Re:Russian central bank confirms block on foreign bids to se...
by vkou on Monday February 28, 2022 @11:16AM
(#30501539)
You are (mostly) wrong.
You are correct in that it's difficult to sanction some oligarch using gray markets for one-off transactions.
But it's very easy to sanction a corporation that is trying to do cross-border trade. If you're selling apples to Poland, your customers - legitimate businesses in Poland - aren't going to be making recurring payments to you through some weird Hawala scheme. They live in Poland, they aren't going to be flouting their country's sanctions laws.
While oligarchs may be fine, the Russian economy can be completely strangled, by cutting off its ability to pay for imports, or get paid for exports.
This also pisses on any remittances the Russian diaspora sends to their relatives back home.
In the long term, I fully expect a proxy banking system to be set up through either China, or one of Russia's satellites, to take care of the needs of the elite. I also expect that the West will either shut down, or keep open particular Russian exports on a case-by-case basis. It's why not every Russian bank has been cut off from SWIFT. If Europe hits a cold snap for instance, there'd still be a channel to buy natural gas...
You are correct in that it's difficult to sanction some oligarch using gray markets for one-off transactions.
But it's very easy to sanction a corporation that is trying to do cross-border trade. If you're selling apples to Poland, your customers - legitimate businesses in Poland - aren't going to be making recurring payments to you through some weird Hawala scheme. They live in Poland, they aren't going to be flouting their country's sanctions laws.
While oligarchs may be fine, the Russian economy can be completely strangled, by cutting off its ability to pay for imports, or get paid for exports.
This also pisses on any remittances the Russian diaspora sends to their relatives back home.
In the long term, I fully expect a proxy banking system to be set up through either China, or one of Russia's satellites, to take care of the needs of the elite. I also expect that the West will either shut down, or keep open particular Russian exports on a case-by-case basis. It's why not every Russian bank has been cut off from SWIFT. If Europe hits a cold snap for instance, there'd still be a channel to buy natural gas...