Otherwise they will find that planes not flying in/out and container ships not delivering will make it hard to import anything at scale. Not that they could pay for goods anyway.
Also I suspect China may use its new found leverage to flood the Russian market with their goods.
Mafia families are not rely upon …
What I can't comment on however is the quality of lumber for construction purposes. Making pellets is trivial. Furniture, less so.
Beyond just economically, perhaps potential big gains politically by using money & leverage to become the controlling mother that Russia is to Belarus, making russia the dependent & ruled child.
Several nations seem to be setting themselves up for irrelevence by undermining democracy, usually at the behest of powerful groups within the country, but to do so they basically need to pay a bunch of people to tell lies. They've then created a network that external corporations and government actors can take advantage of. If the Russian news suddenly started telling the truth mixed with 30% Chinese propaganda, then to the average Russian that would be noticeably more true than what they are getting now.
Would the presenters tell blatant Chinese lies to decieve their people? Well apart from the chinese bit they obviously do, so you basically hope they're all actually insane true-believers, because if theyre just ordinary Russians spreading obvious BS in return for a decent paycheck then thats an obvious weak point for the nation.
And Russia knows this is viable, as they do it to other nations.
You sure? According to the US government, a few hundred thousand dollars on Facebook ads was enough to buy a US President (c.f Trump, Donald J).
Did Trump win the popular vote? Would he have had any chance in a proportional voting system? Or if you had to vote? (He himself says no Republican could be elected if people could easily vote). Who made that possible and why?
Also the Baltic sovereign nations remember very very very well what it was like under Russian oppression. They are not going back to that.
Finnish people remember burning their homes ahead of the advancing tank armies. We remember both wars and many of us have the memories in our blood.
Considering how superbly Russia is fucking up a simple ground invasion, I'd say any threat of nuclear escalation is empty at worst.
Putin says roll tanks into Ukraine? Yeah fine, military commanders oblige. They won't lose much over it. Putin says nuke the world? Well, about that... Even military commanders still want to survive.
Such a decision would be anything but de-escalation.
Either Russia is not a superpower or it's not that relevant.
(Boing and Airbus already suspended providing replacement parts)
I haven't heard anything about impact on container ships yet, so curious what's the situation there...
Even if all 500 planes are instantly returned at the end of March (how?), there will be reduced traffic to Europe due to the current European bans, and the rest of the traffic will be handled by the remaining fleet. I'm not even talking about Comac or other options.
We'll see in the coming weeks, but the scenario you describe where a catastrophic decline in Russian flights such that there are enough non-Airbus/Boeing planes that can manage them is effectively a collapse in Russian civil aviation sector which is kinda what the thread was implying.
The thread in question https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1498723248183382020.html
> other critical components
Like what? This sounds a bit hand-wavy, what are those critical components, if you don't mind me asking?
So whom do you have in mind now? Comac?
Since you are so specific, can you at least hint what exactly are these key components that are now being sanctioned? Not engines.
And sure, why not Comac, too, but that's a different story. Doesn't quite look like Cessna, does it?
Then, how do you picture 500 planes getting returned and leasing companies instantly re-leasing them to other customers to keep their own business afloat? Even if that does happen, worst case, that will reduce Russian air traffic to something like Covid days-level. There are a lot of hypotheticals in this thread, facts on the ground right now are, the planes are flying, cargo ships are delivering and all but 7 banks are moving the money across the borders just fine.
Home-build - maybe, but not without parts from the US\EU, not to mention most of the production equipment is not Russian too and you have to maintain it or replace it at somepoint.
Oh and to build something you need materials - some are local, some will have to be replaced if possible.
This will be a huge problem, especially in a country with strong corruption tradition.
Whatever the US role in the events in Ukraine was, for sure they won't let Russia off the hook easily after this invasion.
Putin will make a law that returning airplanes to abroad is illegal. Foreigners have not been allowed to sell Russian shares already nearly a week. So nothing new there.
They cannot fly to most countries anyway, so the risk of getting them confiscated while landed somewhere is small.
Is there international treaties covering such things?
Mind, I'm from the UK our government just ignore international law when they like and only to please their own ends, not even in times of crisis, so can't see something as simple as breaking a treaty will cause any change here.
By the way, the elimination of Western influence at all levels has been the goal for at least 15 years. It happend much earlier higher up.
We're back in 1961.
“We cannot negotiate with people who say what's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable."
And frankly said, if the performance of the Russian furniture industry is similar to that of the Russian military, I wouldn' buy a doorstop from them.
Russian military doorstops are a dime a dozen right now in Ukraine.
But you tried nonetheless, I give you that. Brave but dead.
Lavrov said, they didn't threaten with nukes.That means they did. That creature was bred and selected over decades for such jobs.
Actually I just indulge in fantasies of burning bastards.
Russians are in favor of Putin. And of course, the apparatus has been driving up approval ratings for him for months before this stunt. And now most Russian don't know anything from independent sources, some probably didn't even heard about that Ukraine Peace Operation. A lot of them just believe the whole narrative, because, well, it's the decadent West that says otherwise and 'they want to hold us down. They always do.'
So even if there is a fraction in the apparatus at all that would or could act, there alway looms the danger of a civil war for them.
They have set the anchor in these negotiations between us and them. They want status quo ante 1997. They will at least get Ukraine. Perhaps Moldavia.
And they created chaos. Which always also bears opportunity.
And China will wait.
They can want whatever they want, doesn't mean they are going to get it.
> They don't fight us, they fight the Ukraine.
They don't fight us, they fight Poland!
This sort of thing doesn't really work.
>> They can want whatever they want, doesn't mean they are going to get it.
They won't.
>> This sort of thing doesn't really work.
They somehow missed that.
They will pay.
Fog of War.
One of about 8 people seemed to genuinely support Putin (something like "he knows what he's doing, this is necessary").
Obviously just a vox pop but in general it seemed few supported the aggression and most were just afraid to talk about it.
https://breakingdefense.com/2022/03/no-the-us-air-force-isnt...
THE WORLD: gasps
UK: These guys were on a holiday there
THE WORLD: claps
Or as the saying goes "Rules for thee and not for me".
PUTIN: These guys were on a holiday there (but actually conducting a war of aggression).
THE WORLD: Gasps in righteous indignation.
UK: These guys were on a holiday there (but actually defending against a war of aggression).
THE WORLD: Claps at the brave defenders.
There, fixed that for you.
(OK, except for the "saying"; I just made that up. But, something along those lines. As is, it seems to fit both Putler's blatant immoral lies, the West's equally blatant but morally defensible ones, and your whataboutish equivalizing of the two.)
We all have to thank the Russians to have shown the world in 2014 how to do it. And before that. And also to give us a great opportunity for Whataboutism.
Sigh, I probably still have those Bezmenov brochures from the early eighties lying around somewhere.
"Bombing civilians" is unacceptable if they are from "Europe" like Ukraine.
"Bombing civilians" is fine if they are savages from Middle East, Africa or "not-Europe", like Russia.
But then again, do you really think anybody is still reading this deep in the thread? They're already bored, no shiny tech, just endless babble.
But okay, your next move, Godwin’s law.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%E2%80%99s_law
Game over.
Yet here you are.
> your next move
But.. you invoked it yourself.
"Game over"
But, hey, there are flight simulators out there, aren't there?
Unfortunately we really don't have anything that is mass-production and of good quality at the same time, but IKEA is hardly a ray of light in my opinion.
Even if you somehow overcome the need for capital, how do you setup the supply chain necessary in a world where you can’t readily trade with anyone but China? Which you may not be able or doing in a month if things turn sour and China also start sanctioning.
Sure Russia has a lot of wood, but Russia doesn’t have the industrial material to transform it into furniture, and right now, Russia doesn’t have access to the high tech commodities required to build an efficient lumber industry, let alone factories to process it.
You’re right of course, this will open up for opportunities in the very long run, but it’ll be very localised opportunities that can’t take advantage of the global supply chain in a country that had an economy which was around the size of the economy of Italy before this began.
If you look at history, then you can’t really build empires in isolation. Even the current “American empire” saw a lot of its economic rise throught things like the Marshall plan, which as an example, lifted my country (Denmark) from what was basically medieval farming methods with lots and lots of manual labour to the average farmer owning tractors in less than a decade. Unless the oligarchs of Russia plan on investing basically all their national profits into building the country’s industry, then I would personally wager that these images are the last chance that a lot of Russian have to but IKEA things for a good while. It won’t stop there either, after a few years of isolation the average Russian won’t be able to buy things like coffee if the sanctions get worse.
War is hell.
examples: Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, ...
Also counter examples of more authoritarian regimes having economic resurgences - south korea, taiwan, to lesser extents china and vietnam... I'm sure there's more.
How did the US not selling drones to Turkey made Turkey a drone superpower? Well, Turkey already had a large engineering talent pool and related industries, therefore US not selling drones to Turkey was an opportunity.
Does Russia already have a talent base or flourishing industries for all the stuff they are being denied? I find it unlikely, it's a common problem with natural resource blessed countries destroying high skill sectors because a very few things are as profitable and risk free as digging stuff from the ground, sell them and live off from than money. Norway is being smart about it, countries like Dubai and UAE are also trying to be smart about it but AFAIK Russia is not very smart. They used to have huge talent pool of all kinds during the Soviet times but that is no longer the case. They monetised the remains of the Soviets and used the money to buy yachts, palaces and luxury estate abroad.
What is the last innovation, art or product that came out of Russia and change the world? Probably there are some but not many. They used to be the ones competing with the west neck to neck, bringing in their flavour and coming up with something ingenious.
It's very sad actually, considering what the Russian people have archived in the past.
Maybe Telegram? It has 500 million monthly active users.
However, this does show that if all Meta and Google is banned, they will be fine. Is it going to be the same for other stuff though? Like the IKEA stuff? Like civil aviation?
> Does Russia already have a talent base or flourishing industries for all the stuff they are being denied? (...) They used to have huge talent pool of all kinds during the Soviet times but that is no longer the case.
That's why I brought up programming. If the legendary Russian skills are still extant in that industry, then that's one example of a pool of talent that remained intact. Sure it won't help with a furniture crisis, but programming and IT skills are the core of a modern economy, so they will help with other things.
I'm speechless.
Actually, the most profound examples of stupidity I'm seeng lately comes from programmers and technologist who think they understand everything just because they can read high-level simplified explanation of a concept in wikipedia or some blog post.
This arrogance is deeply concerning for me, it usually comes from people with no depth in anything other than programming. Dunning–Kruger effect? Maybe.
Elon Musk is a good example for high profile version of this. Without knowledge of caves he adventured to build robot to get kids out of a flooding cave, then proceeded to attack the person who actually knew his stuff and saved the kids. Another one is again him, predicting the end of Covid in the US. Another gold from Musk is him insulting medical professionals for not pumping a drug that cures Covid, that later turned out not to cure Covid.
This is Musk but Musk-alikes dominate the programming culture. It's horrible.
Elon Musk takes risks beyond what most are willing to take and that is what separates him from the average technocrats. You don’t like that personality type, but some of us wish technocrats would reach farther than copycat social media and advertising ventures even if they fail sometimes.
Agree for the former, but not with the latter. Though scientific and military advancements by Russia were possible during the cold war, in its current state and with the new sanctions, I don't think Russia will be able to cope with the rest of the world.
IMHO it's more like there will be either a regime change or a new North Korea.
So the most likely scenario is that the status quo remains until he passes away. At which point there would be an opportunity for a clean reset in relations.
Because a lot of death occurs young, brining the average down. But if you survive into adult hood you have good shot at living longer.
Plus he has way more resources than the average Russian.
That avg expectancy of 73 includes all the people that die young, etc.
"Actuarial tables" is the term you're looking for, if you're curious how long a particular person at a particular age might live.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
In the US a person who is currently 69 years old will live, on average, for another 17.53 years.
In Russia the average expectancy is a little shorter, but also Putin is not an average person. By all accounts he seems pretty healthy, and obviously he has unlimited access to the best healthcare money can buy.
No. All major industries are breaking up contracts with the Russians. SWIFT took a century to build. None of that is coming back. Russia can never trust Europe again, and no country can trust Cloud products anymore, seeing how many Russian people are getting HTTP 410 from Cloud products.
Having a team of private doctors, access to the best hospitals, access to Western medicine, even being able to leave Russia for medical care will probably mean he lives longer than average.
It looks to me like our European leaders are escalating in a specific way that ensures we are locked in a feud with Russia for decades to come, in such a way that we can’t renew relationships even if Putin dies and if they pay war damages (which they won’t be able to pay because of their damaged economy - Ow, sweet irony of 1928…).
I wonder whether we, European people, have an interest into making a 50-years war with Russia, like our leaders are deciding.
Or, in other words, where can I emigrate, from France.
I think you're in the minority if you're against sanctions
Russia poked and prodded NATO for years (Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea) and watched the European powers stand idly by with maybe some words and small sanctions
This caused them to miscalculate and push too far. But the escalation is Russia's fault, nobody made them invade anybody