Regardless of politics I think it's objective to say we're seeing a major increase in the weaponization of the global financial system. Perhaps the most important second order effect (assuming/praying that the war ends very soon) is a faster de-dollarization in China.
A question: does Switzerland have any prior precedent of actions like this? I thought they were neutral?
> A question: does Switzerland have any prior precedent of actions like this? I thought they were neutral?
They aren't that neutral.
> Close cooperation has also been established in the area of international sanctions. As of 2006, Switzerland has adopted five EU sanctions that were instituted outside of the United Nations. Those affected the former Republic of Yugoslavia (1998), Myanmar (2000), Zimbabwe (2002), Uzbekistan (2006) and Belarus (2006). [0]
There were many more since.
> de-dollarization in China
I'm not sure how you mean this (which side), but I think a de-dollarization in China would be terrible. Countries will still rely on their manufacturing etc, so sanctioning them out of SWIFT would probably just weaken SWIFT, since it'd encourage them to have their own system (since it must exist by necessity of the world's dependence on Chinese stuff). These sort of sanctions only work because there's just a small fraction/party being excluded, I think.
By faster de-dollarization I meant that China may speed up their work to voluntarily depend less on the dollar. It sounds like you might have interpreted me as meaning that other countries would sanction China out of being able to use the dollar. That's not what I was intending.
De-dollarization won’t happen in China. Chinese government is addicted to economic growth. The legitimacy of the government depends on it. There are only 3 ways to generate growth: infrastructure investment, consumption and export. The investment approach generates too much debt and one can argue China has reached limit there. Chinese has never been able to increase the consumption as a percentage of GDP in a meaningful way. So they have to rely on export. There is no way they can grow export without dollar.
Neutral as in "does not participate in armed conflicts between other states".
No clue where the interpretation comes from that this "neutrality" is extended to basically everything around the topic of war or military. Switzerland is a weapon export country and has been for a long long time.
Neutrality for this only means they dont export to countries at war or if there is reason to believable that the recipient would sell it to countries at war or if it would fall in the hands of terrorists etc. etc.
The real swiss neutrality is way broader and includes mandatory independence. So while Switzerland can join sanctions they decide and do not agree in advance to join sanctions the EU defined. It also includes military mission to promote peace. Swisscoy is the association of the Swiss Armed Forces in Kosovo. This is not against the swiss neutrality because there is no armed conflict there. The Swiss Armed Forces there are still armed for self-defense only.
It’s nothing new, it was always like that. Ask Iran, Cuba or DPRK.
It makes all sense in the world, if you are not a cooperating entity you are cut off from the network and you are free to do your own thing.
Obviously, you can be bullied into things that might not be in your own interest but you are still free to asses the pro’s and con’s and break of if it’s better for you.
Unless you are benefiting too much from the arrangement, there’s no interest in bullying you because it’s actually a in a mutual interest to have you onboard.
It’s much, much better option to settling things down through killing each other.
During the Cold War there were two competing blocks, so many nations had a choice. The ability to "weaponize" the current system relies on the fact that there's no longer an alternative, and it's hard to imagine one emerging!
That sounds like one piece of a system. The Western-led system is comprised of dozens of international treaties and organizations, many of which China is deeply invested in.
I dislike crypt currencies because of the grifters it attracts, but we also saw how the financial system was used against citizens whose assets were frozen. The central bank in the EU cannot really be called independent either.
I do like the ability to shape monetary policy, but that would only go hand in hand with governments not able to just deperson people.
Corporations do not offer any protection. Like on social media, if there is a legal question, the users gets banned.
There's hubris in the belief that one 'knows' always and every time what good and evil are. There were always multiple sides, each on the side of Good, killing each other, since antiquity. The more modern enlightened moralist should strive to question one's information and assumptions, at all times. Oftentimes, looking back in history we see moral ambiguities.
Certainly in the field of international relations the concepts of good and evil are in the realm of media commentary and politicians. Foreign policy crafters, and the literature around them, have a completely other way of talking.
> There's hubris in the belief that one 'knows' always and every time what good and evil are.
Oh, come on. You don't need to invoke existential certainty to know that unilateral military invasion of peaceful nations is "evil" inasmuch as that word has any meaning at all.
Talk to a Russian, then come back and let's talk about what's an invasion of a peaceful nation. They're going to tell you that 14K were killed due to a fascist regime. Now, I don't believe that, but you're proving my point. Maybe it's just the naive perspective of moral certainty speaking, or maybe it's the lack of international perspective -- something one unfortunately commonly finds among Americans.
We come back to the question of evil. Maybe we grew up on too many cartoons and Hollywood movies, but good and evil are symbolic fictions.
Still not following. It's not "hubris" to believe in the truth. It's not "moral relatavism" to believe lies, that's just "being wrong". The fact that people lie to other people isn't a license to throw out the concept of morality! Quite the opposite in fact.
I will first say I don’t agree the USA should have invaded anyone.
1) America has Europe by the balls because we provide most of the major military security guarantees.
2) Iraq wasn’t exactly a peaceful nation (see: Kuwait)
3) Both Iraq and Afghanistan were governed by non democratic governments; a dictator in one and by religious zealots in the other
4) No one other than the local middle eastern Arabic countries were threatened by this action by the USA, and they didn’t have enough power to put pressure on the USA
In Ukraine, Russia invaded a neighbor of NATO countries, Ukraine was actually a peaceful nation and has a democratically elected government, and the countries that don’t like Russia actually have the power to try to stop it and can get by without anything from Russia.
There was a great deal of international pushback against both. There was also international support for both. The United States didn't unilaterally invade either country.
Maybe that was evil too? I mean, there's complication. But "because America did it" is not a moral argument, and the contention was something about "evil".
Afghanistan was harboring al Qaeda and Iraq was threatening use of WMDs. They weren't peaceful nations.
The latter turned out to be bluster, supported by terrible intelligence and a U.S. administration that didn't have the wherewithal to counteract its own confirmation biases, and that deserves its own appropriate condemnation, but it's nowhere near the same thing.
Does anyone else notice that the above comment is greyed out but still showing up above two other comments ungreyed out? Maybe it’s just a glitch, first time I’ve seen it occur.
If the US were serious about going after the parties responsible, it would have invaded Saudi Arabia. Instead it made a token stab at Afghanistan then ginned up a war in Iraq they were intent on waging anyway.
I don't think the parent meant that it's always easy to discern good from evil. The same way I don't think you believe in absolute bothsidesism. But in some extreme cases (such as current invasion of Ukraine or Nazism last century), it would be pretty hard to argue that there's not one better side. Switzerland isn't asked to pick sides in every single conflict. Starting with the clearest cut ones would be moral progress.
I'm obviously absolutely pro-Ukraine, especially as I'm Western European, with Western European values and with a decided belief that Western European ideas are better than what's currently being offered - what Russia for example offers - as an alternative.
And while rooting for the Ukrainian side, I can't even find the Russian perspective within the sphere of information and data, other than what Russians tell me, which sounds so completely different information-wise, that I wonder if we live on the same planets. In fact I got off the phone with a Russian friend a few hours ago, and I asked their perspective but replied nothing in response. It was literally 100% inverted: that the country was fighting fascism and was conned by the U.S. due to weapons treaties in the past.
So the question is NOT about morals, whose are better - it's hard to find a villain in history with an army behind them, where each individual believed in their own evil.
So the question is about information asymmetry, at the very least, a foggy issue we have to get past before we talk about morals. Again, I'm about 90% confident that the Russian side aren't behaving in good faith, but I leave that 10%.
And most importantly I recognize my bias, in the superiority of Western European values, which means that I'm also biased with regards to those nations having the military upper hand. Which implies that even if the situation were much more ambiguous I would likely root for the Ukrainian side.
I hope that does the opposite of clear up the issue!
War is rarely a matter of good and evil purely. It's a muddled world we live in.
Putin taking direct action to invade will result in needless Russian and Ukranian suffering and death. That seems plenty evil; and if he has deluded the majority of the population of Russia into believing that the current war is necessary, that is evil too.
Spot the American in the conversation. Also note their inability to define evil in their own actions over the last few centuries of imperialist aggression. You people are so tone deaf. America needs a hard slap to reintroduce reality to their world view.
It seems that this is a result of populist pressure, hence the qualifier 'society' and that part seems new. I think the politicians were hesitant to do this for good reasons, I assume that they didn't want to back Russia into a corner. Back Cuba or 1920s Germany into a corner fine... but Russia that is a whole different beast. There is a very Twitter mob feel about it.
You must be utterly delusional to think that the EU, US, Japan etc. are implementing these sanctions because of popular pressure and not because Russia's behaviour is an existential threat to the world order.
If it was purely populist Germany would be using the $100b they have committed for NATO defence and spent it on universally popular policies e.g. tax cuts or handouts.
Hold on. Russia just invaded its neighbour, and you think the international response is due to _Twitter_?! Like, I'm not sure what else Russia would've expected.
Twitter and media pressure that calls for war just a bit less than Russia invading Ukraine. I bet there are many people secretly very happy about that. Often it is just plain idiocy though.
> I think the politicians were hesitant to do this for good reasons
Well yeah, sanctions are also impacting us on many levels and they're damaging future relations for decades, that's obviously not something to take lightly. But what's the other options ? Not do anything ?
> There is a very Twitter mob feel about it
We would have said that about the Treaty of Versailles too, we just didn't have twitter back then. I think people are delusional because these types of events aren't a thing in Europe for quite some time now, I bet they'd blame the "cancel culture" and say that Putin is an angel
What I find interesting is that the sanctions of Russia and support of Ukraine is accelerating faster and faster every day. Had the initial plan of decapitating the government and installing a puppet who signs a peace agreement with Russia worked, I doubt we'd be seeing the same level of support as now. Apparently the EU is now giving them jets in addition to all the small arms, fuel and anti-tank weapons. With all the economic sanctions it seems like they want to collapse the Russian economy and instigate regime change from the inside. Putin made a risky bet by attacking Ukraine, but the EU collapsing Russia with all their nukes still hanging around and hoping the next government in charge is more stable is a way more risky bet.
> With all the economic sanctions it seems like they want to collapse the Russian economy and instigate regime change from the inside
Pretty ridiculous to think this when their isn't much of an opposition to regime change to. And when oligarchs and other interests are massively benefiting from the corruption.
It's purely to impose a serious cost on Russia so that they consider withdrawing from Ukraine and think twice about doing it again e.g. against Eastern European countries.
There's a tradition going back at least to ww2 of waiting to see if the attacked country stands up and fights. If they demonstrate that, then we go all in.
What's the alternative? I think the USAs operations in the Afghanistan showed that you simply cannot just come in, fight a countries battles for them and leave. Ukraine has proven to want to stand up to Russia and now the West is putting it's full weight behind them.
What I don't quite get is why even still pretend to not engage? Surely arming Ukraine with fighter jets is basically the same as flying missions yourself as far as Russia is concerned. If I where Putin at this point I would consider NATO to have started actively participating in the war.
That's because of Zelenskyy and what he represents.
Usually, you'd expect a state like Ukraine (ex Sowjet) to be corrupt and run by oligarchs with no support by the populace. In that situation, Russia would waltz in, the old depot would flee the country, Russia would isntall a puppet and the populace would be indefferent to it, since it's just more of the same shit.
But Zelenskyy was serious in cleaning up the Ukraine, he is not fleeing and he is uniting the nation.
This was Putin's big mistake. He believed he could scare away a greedy despot to replace him with another one. Instead, the Ukraine has a true leader and developed a real national identity.
For Putin, this is a nightmare. For the west, we finally have someone worth supporting (often we have the issue that we don't know how is the bad and the good guy, see Syria, Mali).
I have nothing to prove it, this is just speculation, taken from some tweets I saw. It makes sense to me, but I have no social insights.
This whole thing could have looked very different under any of the former leaders of the Ukraine.
> But Zelenskyy was serious in cleaning up the Ukraine, he is not fleeing and he is uniting the nation.
He's not that clean himself, given that he was mentioned as holding offshore finances in the Pandora Papers leak.
Also he invested in the production company (Kvartal 95) that then created the show 'Servant of the People' where he was shot to stardom playing the role of a teacher elected president. The company then also paid to create a real party named 'Servant of the People' and managed to get him elected as president for real!!
You certainly can't believe everything you read on the internet, but apparently Zelenskyy met with Erik Prince who was up to his war profiteering self-serving crap. Zelenskyy subsequently aggressively moved forward with a plan to produce Turkish government manufactured drones (the ones you now see advertised in the war-media) and associated munitions within Ukraine, starting off with the purchase of a dozen for USD$70M (~USD$6M each).
Even though I am inclined to believe he is the lesser of two evils, it would seem that this war is in part being used as an advert for those munitions (see multiple videos released in the last 2 days from the drones). The Turkish OEM https://baykartech.com/en/uav/bayraktar-tb2/ was founded by Selçuk Bayraktar, an MIT graduate returnee who married Turkish president Erdogan's youngest daughter in 2016. Its apparent exclusive armament is the Turkish government's own Roketsan brand munition https://www.roketsan.com.tr/en/products/mam-c-smart-micro-mu... A UK entity accused Bayraktar of cloning their munitions rack design (the company denied the claim), and an Austrian motor manufacturer accused the company of redirecting their 100HP recreational aviation motors to military use.
I'd be interested to read more from a local about any public statements and private funding and control around those deals. While he's certainly the lesser of two evils in this conflict, history shows us the politicians are often not as clean as they like to make out, it's not out of the question that Zelenskyy or his cronies could have an undeclared private stake in the business and thus be personally profiting from the war and its aftermath.
> it's not out of the question that Zelenskyy or his cronies could have an undeclared private stake in the business and thus be personally profiting from the war and its aftermath.
No doubt that's possible. But if profiting off the war were his primary objective, then why would he stay in harm's way by remaining in Kyiv? Pretty risky bet, I'd say.
He's an inbound politician approaching the apex of his career at the intersection of two superpowers. Of course he's got more than one iron in the fire.
Don't think Turkish drones are war profiteering considering how much utility they've had in the current war and in the Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict. Maybe you're not aware, but Ukraine has been dealing with war since 2014. This is probably the worst example you could have used since TB-2s are both incredibly practical and extremely cost efficient compared to most Western military equipment Ukraine would have purchased instead.
>But Zelenskyy was serious in cleaning up the Ukraine, he is not fleeing and he is uniting the nation.
So much BS... He literally done 180 on his election promises, done a lot of unconstitutional moves, and his public support was continuously dropping to the point of losing to Poroshenko on hypothetical elections.
Ukraine was (and still is) quite corrupt. They ran their president out of town on a rail in 2014 because he was massively corrupt. To the point of using government funds to build a private zoo at his house. Zelensky made his name by portraying an everyman who lucks his way into the presidency by vowing to fight corruption and somehow life imitated art. He was clearly inexperience and in over his head, but his character and showmanship are paying huge dividends right now.
And to just because we have to make everything about US politics, the corrupt leader who was run out of town was elected with the assistance of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates who both ended up working on the Trump campaign less than two years after their cash cow was exiled to Russia.
> Instead, the Ukraine has a true leader and developed a real national identity.
Honestly curious: What has Ukraine’s president done in the past to show that he’s a good leader?
The world barely even knew of him a few months ago, until every Western platform started deep-throating us to herald him as the second coming of Jesus in the last 2 weeks or so.
I think the true leader stuff is mostly about how he's done since the invasion. And he seems to have done well there, no propaganda needed. (If you want bizarre propaganda try watching rt.com a bit - I did that last night - was quite bizarre).
> But Zelenskyy was serious in cleaning up the Ukraine, he is not fleeing and he is uniting the nation.
Totally ridiculous. Zelensky was selected as president for his acting skills, not management skills. He's as compromised as it gets.
No responsible leader of a civilized nation would goad/force his people into picking up AKs in the face of a vastly superior professional military force. He would accept the loss, surrender, and save as many lives as possible. But Zelensky is not a responsible leader, he is a mad sociopath trying to save his own skin, because he knows he has no place in the world should his regime fall.
Horse shit. It is not irresponsible for a leader to motivate a country's populous when that country is under attack. Are you saying that any population should just give up when someone else wants to occupy their home? No matter what might happen to them and their families anyway?
You missed the part where Ukraine has literally 0% chance of winning. Most Russian troop brigades haven't even reached their destination and Russia hasn't yet deployed its fixed-wing aircraft.
Zelensky is actively gambling his people's lives away. Because they aren't his constituents. His constituents are on another continent.
>Had the initial plan of decapitating the government
Why people assume that the Russian plan was to occupy whole Ukraine (the largest European country after Russia) in just several days? Even in Georgia with its much smaller army and territory it took them 5 days to be close to capturing its capital. As another example: it took US several weeks to conquer Iraq, which again is smaller than Ukraine and has a much denser distribution of population centers. Also unlike certain countries Russia does not want to bomb Ukraine into the stone age before moving ground troops in and instead it tries to keep whatever loyal parts of the populace it has there.
>>Why people assume that Russian plan was to capture whole of Ukraine
I literally haven't seen anyone assuming that. All theories seem to be about Russian army going in, getting rid of the government and replacing it with whatever arrangement works for Russia, then going back home.
If you read the newspapers you'll see this assumption is universal. They are describing his campaign as having run aground, delayed, going badly etc because he didn't take the entire country in 24 hours. Feels like war propaganda.
>unlike certain countries Russia does not want to bomb Ukraine into the stone age before moving ground troops in
I read or heard (maybe on http://iswresearch.org/) that Russia has very few smart bombs. If they had plenty, they might've used them as liberally as the US did in Iraq in 2004.
It is a risky bet (and unlikely the next one after Putin would be any better). But it is also a deterrance. Anyone who would want to initiate a war in EU needs to think twice (if EU is successful this time) after this.
> Had the initial plan of decapitating the government and installing a puppet who signs a peace agreement with Russia worked, I doubt we'd be seeing the same level of support as now.
What rules out that Vladimir and Volodymyr aren’t in on this together to dupe other nations and later make up anyway?
It’s a classic con since time immemorial: 2 partners, one who pretends to be the baddie and another who pretends to be against him to gain the support of a dupe, and later split the profits.
I truly hope the same measures will be taken against US or other nation's acts of aggression in the future. e.g. Yemen, Afghanistan,Iraq. This is a great precedent to set.
How can they distinguish good from bad justifications for aggression? Russia's current actions seem to be at one extreme, while, say, responding to an attack from another government would be on the other extreme (barring extenuating circumstances), while the US usually has an (ostensible) justification somewhere in the middle.
Afghanistan after 9/11 is a good of example of something that was hard for another western nation to argue against the justification for starting (how it went is another story).
> How can they distinguish good from bad justifications for aggression?
On a case-by-case basis. As you note, the international community probably wouldn't have reacted against the US regarding Afghanistan (and probably should have regarding Iraq).
Be aware that most people cannot read Chinese or Russian, and as such their whole world perspective is fed by an one sided narrative.
I suggest you listen to these[1][2] talks, and Putin's speech[3] on NATO expansion in Munich in 2007. Pozner[1] pointed out that up to 2007, Putin really tried to be friend with the West, including asking to join NATO.
I made no reference to good aggression, only justifiable aggression. Even then, while it would be fine to form an argument that no such thing exists, it's unrealistic to despise the man who returns a punch.
As for Russia's reasonable concerns about the West and the nigh-impossibility of objectively or thoroughly observing foreign points of view - both are true and important, yet neither serve in the least to justify attacking Ukraine's capital.
According to this person he didn't ask to join, he asked why he wasn't asked to join, and wanted to skip the process that countries-that-don't-matter have to go through.
> Putin's speech[3] on NATO expansion in Munich in 2007
Ukraine would never had joined NATO because it was an active war zone anyways. Putin didn't have to do anything to avoid Ukraine joining NATO.
Listening to his current explanations for the invasion doesn't make him sound like a good guy no matter the language or the perspective.
> Putin really tried to be friend with the West
And relations were relatively good until he decided to invade Ukraine, he just severed every diplomatic bridges and every single chances of progress for the next decades(s).
Putin's not the Devil but he clearly is the aggressor here. Ukraine was a sovereign state with a democratically elected government. You'd be hard pressed to use the "b-bu-but it's both sides" rhetoric here.
>Ukraine would never had joined NATO because it was an active war zone anyways.
It does not prevent NATO from supplying weapons and training the Ukrainian army. The US reconnaissance planes have conducted regular patrols over Ukrainian territory. The British even tried to build naval bases in Berdyansk and Ochakovo. And with active and heated territorial disputes it's easy to see a hypothetical scenario of Ukraine trying to re-capture Donbas and Crimea by force after it felt it's sufficiently strong or Russia is weak enough, like Georgia tried with South Osetia.
>And relations were relatively good
I suggest watching the following videos if you want to learn about alternative points of view:
That sounds great until you figure out that Putin has a reason for everything. The problem is not so much Putin, or even his viewpoint that Russia doesn’t feel safe (I can even see the merit of such a stance) , but the fact that is that he is not accountable to his people.
If he was a normal president and with a functioning democracy, I doubt we would even be at the current situation. I saw the videos of Putin with his advisor (the Spy chief) and that was an exercise in “tell me what I want to hear.”
Being accountable to the people didn't stop the leaders of the US from engaging in plenty of acts of agression and territorial expropriations these past 230 or so years.
And I wouldn't be terribly surprised if most Russian voters will end up approving of the invasion provided Russian casualties and costs don't get too high.
That’s not the point really I tried to make (sorry if I was being unclear). I have a choice to (try at least) vote out the president who starts wars if I don’t agree with it. I could protest freely and massively on the streets. There is no such option in Russia. If I was a Russian citizen that fact alone would be cause for concern.
The US leaders are way more reckless than Putin. The difference is, as pointed out in the lecture in one of the videos, that it's in a incredibly secure position in an unipolar world.
US foreign policies have been a series of failures without any real consequence save for 9/11. No one is gonna sanction the US nor start a war with it.
The us attacking Iraq on false pretenses was clearly unlawful. Afghanistan is different, but would appreciate other views. Tthe country (and bin Laden and others) were clearly behind 9/11. Do you see it as possible for there to be a legal or lawful war between countries when one attacks the other?
Saudia Arabia attacking Houthis and Yemen seems like a clear illegal action. At least the ongoing attacks.
It is dark comedy indeed to see Russia’s apologists defend their actions with whataboutism about the US war in Iraq. Guess what, we think that one was illegitimate too. Good work throwing the Ukraine invasion on the pile of unjust wars. Bush and Putin can sing a Nuremberg duet together.
Imagine Russia ousted Treudeuo for crimes against peaceful protestors (freezing bank accounts without trial etc) as occurred this month in Canada. He then sends weapons and trainers to Canada to build up resistance and military installations in Canada, perhaps even offering a treaty for Canada to join Russia as military defense allies. This is basically what the USA/Europe did in Ukraine in 2014 (McCain and company was there and USA spent 5B on NGOs overthrow democratically elected leaders of Ukraine and helped install pro US gov).
100x civilians died because of the war in Afghanistan, which was mainly planned in the US. Looking forward to disagreeing with your Afghani twin about the justification for invading and occupying the US for 20 years.
Please stay on topic. I'm arguing that the war was justifiably initiated because the US was responding to an attack that killed ~3,000 of it's citizens.
I thought I was. It's not justifiable to bomb and invade a whole sovereign nation to capture a few criminals. Especially if that nation is willing to negotiate their extradition for a fair trial. Just like it would not be justifiable for Afghanistan to bomb and invade the US now because a few criminals "tortured some folks" and killed 1000s of its citizens who had nothing to do with 9/11.
The US was in Pakistan right after 9/11 though, marines and staging bases and everything. They didn't invade, because they had assets already there and Pakistan let more in.
Freezing accounts is definitly not unprecedented. For example accounts of Gaddafi and his circles. But what I think is a bit unprecedented is the speed. Usually Swiss politics moves in months and years, not days.
Switzerland risks backlash from the rest of the wealthy countries if they do not quickly come on board with the generally accepted response to Russia's actions.
With the many financial laws and agreements that exist now between countries, Switzerland has less financial value (secrecy) than it once had. So it cannot afford to lose ground now.
Not just externally. If they don’t move faster, they all, maybe except the right wing party, are committing political suicide from their constituencies.
Slurs like this will get you banned on HN, regardless of how strongly you feel. No more of this, please.
Yes, there's a war going on, and that means we should all be more careful, not less, not to degenerate like this.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Edit: you've been breaking the site guidelines a lot lately. We've also had to ask you more than once not to do this:
This is a terrible take on the good people living there.
It is the type of thing I expect French aristocrats were saying to each other about peasants in the weeks / months leading up to them getting their heads chopped off:
>born in misery, live in misery, die in misery; don't look up their pensions - it's depressing. This has been their life since forever now. They are more cattle
The more sanctions there are, the more stuff Putin has to conquer to use as bargaining chips to lift those sanctions.
I just wonder how this is supposed to work in any other way. They ensure that the war won't stop because Putin has already faced some consequences on the domestic front and how he has to show some black ink.
The sanctions can be lifted when Russia withdraws from Ukraine, pays reparations, and is bound by international agreements not to do something like this again.
Russia is like a rural town with a gang occupying the city hall. The gang can't allow a neighboring town with democratically elected administration to look more successful, because the citizens might unite and revolt. So the gang does only 3 things: it tells citizens that their neighbors have it much worse with their 'democracy', it tells citizens that their town is encircled by enemies, and it swiftly punishes anyone who publicly questions the gang because those questions might dispell the lies and unite the citizens.
> is bound by international agreements not to do something like this again
This is not worth the paper it's written on, but perhaps it may be the only way and reach a peace soon and make everyone pretend to be friends while preparing for the next encounter.
This is the issue; where is the end game here for Putin, I can't see a way out for him and the people who surround him.
My psychological analysis of him basically says Putin is the king of the gangsters and he knows as such he needs to keep everyone scared and also demonstrate his power. The way you get to be Putin is to behave in the most extreme way possible when crossed, this pattern is likely to continue one way or another.
We should seriously think about something we can do to give the gangster a way out (appease his ego while he in return withdraws). I know this sounds weak but the other options are really very bad, a disconnected Russia with loads of nukes with a leader with an increasingly extreme disposition that blames the West for all his problems (because Putin has stopped being able to be wrong). Tell me this situation I've outlined is fine because to me it certainly means sabotaging of the West at the least and nuclear war at worst?
That he will be replaced by people in the Kremlin is extremely unlikely in my opinion and who is to say his replacement will be anything less than consistent with the Cold War mentality Putin seems to be spouting.
I think it's the inner circle that will be his doom. He is costing them all a lot of money and options. What's the point of being an oligarch if you can't jetset around the world, owning high value properties and demonstrating your wealth? He has essentially made what he gave them worth much less.
These wealthy people must have powerful connections that they can work with. It should be possible for them to organize some changes of office...
Most of these wealthy people there are Jewish and according to Putin's propaganda Ukraine needs to be freed from Nazis. I'm sure most of these wealthy people support the war and probably knew in advance and protected most of their assets.
The raw materials in Russia will still be raw materials in a few years. Its not like they will lose value in the log term because of this. Any kind of crisis only kills the small the big will be ready to buy up everything and make profit.
I think you misunderstand how scared everyone around Putin is of him and the KGB. Especially the oligarchs - you think they give him 50% of their money because they really appreciate how nice and kind Putin is?
My understanding (from reading All the Kremlin's Men), is that Putin's strength is overstated in the West and that he rules with the approval of the oligarchs. If they turn on him, he might just die from an undiagnosed tumor.
I think this is a misreading of what a marginalised loyalist thinks, imagine this was happening to a Trump loyalist, I’m pretty certain you’d be seeing them double down on their support not just suddenly realise they don’t like Trump anyway.
Absolutely not. But his appears to be a last ditch effort by a man with waning influence. He has not made Russia better or stronger; he has only made a few people close to him ultra rich at the cost of the general population.
Even if he were to win and gain control of Ukraine, he will lose. He likely will have lost support at home, and he absolutely will have lost support in much of the rest of the world.
There is only one thing he needs to do to lift the sanctions, and that is independant from his conquests. That is: leave the Ukraine. Actually, it is the other way around. The less damage is done, the more likely is a quick lift of sanctions.
There's no legal mechanism which will automatically terminate these sanctions (which, I believe, are placed by different entities in ad hoc basis, as opposed as centralized control) over Putin leaving Ukraine.
If Putin leaves Ukraine, the asset freezing and all the other stuff stays, and may be discussed later.
That's why he won't leave Ukraine even under heavy discomfort of maintaining that presence.
There is no need for such a mechanism. But the quicker he leaves Ukraine and the less damage he causes, the more likely it is, that the West would relax the sanctions.
(I could easily imagine opening up North Stream 2 quickly, if the money paid for the gas would go to Ukraine until the damages are compensated for)
I'm pretty sure most countries would be eager to lift the sanctions rather quickly, since they are losing a lot of business due to the sanctions. If Putin really stopped the invasion, then the sanctions would probably be undone rather quickly.
If it becomes apparent that Russia is going to stay in Ukraine, business interests will immediately start prodding their governments for special exceptions. There will start off on humanitarian grounds, like medicines and medical devices but we've seen with sanctions on other countries that over time these exceptions grow, often due to financial interests of the well connected. You'll probably never be able to export cheese to Russia but lots of things with dual uses will get approved for export and then used for both uses even though only approved for one use.
I think that Putin has crossed the line and the EU will not give up sanctions easily.
The EU just announced that will provide financing for fighter jets that will be given to Ukraine. The EU president also said that will accept Ukraine in the EU (with due improvements of course). They are really big announcements. Everything has changed during these days.
Putin's huge mistake was that he pissed off regular people in the west. Through snapchat and tiktok etc young people have become aware in a new way how much of a dick he is. These people then put pressure on their governments to act.
That’s a laugh. It’s already been proven that regular people in the west have literally no political say[1]. What we can infer is that western oligarchs are committed to Ukraine or at least are firmly anti-Russian.
