Would Russia have an advantage in timber/forestry? Russia has almost 4x the forest area, but not sure about felling and organised industry around it. Almost 50% of Russia is forested to China's 23%, though I also found articles about China aggressively reforesting.

It can easily changed as since ancient time china can claim S belong to C via monolgolian empire. When Russia is so dependent on china for everything, do you think chinese empire would just sit and let Russia grab so many lands of theirs from not so ancient unfair treaty.

Mafia families are not rely upon …

Even Finland, the densest forest in Europe imports 80% of its wood pellets from Russia. Russia's got plenty of trees being felled.

What I can't comment on however is the quality of lumber for construction purposes. Making pellets is trivial. Furniture, less so.

That's a smart take I have not fully thought through.

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.

I feel this is the real selling point of democracy and free media, its hard for a foreign nation to buy an entire electorate.

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.

> its hard for a foreign nation to buy an entire electorate

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).

The US was one of the countries I was talking about that intentionally undermined their own democracy.

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?

No. No. No. The constitution, state, and county voting laws.

This would make Russia the second child after North Korea.

This whole thing makes me question the western/NATO motives of not pursuing de-escalation. Wouldn’t agreeing to Putin’s NATO non expansion terms be better than letting your economic competitor to basically establish monopoly on the entire Russian economic atmosphere?

Supplication to a tyrant worked only to incite unprovoked invasion and war crimes. The west believed that integrating Russia through economy and trade would bring us together. It only revealed Russia is not yet ready and still believes everybody is out to get them like some traumatised recluse. Enough is enough, the west has awoken to the sad reality that Russia has not changed.

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.

You do realize that Russia has more nukes than any country in the world, right? Whether you like it or not, cornering Russia in this way and not offering a way out of this mess without some dignity is an invitation for Putin to do something catastrophic and desperate. Big talk like this is foolish and could end up with a nuclear nightmare regardless of which side is right.

Maybe nuclear war is better than letting Russia win.

Putin isn't some madman sitting on a launch button. No matter how desperate he gets, he needs military command to follow through on an order to start world war 3.

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.

I know enough about human nature and what people (and especially a group of generals) are willing to do when cornered that pushing Russia too far could be one of the worst strategic mistakes in recent world history.

That would imply that sovereign states don't get to decide who they're aligned with. As seen with Ukraine that in turn would make them first targets for an invasion.

Such a decision would be anything but de-escalation.

The reality is that Sovereignty is relative to how close a country is to the border of super power nations. Do you think Mexico or Canada can ally with any nation or join any military alliance they wish?

I don't know about Mexico or Canada, but Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland are all both Russia's neighbours and NATO members.

Either Russia is not a superpower or it's not that relevant.

Or Russia does not find those countries to be enough of a threat either due to size, military force, existing relationships, geographical boundaries, or a multitude of other factors. Or maybe Russia has begrudgingly accepted those countries joining NATO, but the last straw was a huge neighbor like Ukraine joining that is strategically important to them.

Putin's 'non-expansion' terms actually mean rolling NATO back. Sure, it'd probably 'work' in the sense that he'd be able to restore the Russian Empire as a result. I guess he might be happy with just that.

there are plenty of planes flying in and out, container ships delivering, and cross border payments happening, right now.

Not for long potentially. I don't have the link right now, but someone posted an interesting thread on Twitter how to fly planes you need a lot of international support. Down to things like supply of replacement parts and access to repair manuals. Their estimate (not sure if accurate) is that in 3 weeks, domestic aviation in Russia will become very hard to run.

(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...

Might come as a surprise, but Boing and Airbus are not the only civil airplane manufacturers in the world.

They're certainly not, but they're the biggest and the Russian airlines already own or lease a lot of Boeing and Airbus planes. Aeroflot is nearly all Airbus[0] and Rossiya[1] (largest operator of Russian-made Sukhoi planes) is around half Airbus, half Sukhoi. They could indeed just scrap these and buy a shiny new fleet of, say, Embraer jets but that would involve retraining pilots and support staff, not to mention actually paying for them and waiting for them to be built + delivered (I don't imagine Embraer have a big showroom full of planes ready to be taken home!).

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_fleet

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rossiya_Airlines

Just like Embraer would have a ton of trouble delivering a 500 plane replacement, think about what would it take to return 500 leased planes (and for the leasing companies to lease them to someone else to avoid going bankrupt, and for Boeing to deal with a deluge of cheap second-hand planes, etc etc).

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.

I think the point being made originally was not that the leased planes will be returned (many articles suggest they won't), it was that these planes need ongoing maintenance and parts which the airlines won't have access to. The original tweet thread viraptor is referring to suggested that this is something that will hit the airlines much sooner than we laypersons might have imagined.

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

That was the exact thread I was looking for. Thank you.

Fortunately for civilian Russian aviation, there are currently plenty of foreign-owned planes that just happen to be sitting on Russian airfields, that can't go anywhere, and are chock-full of spare parts.

It might get them out of a tight spot in the short term, but I'm not sure if cannibalising abandoned planes is a particularly viable long-term strategy

Practically they are the only ones. While Chinese and Russian make some of their own they are still dependent on West for engine and other critical components.

Engines: MC-21 flew with a locally built PD-14 engine in 2020 (wikipedia). Work is underway on SSJ-New with a local PD-8 or a PD-14. There was a snag with composites, which were sanctioned by US a few years ago because of some other random bullshit, but now they are built locally as well.

> other critical components

Like what? This sounds a bit hand-wavy, what are those critical components, if you don't mind me asking?

Do you expect them to fly Cessnas now?

Clue me in which large manufacturer of passenger plans you have on your mind. There is practically nobody left any more. Boeing, Airbus and Embraer are controlling the market and all of those are directly or indirectly sanctioning Russia right now. Bombardier at this point is practically Airbus. In Russia there is one locally manufactured plane that has some traction from Sukhoi, but it also won't be able to be serviced or produced any more as key components are now sanctioned.

So whom do you have in mind now? Comac?

> key components are now sanctioned

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?

The locally produced engines you mentioned elsewhere are barely past testing phase with single deployments in 2020/2021. The plans for this year were to produce 10 planes and that was assuming fully functioning economy and government grants. I'd be honestly impressed if they actually pulled off those 10.

Container shipping is about to be reduced, Maersk just announced that they would only ship food to Russia going forward. Aviation in Russia might come mostly to a halt. About 500 airplanes are leased and have to be returned within a month to the leasing companies, the rest is running out of spare parts quickly.

So now we are all of a sudden in the "might come to a halt" hypothetical. Ok. First of all, at least 40% of the planes are home-built, so aviation in Russia most certainly will not come to a halt.

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.

> First of all, at least 40% of the planes are home-built, so aviation in Russia most certainly will not come to a halt.

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.

Or salvage parts and engines from the leased Boeings if they are comparable.

That would assume they are willing to break their contract and not returning the machines. Which they can do, but then they will never be able to lease a machine again. At best, this buys them a couple of months of operations.

You underestimate the shortsightedness and short memories of businessmen when shown a pile of cash, especially at companies like Boeing and other defense manufacturers.

The businessmen might think of their wallets first, but as long as the sanctions last, they cannot send spare parts to Russia. Also, the defense manufacturers are currently quite happy with the increased defense spendings.

Whatever the US role in the events in Ukraine was, for sure they won't let Russia off the hook easily after this invasion.

Ok, at some point, sure, maybe.

Home-built doesn’t mean “all parts produced in Russia”. And it just takes a handful of parts to be included in sanctions – especially with just-in-time manufacturing – for an entire production line to grind to a halt.

There are about half a dozen SSJs and MC-21s produced every month, let's check back in a couple of months from now, and see if those lines ground to a halt or doubled their production. I'm curious myself!

And how many of them are using home built engines and not engines bought in the west?

> About 500 airplanes are leased and have to be returned within a month to the leasing companies,

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.

Well, yes, they can keep and operate them illegally. Short term: problem solved. Long term: its even worse.

It might be immoral, but surely keeping they planes will be legal by some means, executive fiat or whatever.

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.

Exactly. It'll be a slow and steady decline in terms of safety, pilot training and so on.

On the front page is a post about yandex where yandex says that they have equipment for a year on hand but there is a legitimate concern that as their equipment naturally breaks they will not be able to source replacements. There's no garuntee on what will be available for any up and coming company