Ukrainian War Developments

KYli said:

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To date, the sanctions imposed by the United States have prevented American banks and firms from transacting with Russian banks, oligarchs, defense firms and other parts of the Russian economy. But now White House officials are preparing rarely used measures that would also punish third parties in other countries for interacting with parts of the Russian economy that have been sanctioned by the U.S., according to four people aware of administration conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private talks.

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Weaasel said:

Russia posseses the wherewithal in terms of know-how and finances to produce a vast plethora of mid-tech and even certain categories of mid-tech goods to meet the vast majority of its domestic demand for such goods. I am. It too familiar with Russia's semiconductor IC chip, and semiconductor manufacturing equipment capabilities, but I have read that Russia has indigenous capabilities of manufacturing lithographic equipment and chips down to the 60 or 90 nm node ranges.

The West employ a strategy of ensuring the dominance of a financial system that they control - with the United States having the most influence - and luring investors, companies, and states of other countries to access financial capital and assets within Western countries, as well as to attract their investment, often selling their foreign direct investment as the only route towards prosperity, so as to ensure a economic dependency that eventually leads to a political dependency through the threats of a cut-off from their financial system for whatever reason and for whatever pretexts to greatly influence or compel particular states to follow their policies.

The Russian oligarchs were/are drunk on access to finances and perks and other sirens of the West. But the Russian state has ensured that it does have significant leverage by making many European countries, and the most important one in particular, Germany, very dependent on it for arguably the most fundamental commodity necessary for any modern industrialized economy from the late 19th century onwards: ENERGY.

But Russia will not be able to play the energy card for much longer, especially after this Ukrainian conflict. Aside from the fact that there is actually a slow transition away from a fossil fuel dominated economy within the industrialized and developed countries of the world, the West has realized that its options of punishing Russia for undertaking actions that it does not like or otherwise wouldn't tolerate are greatly limited because of their dependency of energy from Russia, and they will definitely accelerate transitioning away from Russia for energy supplies, be they in the use of fossil fuels and non-fossil fuels. Accordingly, Russia must also adjust itself so as to ensure that fossil fuel exports and fossil fuel production are a much lesser component of both its exports, but in particular of its economy, and it must pursue as comprehensive an import substitution policy as possible, targeting especially having all manner of categories of state of the art consumer and especially capital goods that it can produce for itself. Non-Western countries, especially outside of East Asia, will gladly purchase such goods themselves if they are competitively priced.

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enroger said:

Every time the US wave their sanction stick, US dollar lose some mojo.... keeping digging that grave

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Kich said:

Russia is a resource rich state but has no manufacturing to utilize it. Corruption is their biggest and greatest enemy. It is why they are not a superpower. Their elites benefits from this corruption and then are lured to western capitals to hide their wealth and enjoy their lifestyle and women. You can say the soviet union fell because Gorbachev sold the decaying empire for some Mcburgers and some fries.

But that world is ending.

For over 30 years, the west has done a fantastic job in keeping Russia weak. They lure the corrupt elites to their lands, thereby tacitly encouraging their corruption and then on the other hand, sell the promises of globalization to them and they tell Russia to play the role of the commodity supplier. Russia supplies the resource and they get the goods and access to western superior tech and even societies for the few elites.
[China was the cheap goods manufacturer and India, the software experts]

Things will change now. A new order is happening and Russia must first gain some self respects and stop selling themselves to the west. Putin's biggest task should be ending the corruption.

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Overbom said:

"March 25 (Reuters) - Russia's defence ministry said on Friday that the first phase of its military operation in Ukraine was mostly complete and that it would focus on completely "liberating" eastern Ukraine's Donbass region."

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1507360791086911490

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Kich said:

Russia is a resource rich state but has no manufacturing to utilize it. Corruption is their biggest and greatest enemy. It is why they are not a superpower. Their elites benefits from this corruption and then are lured to western capitals to hide their wealth and enjoy their lifestyle and women. You can say the soviet union fell because Gorbachev sold the decaying empire for some Mcburgers and some fries.

But that world is ending.

For over 30 years, the west has done a fantastic job in keeping Russia weak. They lure the corrupt elites to their lands, thereby tacitly encouraging their corruption and then on the other hand, sell the promises of globalization to them and they tell Russia to play the role of the commodity supplier. Russia supplies the resource and they get the goods and access to western superior tech and even societies for the few elites.
[China was the cheap goods manufacturer and India, the software experts]

Things will change now. A new order is happening and Russia must first gain some self respects and stop selling themselves to the west. Putin's biggest task should be ending the corruption.

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plawolf said:

Firstly, the Russians don’t need to be able to manufacture everything themselves when they got the support of the factory of the world right next door.

Secondly, I think a significant factor and benefit for Russia from this war is anti-corruption.

Western sanctions and asset raids are hitting the corrupt oligarchs harder and more thoroughly than Putin could ever dream of doing himself.

Without their overseas wealth, their power base within Russia will crumble away overnight clearing the field of the bulk of Putin’s rivals and enemies.

Putin still won’t be able to do an anti-corruption drive like Xi, but at least he would be able to reign it in a lot and at least get the country moving in the right direction again.

Lastly, another expected benefit for Putin from the war is the grass roots level anti-Russian sentiment it has generated in the west. Even the pretence of hating-the-government-but-support-the-people is being dropped with open anti-Russian racism being celebrated and boosted.

The Russians are a proud and vengeful people and this will not be forgotten or forgiven in a hurry.

I see this as Russia’s Trump trade war moment, where the veil finally drops for the overwhelmingly majority of original people and they can see with their own eyes the true face and heart of the west.

Even if the west has the political capital (which it doesn’t remotely) to reverse all the sanctions and make good Russia’s losses, things will not go back to the same way as before the war. Not for at least a generation or two as only those too young or born after these events could have any hope of being fooled by the west’s honeyed lies again.

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