fucked!
Putin isn't Hitler. People are way too quick to write off negotiation when it is people's real lives at play.
> They've sent huge amounts of aid already to Ukraine (~1% of GDP versus 0.2% of GDP for the USA).
False? not sure where you are getting your numbers from but USA has sent both considerably more in magnitude and as a percentage of the GDP through the end of 2023.
Germany doesn't even spend 2% of GDP on all military expenses (they recently pledged to as it is a new NATO requirement), they are not spending half of that on Ukraine allocation.
> It's not realistic. The only person who is going to do that is Trump.
Wavering support for the Ukraine war is not just a Trump-ism phenomenon. I am not sure how the media reports this in the UK but support is collapsing across both parties in the polls.
A majority of Americans think Trump is stupid too and you are very unlikely to meet a supporter on HN.
> Good luck standing up to China alone, in that case
US policymakers already perceive no will to stand up to China among EU lawmakers.
> And how would we benefit exactly from trading away our security? How can the US force us?
EU+UK citizens will not be willing to pay the full brunt of this conflict for an extended period of time.
The fact of the matter is that most Europeans are much more ambivalent about this conflict than you are implying [0] which is obvious from the polling. Ratchet up the spending and energy price impact to considerable portions of GDP and what will happen?
[0]: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/at-your-service/files/be-hear...
No he's not Hitler, he's Putin. Putin cannot be negotiated with, that is the point.
>False? not sure where you are getting your numbers from but USA has sent both considerably more in magnitude and as a percentage of the GDP through the end of 2023.
No it is not. My numbers are from the Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/ca7fa865-97a1-4013-bde6-b69731b03...
Where are yours from? If you have better numbers, share them.
>Wavering support for the Ukraine war is not just a Trump-ism phenomenon. I am not sure how the media reports this in the UK but support is collapsing across both parties in the polls.
Wavering or collapsing? The majority still support aid for Ukraine. That much is a fact. I am not in the UK anyway, I live in Germany.
Your source for polling is sadly incoherent, just quoting random countries, but judging by this poll, it looks clear that Europeans support Ukraine:
https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/news/european...
But to some extent it does not matter, there is no choice, because Europe is being attacked. It's not as if we have choice but to support them. Arguably more importantly, our establishment supports Ukraine.
>US policymakers already perceive no will to stand up to China among EU lawmakers.
US policymakers firmly believe that the best way to counterbalance China is through strengthening alliances around the world.
>EU+UK citizens will not be willing to pay the full brunt of this conflict for an extended period of time.
We already are. I think a lot of you yanks like to get high on the idea of Europe being seconds from collapse, but actually things here are OK. The worst is over, that first winter after the invasion? Yeah that was tricky, but it's already past now. The way you talk it's like we're rationing supplies to make ends meet to raise money for another missile. Yes the USA is richer than Europe, but Europe is the richest place in the world after the USA, so it's OK, there's no shame in being second place. Everything's OK. Europe will ultimately do whatever it takes to see out Russia's invasion. There's no way a country with an economy the size of Spain can outlast the entirety of Europe. Russia is a paper tiger, as evidenced by how shit its military has performed ever since it invaded.
And yet, here we are with another ultranationalist dictator hell bent on getting back that vital space and dreaming of fallen empires. Hitler had Charlemagne, and Putin has Catherine and Peter the Great. Putin did not gas anybody that I know of, but the gulags remained the whole time. It’s true that he is closer to Stalin than Hitler in many respects, but I am not sure it’s much better.
> Europe’s economy is in shambles, they do not have the power to push back if Russia and the US were to push for détente never mind that the country with the most EU influence (Germany) is a major dove on this issue.
That is a terrible misreading of how the EU functions. By design it cannot be dominated by a single country and Germany is basically following others. It’s not a major dove in any way, it’s just in the middle of the pack and they started from a fundamentally pacifist political background. The fact that they are merely talking about rearming is a demonstration of the seismic shift in domestic politics there.
Détente won’t happen in the current situation, regardless of what the US push for. They simply have no power to force that outcome. What would happen is another Korea, Georgia or Moldova: a country split in two, with one half living under yet another brutal dictatorship.
Is's not like you're going in with a military action and capturing Volgograd, after all. Adolf Hitler could be neutralized by capturing Berlin. Good luck dealing with Russia that way.
So far, we have seen the opposite pattern of Russia messing with countries which didn't make it into NATO in time.
If that does not happen, these sabers will be rattling from time to time. If Russia's (and China's) immediate borders are packed with countries armed to their teeth, there would be wars.
Buffer states happen for a reason.
I believe USA kind of understands this (see how they reacted to Cuba) and EU surely understands this too (see how Sweden reacts to any signs of Russian militarization), but they have trouble projecting it on other countries or still believing they can coerce these countries into "dealing with it".
I like this Putin's style of passive threats like "there would be wars". Just say the threat explicitly, Russia would invade their western neighbors.
> Buffer states happen for a reason.
Ukraine was a buffer state, yet it was invaded by Russia three times in the last 10 years. People have now justified doubts about this model.
Arms do not win wars without people holding them, and even then, fighting off an agressor does not mean your country isn't ruined.
Ukraine was in the process of ditching its buffer state status by choosing a side. They bragged for a decade how they are going to do that. Needless to say it didn't go so well for them, and only them so far. Other countries in thir position turned out to be smarter as not to win the first Russian invasion target prize.
Please note that I'm not asking for a moral judgement because everybody else who may pass it has worse skeletons in their own closet than Russian Ukraine affair.
Other countries just managed to join NATO fast enough before Putin lost his mind. Ukraine's mistake was joining too slowly. Now Russia and Ukraine both suffer for basically no reason other than the fantasies of a senile 71 year old man.
>Please note that I'm not asking for a moral judgement because everybody else who may pass it has worse skeletons in their own closet than Russian Ukraine affair.
I don't know if that is true, the Ukraine War stands out as particularly evil. Russia is guilty of particularly evil crimes against humanity in this war that they chose to start.
Most of these countries Russia never touched, or fought off of Turks and then let them be. They never lived under Russia's anything. Were it Czechs live under several centuries of Russian tyranny? Because these ones are particularly obnoxious now, despite many years of feeding off of Russian statesmen in Karlovy Vary.
I don't think you even remotely understand what you are talking about, and people are going to die in great numbers before they start reading history books instead of NYT columns on the subject.
> stands out as particularly evil
I guess they just don't hand out history textbooks in the child care...
I think you just struggle to understand how fundamentally your country is hated by Eastern Europeans. Russia is like Germany, if Germany still was proud of its Nazi heritage. You just don't get it, it's sad, you're so hated but you have no idea why, you're just so blinded by ultranationalism. Russia could have chosen to enter the 21st century but instead decided to enter the 18th. Meanwhile most of your people outside of Moscow and St Petersburg don't even have indoor toilets. It's honestly tragic what a gigantic shithole your country is, and yet you're so proud of it being such a gigantic shithole. Just tragic.
The problem with most Eastern Europeans is that they'll sing and dance on anybody's 5 cents. You can buy and sell them and they will always be eager to serve.
That is frankly revolting to Russians who are able to maintain long term loyalties, and will be heartbroken to betray long term commitments. Russians do not hate Eastern Europeans, neither do they want to invade and occupy their countries, but Russians do despise Eastern Europeans now. Every stupid thing you say gets laid on these scales.
Still, Russians did not write Armenia off completely even after all this.
Armenia basically tell Russia they break up with them to join another relationship. However, the other side does not look like they want Armenia. No breakup exchange of personal effects happens. In the end, Russia lingers there to see what happens and is not closing the door yet. Again, it is a bad analogy because even the closest country to country relations are not monogamous.
The reason of why the breakup is discussed: your bearded girlfriend taunted another girl (with a mustache) and got serious bruises in return. Now she thinks you should've fought with that another girl instead of her doing so. Your girlfriend was the cause of the fight but you do think the mustached one has overreacted.
Does the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact ring any bell? Do you know what the Baltic states went through? Did you hear about the Prague spring or that glorious sister republic in eastern Germany? Fuck, do you know about the Holodomor?
It’s a bit rich to say these countries never knew Russian oppression. It may not have lasted very long, but it was particularly brutal. The first thing they did is get away at the first occasion and all of them are traumatised to this day. Ukraine and Belarus tried to play nice. Belarus is now subservient and annexed in all but name, and Ukraine is being torn apart. So tell me why those Eastern European countries would not do anything they can to stay out of Russia’s reach?
XX century was a disaster, you had to grind your teeth and survive through it. Holodomor is a pathetic Ukrainian attempt to privatize a much greater Communist hunger and frame it on its victims. They do so because they believe that they should get a specific, better treatment than everybody east of them. Rings any bells?
Needless to say Russians did not invent Communism and you can find a huge number of fans for it in any HN thread. Russians sincerely believed they have a traumatic experience of struggle to share with the rest of "socialist camp" only to discover that the whole 500 million strong camp frames it on their small ethnic fraction.
Belarus is a paradise now compared to Ukraine (and to extent Russia). You can do whatever you like and there is no fear of draft. There are also jobs and industry intact. You can cross the border if you are male but is not economically obliged to do so.
But I'm more optimistic about that and don't believe your empty threats. If the NATO strengthens its eastern border, Russia's military has simply no chance there. It's a suicide, it doesn't make sense to bang your head against the wall. Russia has many other weaker neighbors it can abuse instead.
> Ukraine was in the process of ditching its buffer state status by choosing a side.
Ukraine was invaded because it wanted to get closer to EU in the form of the association agreement.
Interestingly, the roughly analogous CIS was never a problem in this concept of "buffer state". Or does "buffer state" actually mean "Russia-aligned"?
And that's the crux of the issue. You can stay as a buffer state only as long as you're a Russian puppet.
The first move was at the end of the Cold War. The drunken President Yeltsin took the existing administrative map of the USSR and created a new state that had artificially attached Russian regions. This set up the time delay fuse. Second was the US-backed coup in 2014. And third - what we have today. The US is good at playing the long game. Only China is better.
Downvote away, it seems to make you happy. But maybe before you write this off as "Russian propaganda" go read what Solzhenitsyn had to say on the subject. Yes, that Solzhenitsyn, the dissident who wrote "Ivan Denisovich".
Look, we tried normalising relations. In the end, Russia just takes what it can. It’s lunacy to believe that everything would be better if European countries just rolled over, accepted being bullied, and just gave Putin what he wants. It’s insane.
I also remember how bad they were during COVID time, etc.
The problem is what to do with the likes of Georgia and Ukraine (which has been deeply regretting giving up nukes against Russian/US/UK "protection" for some years now).
The Korean peninsula would like a word with you.
Not really? Many conflicts routinely simmer on for decades, and peace treaties that officially end a war rarely resolve conflicts. Israel is fighting I believe it's 4th war against Hamas this century, for example; its broader conflict against its neighbors has been going on arguably at least a full century. The Balkans are somewhat infamous for the depth of history of its conflicts: the assassination of Franz Ferdinand was chosen to occur on the 500-somethingth anniversary of another conflict, for example.
I don't think your comment is grounded on reality, and it's ironic how it parrots one of Russia's anti-ukraine propaganda tropes: the collective west should just stop backing Ukraine because the faster they cave in, the faster all relationships normalize.
Even if you believe fairy tales about forgetting Russia's perpetual threat of nuclear annihilation and Russia's "our empire will extend to Lisbon" threats, all you need to do is look at the Soviet Union's rejection of peace and a free world up to it's collapse to understand that any talk of normalization is at best thoroughly unsupported and at worst more Russian propaganda.
The Soviet-Afgan war was ended due to public discontent with 100k killed and wounded
You seriously think there are only 43k killed and wounded in total?
No Russian attracting enough attention is outside the reach of the Kremlin anyway, unless you avoid tea and underwear your whole life. So i put only marginally more trust in this report than the official figures of 7000 or whatever it is from Puntin himself.
This is Yandex's European arm divesting itself from the Search+Mail business they have in Russia.
In the press release, this was even mentioned - that Yandex's Russian management (aka most of it's management) would be buying out their Russian operations.
Not surprised either, as the core team was fairly progressive and anti-war, as a lot of Russian techies are. Also, it was the core team that was working on forward facing bets - sort of like a more functional version of Larry Page and Sergey Brin - and they're keeping those forward facing bets.
Middle management appears to still be operating in Russia though.
Edit:
To people commenting below,
IT Professionals and most other white collar jobs are draft exempted in Russia [0]
To make up for the unfairness, mobilized Russian soldiers are being paid Russian/Eastern European white collar level salaries ($2,500/mo) [1]
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-excludes-some-it...
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/opinion/russia-ukraine-wa...
Most of the founding leadership's net worth was tied to Yandex's NYSE stock (YNDX) which was delisted due to the sanctions regime.
Back in the day, Russian companies (just like Chinese companies pre-COVID) would cross list stock in both the Russian Market and the NYSE for an IPO.
Basically, this is them cashing out and concentrating on their European operations, but the actual stuff Yandex is known for (search, mail, AI/ML) is still based in Russia and operated by Russian managers.
Not that I blame them - I doubt I would leave the US even during an unjust war… but a draft?
This was about them getting paid fat paychecks from western clients/employers not out of draft fears.
To make up for the unfairness, mobilized Russian soldiers are being paid Russian/Eastern European white collar level salaries ($2,500/mo) [1]
The issue is if you're a Russian contractor working for a western company, how is the western company supposed to pay you? Russia's banking system has been decoupled from the west, and even Asian banks in China and India (major trading partners of Russia) are hesitant to fill the gap out of fears of secondary sanctions.
If you want to earn dollars, best to move to a Russian speaking country that isn't sanctioned like Kazakhstan, Georgia, or Bulgaria or to an easy to move country for Russians like Turkiye, Serbia, UAE, etc.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-excludes-some-it...
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/opinion/russia-ukraine-wa...
$2500/mo is way higher than I would have thought they were paying these soldiers.
>> This was about them getting paid fat paychecks from western clients/employers not out of draft fears.
> Not a new phenom, whereas the draft is.
Russian techies started to leave immediately following the invasion that started in Feb 2022, because Western firms put in policies forbidding anyone in Russia from having access to their systems due to security concerns. If they were working for or contracting with those firms and stayed in Russia, they'd lose their jobs.
It looks like Putin first announced the draft in Sept. 21, 2022, but by then the techies working for or contracting with Western firms had already left or quit.
Techies bring in $$$, so they are exempted from the mobilization.
I hope India takes notice because so far they seemed to have cared little about the blood on their hands.
If there's a buyer, there's a seller [0]. EU member states need oil, so they buy it via India.
There's no alternative to Russian crude for the European market.
Anyhow, the last time Indian listened to Western oil sanctions over Iran in the 2008-10 period [1], the Indian economy ground to a halt and had a lost decade [2] while China grew with double digits in the same period, powered by Iranian crude.
Oh, and Iran still exists in 2024 and can project even more power than it ever could in 2014.
Given this context, India ain't dropping this competitive advantage.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/fuels-russian-oil-ge...
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/world/asia/31india.html
[2] - https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/cid/...
>Europe typically imported an average of 154,000 barrels per day (bpd) of diesel and jet fuel from India before Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
>That increased to 200,000 bpd after the European Union banned Russian oil products imports from Feb. 5, Kpler data showed.
An increase of 50,000 bpd across the whole of Europe is nothing in the grand scheme of things. India imported on average 1.76m bpd last year[0].
>Anyhow, the last time Indian listened to Western oil sanctions over Iran in the 2008-10 period [1], the Indian economy ground to a halt and had a lost decade
That sounds like a them problem? Maybe they should invest more in renewables?
>Given this context, India ain't dropping this competitive advantage.
The world will remember those who profiteer from war.
[0]: https://www.reuters.com/world/india/russia-makes-up-40-india...
They are [0][1][2].
Hard to build renewables when majority of energy costs in 2010-2020 were spent using Dollars buying Oil and NatGas from the Gulf instead of using Rupees with Iran.
> The world will remember those who profiteer from war
But they don't.
The failure of sanctions on Iran showed that you can ignore Western sanctions and the Western relationship will continue just like before.
India's largest FDI sources are in Asia - Singapore and Japan [3] dwarf the US and EU, and both are Western countries as well.
The reality is countries compartmentalize relations and issues - India only cares about the China threat. The US mostly only really cares about the China threat with a bit of passive support against Russia (which btw has been fairly successful - Ukraine has been able to maintain a stalemate against a much larger adversary). European countries only really care about the Russia threat and are indifferent to China. Japan and SK don't care about Russia but care about NK and China.
To keep alliances, you need to compromise. The lack of compromising by American administrations in the 2010s caused us to lose Turkiye, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia as close allies.
The US can't afford to alienate Russia, China, AND India and ASEAN (most of whom lean pro-China now after getting ticked off for being called out for being anti-democratic).
And this is why Western countries are indifferent to the purchasing of Russian oil.
[0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/world/asia/india-coal-gre...
[1] - https://www.newyorker.com/news/dept-of-energy/indias-quest-t...
[2] - https://www.straitstimes.com/multimedia/graphics/2023/08/ind...
[3] - https://santandertrade.com/en/portal/establish-overseas/indi...
- Russia still gets far less than they got from the European countries, because no one else is willing to take it, and Europe still gets part of the resources we need
- The money Russia gets is basically useless, cause so much Rupees are not freely convertible. They sit on a big stash of money that they cannot use to buy the things they need (cause they'd need Dollars or Euros for that)
I don't think the second part was intentional on Indias part (I believe them when they say they don't care about Europe - which is something we should remember in all future interactions. Fair trade? Yes. Favors for 'friends'? Not one), but it seems to work out well.