From the below on response was "$130 bln is gold, kept in Russia. $60 bln is renminbi, kept in China. All the rest - in G-7 countries"
Seems fluid and not totally clear the details yet. But from the below FT reporter. article is slightly vague since sanction rules are still being written. But on Twitter they wrote clearer that those assets will not be accessible.
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A US official declined to say if the US would sanction the central bank by adding it the Treasury’s “Specially Designated Nationals” list, which Fishman described as “the single most impactful sanction that you could apply to Russia, and you could do it with a stroke of the pen.”
“It would render a sizeable chunk of their foreign exchange reserves unusable overnight,” Fishman said.
"The move would ban US entities from dealing with the central bank, which would mean that everyone would be “skittish about moving any assets on behalf of the Russian central bank”, he said.
https://www.ft.com/content/073a37d5-4daf-49ed-b5bc-a4682ef1a... https://twitter.com/HenryJFoy/status/1497705581817253889
That means cutting off Russia from CIPS, the Chinese payment system akin to SWIFT.
Failure to do so will make China an accomplice and could thus face sanctions as well.
So the pressure is mounting on China to declare who they support. Being neutral is not an option here.
No-one will be able to cut them off even if they side with Russia openly.
China sells $2.5 TRILLION per year to other countries, half trillion to USA
USA would collapse if China stopped selling here.
So if China wants to support Occident they will do it indirect and the same will go for US/EU: they will not ask China directly to ban Russia but more suggest that China should not be very active to support Russia.
It's probably not the best way to treat China like Belarus, a middle ground is better for all.
It's irrational. As simple as that - just irrational.
Or do you have secret information that Nato would overnight change its rules to allow countries with disputed borders to join?
The problem with Ukraine seems to be that it was a successful democracy on the border of Russia and that due to the historically close connections between Russia and Ukraine, Russians could easily see themselves in Ukrainians.
Ukraine was getting armed to the teeth, and with good stuff from the West. Russia had to react before it’s too late.
Keep in mind Russia shares border with many successful democracies from ex-Soviet block, I can’t see how that can ever be an argument.
You know why they were getting armed, don't you?
Because that fellow in Kreml kept financing terrorists in Donbas so they could shoot down airliners and shell kindergarten, right?
Well, I mean, he's 69. It's not that unusual to go downhill at around that age, and he's been acting very oddly RE covid.
All those discussions about morals, mistakes and the descent of sanity are beside the point.
Sanity (Oxfod, 2nd def) :
>the state of being sensible and reasonable
Morality is indeed besides the point, I just added it as I feel dirty suggesting he's rationale 3 days after invading Ukraine without amending the idea.
As for mistake, I think speaking of a political mistake is relevant if we should consider your explanation wrong, i.e. he's sane/rational autocrat whose invasion backfired more than expected, should that be the case.
I think we agree on that.
Narcissist, certainly; immoral and corrupted, most likely; but still possibly rational [0], I see no reason they'd be de facto irrational despite how I feel about them. Born autocrats (or born in a line of succession) are a different story, but I'd argue it would even be unlikely for a commoner to ascend to absolute power without starting off as a rational, calculated and intelligent person (tho ofc not impossible, there are obvious cases). Not that there is any guarantee they'll necessarily remain so, seems unlikely after years or decades being surrounded by sycophants.
Feel free to disagree.
0: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/americ...
Survival breeds sycophants, ...
Shit, why am I reciting stuff from 8th century BC here?
Not to say there aint no 6400 warheads. They, you know, require maintenance. 640 100kt range maybe.
I think Russia agreed with China to pull this wild experiment off with invading Ukraine in order to see how far US and its allies are willing to go to sanction Russia and to see if two of them(Russia and China) can survive and prevail together. This mentality "me against the world" is extremely irrational from diplomatic and economic point of view but it can work out because Russian and Chinese economy can complement, synergize and eventually survive and live together. Russia has 6,400 nuclear warheads—the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world so no way anybody can compete with them militarily. Also they have $600bn+ in national reserves in USD, gold and other assets so this vast amount of sanctions won't hurt them at least not in the short term. Btw Taiwan could be next.