zlacker

>>anigbr+(OP)
How isn't "the West" shooting themselves in the feet with these sanctions when Russia is able to get the war stuff through Turkey/Kyrgyzstan etc when not able to buy and sell civilians stuff?

Also, the Dollar and Euro can have effect on the Russian economy and tracked for intelligence only if they are used.

I wonder if this will be considered a great blunder, looking back in few years.

Forcing worlds most energy and minerals rich country doing business with most industry rich country, what could go wrong?

>>mrtksn+F6
> How isn't "the west" shooting themselves in the feet with these sanctions

Same way Britain wasn’t shooting itself in the foot blockading Nazi Germany, or the West by refusing to trade with the USSR.

> Forcing worlds most energy and minerals rich country doing business with most industry rich country, what could go wrong?

Post-Soviet Russia as an independent power has been an unmitigated disaster. China is America’s geopolitical rival, but at least it’s rational. Moscow as a Chinese suzerainty is likely a better configuration than it as a sovereign power.

(Also, it’s clear China isn’t willing to let its financial system be sanctioned simply to trade with the likes of Russia.)

>>JumpCr+Y6
See, they don't actually block anybody but themselves. The Russians simply get their stuff from others.

>>mrtksn+p7
> Russians simply get their stuff from others

With less variety, slower and at higher cost [1]. And they’re not getting much of the high-tech kit [2]. (The Germans also had blockade runners. Everyone does. That doesn’t make a blockade less onerous.)

Russian natural gas sales have also cratered; Beijing is leveraging its position as a monopsony to demand price concessions [3].

[1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/out-stock-assessing-impact-san...

[2] https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/the-impact-of-s...

[3] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russia-china-gas-pip...

>>JumpCr+28
Atta boy for Beijing but Russians don't seem to be having trouble running this war at all. They still get their precision machinery and simply eat M instead of McDonalds.

Stuff getting expensive is no different than the west really. Slightly worse living standards can destroy the western democracies as they shift to extremist politics but has no effect on Russian leadership.

>>mrtksn+W8
> Russians don't seem to be having trouble running this war at all

They’re fighting like a ragtag African army, not a modern combined-arms one. Their latest air-defence systems which they once peddled for half a billion dollars each are being taken out by old American kit. The front lines barely budged while Ukraine was rationing arms; Russia is quite literally liquidating its economy and demography for Pyrrhic gains. We are watching the voluntary disassembly of a regional power.

> Stuff getting expensive is no different than the west

There is a massive difference between eggs becoming more expensive and not being able to access modern chip fabrication.

> Slightly worse living standards can destroy the western democracies as they shift to extremist politics but has no effect on Russian leadership

This was the Nazis’ hypothesis. In the end, Britain was able to shift to a more-extreme war footing earlier and more forcefully.

Putin has made this claim, but goes out of his way to insulate the Moscow elite from the effects of the war. The history of democracies in war is generally that they’re far more resilient than strongmen.