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Ask HN: Why did the ruble stabilize and what's going on?
107 points by helij on April 23, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 232 comments
Today the Ruble is worth more than 2 months ago before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Can any economists chime in and explain why this is happening? Inflation in Russia looks to be high but similar to the one in Lithuania for example. Ukraine inflation is lower which in my dilettante view doesn't make sense.

It looks like it's business as usual and war doesn't really have any impact on global economy at the moment. Prices were going up before Feb anyway.

So what's going on?



Supply and demand.

1. Capital controls. Russians are legally not allowed to sell their Rubles anymore. This decreases supply and keeps prices up.

2. A healthy dose of foreign currency ($1B/day from Germany alone) gives the Russian central bank plenty of tools to buy Rubles and increase demand for it to keep prices up.

This does not mean that the existing sanctions aren’t working. Eventually Russian factories will run out of machine spare parts and everything will grind to a halt, people will use their jobs, demand for goods will decrease, other factories will have to close due to lack of demand for their goods, their workers get laid off - you get the idea. This takes time though.

Disclaimer: I’m not an economist, but I do have a subscription to the Economist :)


> $1B/day from Germany alone

According to [1], all imports from Russia to Germany in March were 4B EUR, so rather $139M/day, not $1B/day. Maybe that is the amount for all of the EU (with Germany then contributing 13.9%)?

[1] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2022/03...


Gas [1]

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61164894


$1B/day is in fact the sum from all of the EU for gas and oil according to Josep Borrell, the EUʼs top diplomat from Spain [1], [2], [3]. The $139M/day ≈ 13.9% from Germany include oil and gas (according to the source I gave).

The source you provided (thank you) reads: “Proceeds from the sale of Russian oil and gas amount to around $1bn (£770m) a day”. In the context of the article, it is misleading, unfortunately; in itself it could even mean ‘from everyone’. Itʼs probably the number given by Borrell.

[1] https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/04/06/eu-has-spent-3...

[2] https://tfiglobalnews.com/2022/04/08/eu-gave-e1-billion-in-m...

[3] https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/minister-says-eu-giving-russ...


I appreciate this back and forth, thank you. I’m disappointed in the BBC reporting here.


I also fell into the BBC trap (I’m OP), thanks for the correction and the reminder to not just look at the top google result.


Eventually Russian factories will run out of machine spare parts

Most parts are able to be manufactured anywhere. Certainly, it is cheaper (generally) to buy the parts from the usual manufacturers. But supply and demand will cause those parts to start to be made, whether in Russia itself, or in China (more likely). If those parts start to get made more cheaply in China than the original 'western' parts, the western parts will eventually become uneconomic to make and be pushed out of the market.

Sanctions are generally a two-edged sword. There is pain caused to the sanctioned party in the short-term, but the sanctioning party more often finds itself damaged in the long-term by being shut out of its traditional markets when the sanctioned party starts buying things elsewhere.


It'll be interesting when they start buying Chinese knock-off parts for machines. It didn't seem to work out so well for Russia's IFV tyres...

> One aspect that wasn't covered was that a lot of Russian vehicles are fitted with cheap Chinese copies of off-road tyres which may be a significant contributor to the problems Russia is having and exacerbating the poor maintenance Trent talks about.

https://www.tanknology.co.uk/post/primer-ctis-tyres


We've gone through the 'cheap Asian knockoff' cycles many times before.

I can remember when it was Japanese stuff that was supposedly 'cheap and shoddy' but we all went out later and bought Mazda and Toyota cars and Canon cameras.

Then it was the Taiwanese stuff and today the whole world can't do without Taiwanese computer chips.

Then it was the Chinese stuff, and the same cycle. But the scene is changing. In the same way as I originally thought the Japanese stuff wasn't up to par and then bought a Mazda Rotary that I absolutely loved, I see that the Chinese Haval is not at all a bad SUV for the price.

These days it seems to be that it's Vietnam's turn to be going through the cycle. Starting off cheap, and then later moving up the value-added ladder.

History repeats. Products are made to a price. Just because we usually see the cheap Asian shit that our companies try to foist upon us doesn't mean those Asian countries can't produce high-quality stuff for themselves to use against us.

There was a cartoon from the 1940s that showed Bugs Bunny finger-flicking a Japanese battleship that then fell to pieces. That wasn't at all the actuality of what happened when the US Navy finally met the Japanese Navy in early 1942.


The original cycle started with Germany:

"Where does the rubbish in every country come from? Germany!"

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/brands-geographical...


That's really interesting. Germany > Japan > China all of them became tech powers. So the moral is copy, sell, develop, ..., profit!


But then, if you go back far enough, it was

  United States > Germany > Japan > China
The US got its own start by copying and ripping off British IP in the early 1800s.

https://apnews.com/article/b40414d22f2248428ce11ff36b88dc53


Ill add that sanctions always hurt the poor the most. They are not a smart way to bully diplomacy.


They also had existing foreign currency reserves (far more than the foreign currency still flowing into the country) to sell for rubles to prop up the currency (easier to to force up the price for rubles when most people arent allowed to sell theirs)

They're expected to run out of accessible foreign currency reserves soon if they continue at this rate though, and the head of the Russian Central Bank tasked with actually making the trades is not optimistic about Russia's economic outlook for this quarter...


> They also had existing foreign currency reserves

Over half of those are frozen due to sanctions, but even the rest is hard to use, because any transaction may be blocked out of abundance of zeal.

That's why capital controls are used to keep the official rate at pre-war level. Aside from restrictions on selling the ruble, Russian state forces all businesses that are paid in foreign currencies to immediately sell 70%. This increases the demand for ruble.


Issue is that only the west is sanctioning them, not e.g. China. By sanctioning them we are just strengthening the Russia-China, India, etc. relationships. To think the world relies on the west to a point where its existential is a bit excessive, in my opinion


The issue is that Europe buys their energy from Russia.


China's interest in a relationship with Russia is solely predicated on what it can do for China. Same for everyone else, I guess.

But it leads to the question, what _can_ more trading with Russia do, that China can't get elsewhere?


Wow the world's manufacturing plant wonders what it can get out of having Russia be an exclusive customer.

No way that can't backfire on the US! I swear a lot of arguments completely ignore how willing China is to put down the West.


Russia does not earn all of its money in Europe, but it does most of its profit. There is a reason it engages in these multi-decade influence campaigns in Europe: the Chinese don't overpay nearly as readily because they can't.


> Eventually Russian factories will run out of machine spare parts and everything will grind to a halt

Probably not. The Russian economy is unusually self-reliant, a legacy of Soviet times. It's pretty common to discover that for some niche weird thing there are only a handful of manufacturers in the world and one of them is Russian.

For example: one reason it's hard to build nuclear reactors is that the containment hull has to be made of a special kind of steel that you can only buy from two companies in the world. One is Japanese, the other Russian.

In particular their military is unusually self reliant. That's why they're famous for weapons exports rather than imports.

> I do have a subscription to the Economist

The Economist was pretty consistently writing deranged propaganda about Russia even 5 years ago so I really doubt you're getting accurate information from it now.


> The Russian economy is unusually self-reliant

Not anymore from what experts are writing, but only time will tell. Aircraft industry is a good example [1], as most planes operated in Russia require western maintenance parts that can’t easily be replaced.

Other examples are in gas and oil drilling equipment [2].

> The Economist was pretty consistently writing deranged propaganda about Russia even 5 years ago

You call warning about the danger of Russia invading neighboring countries driven by the ideological shift towards imperialism “propaganda”?

[1] https://www.frost.com/frost-perspectives/will-sanctions-from...

[2] https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/putin-admits-western-sancti...


5 years ago? It was all about how Putin was secretly manipulating western elections via social media and leaders via secret blackmail material. All that stuff was nonsense from day one.


I still have few "made in CCCP" things at home. All of them were unbelievably shit compared to their western not-competition at the time of manufacture. Especially computers, while the west already had Windows and internet and 3.5" floppies, 8bits with tapes were just getting started here - and of course it all was a copy of western designs.

And most of it was made outside Russia anyways - e. g. they used Czechoslovak factories a lot because the quality was and is like from another dimension; our army refused Soviet tanks because of the shit quality and instead made our own based on the same design.

That was when they were "self-reliant" for decades. After the fall, they switched to globalized manufacturing completely. And now you're saying they will be able to switch back in months, with much worse economy and nobody willing to help them? I'm laughing very loudly.


But the argument here is not that they'll have to make do with lower quality parts. It's that they won't be able to get or make the parts they need at all. That is a very different and much less likely argument, especially as there are still many countries they're trading with through which imports can be routed.


No, today it's the same. They're thousands of miles away from today's precision manufacturing. They won't be able to make usable parts. If they try to use whatever they produce, their machines will likely explode, or at least grind to halt.


So then they'll buy more parts from their friends in Germany? After all, they have to sell the Russians something in return for all that gas.

I think you are seriously over-estimating what sanctions can do. Even if some Russian machines do explode, much harsher sanctions have routinely failed elsewhere. It'd be nice if this is all it took to end the war but it seems unrealistic to assume so.


Where is that elsewhere? I visited some sanctioned places and it was as I said here - yeah they make some stuff, and all of it is shit, doesn't work at all, or breaks down very soon. There's a reason why there's a car repair shop at every corner in Iran.


And their "friends" like China won't ever let them have the machines that produce machines, because that's how they dominate others (and China learned that well from the West).


A good part of Chinese high tech factory machines are made in places like Germany [1]. This is slowly changing though as China is becoming a major exporter of production machinery themselves, albeit starting from the low tech side of things (think plastic molding).


>>> This does not mean that the existing sanctions aren’t working.

What metrics do you use to determine 'working'? Can you provide a couple examples of sanctions working to provide peace?


How about South Africa dropping apartheid? Didn’t take a civil war to accomplish


Good example there of internal change expedited by international actions.

How do the present sanctions on Russia help expedite Zelensky allowing "Minsk agreement" elections in eastern Ukraine (Luhansk and Donetsk)?


Why would you expect current sanctions to help with that? Both DPR and LPR are under sanctions themselves.


I am in Russia right now. Since 18 April it is possible to buy USD, although current rate is slightly higher 77 (Google) vs 86 (that is from an actual local exchange office, not a bank, you can walk in and buy).

Since the whole world seems to hate Russians right now, I guess no point buying USD and traveling somewhere.

I keep hearing stories how "in just a few months" everything is going to collapse and people will be starving. I doubt it, it's been two months, feels the same so far.


The whole world does not hate Russians. On the contrary, I've seen a lot of empathy for Russians abroad and in Russia who do not support the invasion of and atrocities in the Ukraine but still have to suffer because of the Russian government's, or rather Vladimir Putin's, actions. Obviously, yes, Russians who express support for Putin are hated, rightfully so.


I think that’s what a silent majority of reasonable people might think, but there is still a ton of indiscriminate anti-Russian bigotry going around.


I guess it doesn't help when there's footage of mass graves in Ukraine. (I'm aware that they've been publicised via Ukrainian PR, so the truth may be blurry, but given that the French just published footage of soldiers burying bodies in Mali, that they claim are Russian mercenaries trying to carry out a false flag attack, I'm inclined to believe that the Ukrainians didn't kill a bunch of their own citizens to make Russia look bad).


These mass graves are the product of indiscriminate hatred and collective retribution. How can they possibly justify it?


And they're committing a literal genocide while Russians abroad are silent or tacitly supporting it.

When Ukrainians are no longer being killed then we can talk about hurt feelings...


Yours is the logic that leads to genocide.


Pretty sure whatever logic the Russians are using leads to genocide considering they're committing it right now...

I'm literally advocating for an end to genocide...


You are advocating indiscriminate and collective hatred towards entire nationalities. That hatred is the root cause of genocide.

And if that is truly your attitude, you don’t even have a consistent moral basis to claim that genocide is categorically wrong. By your logic, an entire nationality of people are collectively responsible for whatever their regime and military do. Since a hostile military can be justifiably killed, why not the civilian populace? I have an answer that question; do you?


I simply said that we can talk about Russians' hurt feelings when Ukrainians aren't being killed by Russians.

Quote where I said Russians should be killed? No one's killing Russian civilians. I never said anyone should.

Russian media and leaders have said Ukraine should be wiped off the map. Mariupol is no longer a city. Tens of thousands of civilians murdered. Women raped. But people are being mean to Russians? You're literally whitewashing a genocide...

How about you say what the Russians are doing is wrong?


This is the statement of mine that you find so objectionable:

> I think that’s what a silent majority of reasonable people might think, but there is still a ton of indiscriminate anti-Russian bigotry going around.

And for further context, what is the stance that I think "a silent of majority of reasonable people" might think?

> The whole world does not hate Russians. On the contrary, I've seen a lot of empathy for Russians abroad and in Russia who do not support the invasion of and atrocities in the Ukraine but still have to suffer because of the Russian government's, or rather Vladimir Putin's, actions. Obviously, yes, Russians who express support for Putin are hated, rightfully so.

I have already condemned the actions of the Russian regime. That is not enough for you; you are not satisfied unless I hate the Russian people without distinction.

I have done nothing in this thread except to draw the moral distinction between the Russian regime and military and the Russian people as a whole, and to reiterate that it is morally unacceptable to hate, without any distinction, an entire nationality of people. You are the one who took up the mantle of defending bigotry; don't you dare claim the moral high ground.


You are not satisfied unless I hate the Russian people without distinction.

You're pushing buttons here, and trying to bait this person into joining a downward spiral with you. Please stop, and find something better and healthier to do with your time.


Again, show a quote where I "defend" bigotry? I did no such thing, rather said that preventing people dying is more important than hurt feelings. Which it is.

Here in Canada Ukrainians have been attacked by Russian supporters; a Ukrainian priest and his family's home was set on fire. There's pro-Putin demonstrations in Germany.

There hasn't been any bigotry or violence directed towards Russians abroad yet you are taking up that cause like it's more important than the genocide against Ukrainians itself.


> There hasn't been any bigotry or violence directed towards Russians abroad

This is simply untrue:

https://www.fox5dc.com/news/russia-house-restaurant-vandaliz...

https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/vandalism-at-russian-chur...

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/12/1086282867/a-russian-pianists...

Perhaps you are going to respond that none of this is equivalent to the atrocities committed by the Russian military. And you’d be right, in exactly the same sense that the indiscriminate internment of Japanese-Americans and Japanese-Canadians was not equivalent to the atrocities carried out by the Japanese military. My point here is that one still does not justify the other.


A door being splashed with red paint isn't even close to the same level as a priest and his family being intentionally (almost) burned alive...[1]

Are you fucking serious? Just admit you support genocide at this point...

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/victoria-ars...


I don't support genocide because I don't support indiscriminate hatred and retribution towards people on the basis of their nationality. I've said that repeatedly. I also don't support what the Russian military is doing in Ukraine, and I think every legitimate Russian military target should be obliterated without mercy. Why isn't that enough for you? Why does it trigger you so much for me to point out that some people are, in fact, irrationally bigoted towards Russian people even when they have nothing to do with this war?


> I've said that repeatedly.

You haven't, this is the first time I've seen. Thanks for finally saying it.

> Why does it trigger you so much for me to point out that some people are, in fact, irrationally bigoted towards Russian people even when they have nothing to do with this war?

Because it's obvious you have more sympathy for hurt feelings than people who are actually being killed.

Funny enough, the Russian people I do know who are truly decent people aren't upset about anti-Russian feelings, they're truly sympathetic for the Ukrainian people, without having to try put the attention on themselves.


> You haven't, this is the first time I've seen.

You haven't seen me say that I oppose indiscriminate hatred and retribution towards people on the basis of their nationality? I've repeated that in almost every single reply I've made to you.

> Because it's obvious you have more sympathy for hurt feelings than people who are actually being killed.

Don't pretend you know where my sympathies lie, especially when you don't even understand what I'm saying to you. If someone replied to me arguing that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was justified, I would argue with them. Instead, I got you and that Finnish guy both arguing that indiscriminate hatred of Russian people is justified.

> Funny enough, the Russian people I do know who are truly decent people aren't upset about anti-Russian feelings, they're truly sympathetic for the Ukrainian people, without having to try put the attention on themselves.

You said earlier that Russian people are "silent or tacitly supporting" the invasion, which justifies indiscriminate hatred towards Russian people. Which is it?


> You said earlier that Russian people are "silent or tacitly supporting" the invasion

Many are, not all.

> which justifies indiscriminate hatred towards Russian people. Which is it?

Never said that, you imagined it. Just said there's more pressing issues than feelings.


I'll just make the charitable assumption that you didn't understand what I was saying and the context that I was saying it in, then.


[flagged]


And here we have a perfect example of anti-Russian bigotry.


Less than a hundred years ago russians marched into my country and tried to murder every man and rape every woman.

Now they're marching into Ukraine and doing the same.

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, you just want to "feel good" about how woke you percieve yourself to be, all the while living comfortably very far from a russian border, I'd wager. All this seems just overblown bigotry to you.


And what would you suggest we do? Murder every Russian man and rape every Russian woman as collective retribution? Besides, how many Ukrainians were in the Red Army that invaded Finland in 1939? And what was the nationality of the man who ordered that invasion? By your logic, Russians, Ukrainians, and Georgians are all your enemies, so why take a side when they are fighting between themselves?

My moral stance here is to remember the distinction between a people and a regime. It’s the opposite of what the “woke” do; in fact, many of the “woke” wholeheartedly agree with you.


> And what would you suggest we do?

Stop calling justified hate "bigotry". That's all. That's what I was accused of.


Indiscriminate hatred towards people you don’t even know, purely on the basis of what country they were born in, qualifies as bigotry. You can hold the opinion that it’s justified in this particular instance, but it is still bigotry.


> Less than a hundred years ago russians marched into my country and tried to murder every man and rape every woman.

You had better back such a sweeping statement up with hard facts and numbers as its emotional quotient veers past the red line.

The history of the human race is so rife with examples of polity A committing atrocities against people of polity B under pretexts 1, 2, … N that it does not take long of poking around to find something to embarrass nearly any ethnic group on this planet, small or large. Human beings simply do not have a lasting track record of peacefully resolving their differences and most of the time resort to the warfare instead. Sad but true.

Let's do another fact cross-check if the domain name of «.fi» in your profile rings true to the origin of your abode.

Finland joined Nazi Germany as an ally and participated in the invasion of the Soviet Union; from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuation_War#Finnish_offen...:

«On the morning of 22 June Adolf Hitler's proclamation read: "Together with their Finnish comrades in arms the heroes from Narvik stand at the edge of the Arctic Ocean. German troops under command of the conqueror of Norway, and the Finnish freedom fighters under their Marshal's command, are protecting Finnish territory».

«The Finnish plans for the offensive in Ladoga Karelia were finalised on 28 June 1941, and the first stages of the operation began on 10 July. By 16 July, VI Corps had reached the northern shore of Lake Ladoga, dividing the Soviet 7th Army, which had been tasked with defending the area. […] The Finnish II Corps started its offensive in the north of the Karelian Isthmus on 31 July. […] On 22 August, the Finnish IV Corps began its offensive south of II Corps and advanced towards Vyborg (Finnish: Viipuri). By 23 August, II Corps had reached the Vuoksi River to the east and encircled the Soviet forces defending Vyborg».

On Finland's plans concerning Eastern Karelia; from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_military_administratio...:

«The Continuation War and belief in a quick German victory over the Soviet Union once again gave rise to Finnish irredentism. The legality of the Finnish claims on Eastern Karelia was justified by both ethno-cultural and military security factors. During the spring of 1941, when the Finnish political leadership understood the full extent of the German plans concerning the Soviet Union, president Ryti commissioned professor of geography Väinö Auer and historian Eino Jutikkala to demonstrate "scholarly" that Eastern Karelia formed a natural part of the Finnish living space».

On the ethnic cleansing of ethnic Russians in Easter Karelia by the Finnish government; from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Karelian_concentration_ca...:

«These camps were organized by the armed forces supreme commander Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim. The [Eastern Karelian concentration – emphasis is mine] camps were intended to hold camp detainees for future exchange with the Finnic population from the rest of Russia. The mortality rate of civilians in the camps was high due to famine and disease: by some estimates, 4279 civilians died in these camps, meaning a rough mortality rate of 17% […]

Significant numbers of Soviet civilians were interred in the concentration camps. These were primarily Russian women, children, and the elderly, as almost all of the working age male and female population were either drafted or evacuated by the Soviets. […] During the spring and summer of 1942, about 3,500 detainees died of malnutrition».

Granted, the situation with ethnic Russian detained in Finnish concentration camps was never as severe as in German extermination camps and the detainees did get released, several thousands did die anyway under the justification of the polity A leadership having a superiority over people of polity B. We now have gone a full circle.


The soviet union illegally and unprovoked invaded Finland in 1939 and conquered territory. Then:

On 22 June 1941, Germany launched an invasion of the Soviet Union. Three days later, the Soviet Union conducted an air raid on Finnish cities, prompting Finland to declare war and allow German troops stationed in Finland to begin offensive warfare. By September 1941, Finland had regained its post–Winter War concessions to the Soviet Union: the Karelian Isthmus and Ladoga Karelia. However, the Finnish Army continued the offensive past the pre-1939 border during the conquest of East Karelia, including Petrozavodsk, and halted only around 30–32 km (19–20 mi) from the centre of Leningrad. It participated in besieging the city by cutting the northern supply routes and by digging in until 1944.

So the war you are talking about started with, again, the soviet union bombing Finland. We got hella mad and pushed them back, reclaiming our lost territories. Did we march further into russia than we needed to? Sure. Was there precedent? Absolutely. Am I a bigot for hating russians? Fuck no.

Some prisoners of war dying of malnutrition or disease is hardly an evil act from a tiny nation of farmers struggling to feed themselves while fighting to survive invasion from russia.


> Some prisoners of war dying of malnutrition or disease is hardly an evil act from a tiny nation of farmers struggling to feed themselves while fighting to survive invasion from russia.

Lastly, you are confusing who was invading whom in 1941-44 as well as who was starving whom, intentionally or not. There is also a major logical fallacy in your reasoning of «when ABC invades my homeland, the ABC are bad; but when my people being "a tiny nation of farmers struggling to feed themselves" invade ABC in a retaliation, rightfully or not, and intern and starve women, elderly and children of ABC, that is acceptable because it is a small price to pay for what heinous things the people of ABC had previously done to my people». There has been no right party in any invasion over the course of the entire human history.


What's the major logical fallacy?


> The soviet union illegally and unprovoked invaded Finland in 1939 and conquered territory.

The Soviet invasion of Finland in 1940? Yes, it was absolutely illegal, and I irrevocably concede with that fact. Finnish alliance with Nazi Germany to regain previously and forcibly ceded territories? Yes, I [can] accept that. Selective ethnic cleansing specifically targeting the ethnic Russians purely on the pretext of Karelia being the cradle of Kalevala and of the nation? Hardly so – for it is an attempt to impose and extend a sense of collective guilt upon an entire ethnic group of people for the misdeeds of their leadership they may not have agreed with.

I also note that you have evaded to provide any evidence to back up your prior statement being «Less than a hundred years ago russians marched into my country and tried to murder every man and rape every woman». Strong statements require strong evidence. The human history is full of highly unpleasant truths, but – to be able to arrive at an objective assessment of any historical situation – one has to immerse themselves in each side of the story, no matter how unpleasant it is/was. Cherry picking truths that selectively suit or support one side of the story is not an option in such a case.


I'm not your history teacher, go read a book. If you don't know what happens to the women and children after soviets invade your country then you'll surely be shortly educated.


The Red Army raping its way through Germany (not sure if that is the country the comment you're replying to was referring to), is pretty well documented and agreed upon by everyone other than Russian historians.

> Finland joined Nazi Germany as an ally and participated in the invasion of the Soviet Union

When you linked to an article on the Continuation War, did you wonder why it was called the Continuation War? Not the War of Finnish Aggression?


> The Red Army raping its way through Germany […]

In fact, it was much worse and started way before. According to informal accounts that Russian historians silently omit due to not boding well the narrative of the glory and the purity of the Soviet victory, male Wermacht soldiers captured in trenches of the Eastern Front were frequently sexually abused and raped with material objects other than a male genitalia, such as glass bottles. The most commonly cited reason (and an excuse) is revenge for an attempt of a near total extermination of Eastern Slavs (Poles, Belarussians, Ukrainians – not just ethnic Russians). Actually, it was the Poles, the Belarussians and the Ukrainians who bore the main brunt of the Nazi brutality.

US and British troops, however, did participate in mass rapes after the fall of Berlin and West Germany as well, only to a lesser extent. Many of the Allied forces' soldiers were court martialed on the account of their involvement in mass rapes of German women. Yet, they were given a free reign in the first few days. Soviet Army was given a longer "leeway" in their rampage after which those involved in rapes and other atrocities were also court martialed. Again, the most cited reason is revenge for the murdering of 27+ million Soviet citizens. Personally, I can't accept revenge as a rationalisation of events.

> […] did you wonder why it was called the Continuation War?

Yes, I did ponder the very same question; yet, I am at a loss. Finland attacking back the Soviets on its own to regain previous losses and calling that The Continuation War? Yes, I can see a merit in that. Finland opportunistically siding with Nazi Germany, creating a pretext rooted in the nationalistic rhetoric and the Finnish epic poetry for the ethnic cleansing? No, it is a separate undertaking and not a continuation war (note the spelling).


Yeah sure, boy, particularly people who haven't lived in Russia for the past 20 years or so ...


Technically, Russian conscripts did.


> it's always russian people invading.

Let's cross check this statement against the historical record of invasions of what we now collectively know as Belorus, Russia and Ukraine.

A list of major invasions that took place that we have a historical record of:

- Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus' (1237–1242), a series of invasions that resulted in the Rus' states becoming vassals of the Golden Horde.

- Livonian campaign against Rus' (1240–1242), an unsuccessful Teutonic invasion of the Novgorod and Pskov Republics, in order to convert them to Catholicism.

- Russo-Crimean Wars (1570–1572), an Ottoman invasion that penetrated Russia and destroyed Moscow.

- Polish–Muscovite War (1609–1618), Poland gained Severia and Smolensk.

- Polish–Lithuanian occupation of Moscow (1610-1612). The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth occupation of Moscow took place between 1610 and 1612 during the Polish–Muscovite War, when Moscow was sacked and the Kremlin was occupied by a Polish-Lithuanian garrison under the command of Stanisław Żółkiewski.

- Ingrian War (1610–1617), a Swedish invasion which captured Novgorod and Pskov.

- Swedish invasion of Russia (1708–1709), an unsuccessful Swedish invasion, as part of the Great Northern War (1700–1721).

- French invasion of Russia (1812), an unsuccessful invasion by Napoleon's French Empire and its allies, as part of the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815).

- Crimean War (1853–1856), a series of conflicts between the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire, France, Sardinia and the Russian Empire, including an Allied invasion of the Crimean Peninsula.

- Japanese invasion of Sakhalin (1905), an invasion and annexation by the Japanese, as part of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905).

- Eastern Front (World War I) (1914–1918), Russia was forced to cede Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states to Germany as the Russian Empire collapsed.

- Caucasus campaign (1914–1918), a series of conflicts between the Russian Empire, its various successor states, and the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

- Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War (1918–1925) and the contemporaneous Polish–Soviet War (1918/9–1921), the Polish occupation of Belarus and West Ukraine.

- Japanese intervention in Siberia (1918–1922), an occupation of the Russian Far East by Japanese soldiers during the Russian Civil War (1917–1923).

- Operation Barbarossa (1941), an unsuccessful invasion of the Soviet Union led by Nazi Germany that started the Eastern Front (World War II) of 1941–1945.

The list above does not include constant «minor» invasions over a succession of multiple centuries of nomadic tribes (Cumans, Kipchaks, Pechenegs) from the south and from the south-east of what we now know as Russia and Kazakhstan.

If we average that list out, Russia historically has been a subject to a major invasion every 47.2 years ((1945 - 1237) ÷ 15) over the between 1237 and 1945. The 47.2 years figure is, of course, nonsensical from the historical point of view but lends a perspective of the average frequency of major invasions.

------

As a bonus, there is also a list of planned invasions:

- Kantokuen (1941), an aborted plan for a major Japanese invasion of the Russian Far East during World War II.

- Operation Unthinkable (1945), a proposed contingency plan for an Anglo-American invasion of the Soviet Union developed by the British Chiefs of Staff during the later stages of World War II.


You misunderstand my statement. I didn't mean that "every invasion is by russian people", I meant that "when russia invades, it's the russian people doing the invasion not their leaders".


I don’t begrudge hatred towards a foreign army carrying out an invasion of conquest. I’m also fairly willing to justify relatively extreme tactics to bring such a war to a satisfactory end; for instance, I believe the atomic bombings of Japan were justified. But when you talk about indiscriminate hatred towards the Russian people, you’re including Russian people who mind their own business and have nothing to do with these invasions. You’re even including Russian people who might oppose these invasions and have done what they could to resist them.

Russia isn’t even a democracy, and it’s safe to say that it never has been. The people of Russia have always been the victims of their own autocratic regimes. If you treat them as an enemy because you are victimized by the same autocratic regime that they are, you are only furthering the interests of the regime itself, which is your true enemy and theirs.


Top political leadership physically heading the country's troops in the battlefield has been unheard of since medieval ages, as this role has been delegated to the military commandership and to the army it commands long since then. Therefore I find it illogical to award the term of «statement» to the way you have chained an aggregation of words as it does not parse as a semantically or a historically valid «statement» to me.

> it's the russian people doing the invasion

Are you singling out ethnically Russian people only and are declaring that the Russian invading force in Ukraine is comprised of 100% ethnically Russian solders, or you refer to Russian citizens instead? Russia is an ethnically diverse country and is home to 193 ethnic groups nationwide, and there are soldiers in the Russian invading force who happen to be ethnically Ukrainian.


I don't know what ethnics has to do with it. If it waves the flag it's of the nation. Russia is a nation of russian people. A nation with a history of illegal invasion of its peaceful neighbors, including mine.


> A nation with a history of illegal invasion of its peaceful neighbors, including mine.

Historical facts prove you otherwise. Historically, Russia has been far more often on the receiving end of illegal invasions (I have not even attempted to count the number of innumerable skirmishes) from "peaceful" neighbours – a major invasion every 47.2 years on average between 1237 and 1945, which is something I have pointed out before with a list of reference points to each major invasion.


You haven't proven otherwise. You've simply pointed out a different fact. Russia being frequently on the receieving end doesn't somehow annul the fact that it has a history of dishing out its own invasions.

That's like saying the Sun doesn't set, because I can prove to you it rises. It's capable of both.


"Russians abroad and in Russia who do not support the invasion" lol like Russians abroad have a choice ... it's funny to observe how the west from it's high moral ground and use or 'isms' left and right goes on to full on support of nazism.

I guess nobody gave an F about Ukraine until now and all those mainstream media articles from 2014-2021 about nazism problem and anti-russian atrocities have gone ignored. Apparently, people had another pet cause to read about in those years.


plenty of people cared about Ukraine; what the fuck are you on about? the previous US president tried to withhold aid to Ukraine in quid pro quo.

>Apparently, people had another pet cause to read about in those years.

You mean they weren't literally at war, so they didn't take up as much of the spotlight?


> the fuck are you on about?

wow, tough guy here :) I recommend you seek the truth over emotional highs. If you're not willing to do the work then be quiet - not for me but for your own good. FYI I wrote a two theses on the topic and read through tons of available material and defended both in front of a panel of people who served as ambassadors and are highly credible politologists, international lawyers, geopoliticists and I have zero investment in either side being right.


The western media has been working extra hard to suppress Nazism in Ukraine: https://mobile.twitter.com/elaadeliahu/status/15179484439222...


I see only Ukrainian symbols in that video. Only yellow and blue. No extremist symbols.

The extremist elements of Azov have long since been weeded out. And do you know where the word Azov comes from? Sea of Azov, ie. where Mariupol is. Have you seen pictures of what the Russians have done to Mariupol?


It's the silent approval of Putin actions by the majority of Russian population is what caused world to actually and generally dislike Russian people.

Granted - they been hypnothized by putin's multi-billion dollar/yr propaganda machine but this is the result.


Since the whole world seems to hate Russians right now,

Not true at all, friend. I really hope this will be over soon, and that we can all travel freely and visit each other again in the not-too-far future.


[flagged]


> do you feel that the Russians have started to detest "West" more?

It's certainly true for me and a few more people that I know. I used to be a cookie-cutter west-loving liberal, and now I'm slowly turning into a bitter vatnik. One of the things that made me change my mind (aside from diving deep into the history of the conflict after which many things started to make sense) is seeing how petty and ridiculous sanctions could be. Ironically, those people who embraced the western values have suffered the most, not only financially, but morally too, seeing how every day new sanctions pushing them towards the world's pariah status. For the average Putin voter nothing has changed really (except McD, that was harsh) - financial instututions work just fine and we are not going to suffer from food or fuel shortages

I still think Putin is a bloody dictator and that the war is a historical mistake and a catastrophe. However, seeing rabid mccartism and imposing collective guilt only makes me feel under siege. And the natural response is to stick to the leader, no matter how bad he is

I don't even want to start on the hypocrisy, this rant would go well beyond HN's allowed comment length


I appreciate your perspective even though I disagree with it, and I'm sorry that you're being flagged and downvoted for posting what amounts to your opinion. Having said that, I'm curious: what does the Russian public education system teach you about Hitler and the events leading up to WWII?

Here in the US, we are taught that Hitler first threatened, then proceeded, to invade his country's neighbors. His rationale: we are protecting ethnic German enclaves, we are seeking to recover losses from Germany's previous disastrous approach to world politics (i.e., WWI), and we are entitled to secure more living space for the German people along with the economic self-determinism that it will bring.

I imagine that most Europeans are taught similar things.

So, is it surprising that many Westerners are disturbed by the parallels between Hitler's actions in the 1930s and Putin's actions today? It is easy to convince us that Putin has to be stopped at (almost) any cost, because we have seen -- or at least, we believe we have seen -- the consequences of letting a schoolyard bully dictate terms at the international level.

Certainly it feels awkward to lecture a Russian on such matters, since your country suffered by far the worst losses due to Nazi aggression and expansionism. Yet the lesson seems entirely lost on your countrymen. What do they teach you over there, exactly, that makes Putin's behavior seem acceptable?


Thanks

I am not sure how it's taught currently but the events between 1918 and 1941 haven't been drawing much attention traditionally. Even more so now that laws forbidding justification of fascism are getting harsher every year

I find it a little bit funny that after all these years of practicing in drawing comparisons with Hitler, people try really hard at not noticing Azov. Answering your last question, russian propaganda is focusing on Azov way too much, trying to make an impression that they are not a few thousand strong unit, but represent most of Ukraine's military and we don't talk to nazi. Any dissent is steamrolled


> However, seeing rabid mccartism and imposing collective guilt only makes me feel under siege.

Seeing as that is the whole point of the sanctions, I'd say it's working. The point is to piss off regular Russians enough that at some point they might decide to overthrow their dictator.


Oh no, quite the opposite actually - the most pissed off demographics is people like me, faint-hearted internet liberals. A coup is extremely unlikely, like less likely than an actual nuclear war

Another funny fact that I wanted to tell about is that a couple of years ago Google/Apple helped to derail opposition effort to consolidate and push people not from the ruling party to parlament. They banned apps offering vital information on voting patters. Now they are on the high moral horse, along with FB


It seems very unlikely at this point Putin will be overthrown. Sanctions will need to do to Russia’s economy what Russia is doing to Ukraine’s cities, reducing them to rubble. You have to salt their economic earth to prevent this from occurring again after Putin dies, is couped, etc (allow for an authoritarian who will likely fill the power vacuum, without any military power).


It appears this is the path the US will be adopting.

> Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Kyiv visit: "We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can't do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine"

> Russia “has already lost a lot of military capability, and a lot of its troops quite frankly,” Austin said. “We want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-25/u-s-aims-...


What's the alternative, though? The leader of your country is terrorizing Europe in ways not seen in almost 80 years. We all know all-out war between nuclear states is not an option, so what should Western nations do? Just sit back and ignore the indiscriminate war crimes?

It's ironic to me, given how clearly Putin's worldview presumes that power is all matters, how quick Russia has been to cry foul over sanctions. If you want to live in a world where the one with the biggest stick gets to do whatever he wants to everybody else, you should probably at least make sure you have a big stick first.

I'm sorry that your local McDonald's closed, and I do have some sympathy for the Russian people, most of whom probably wanted nothing to do with this war. I have an enormous amount of sympathy for those brave enough to speak up in the face of frankly terrifying state oppression. But honestly, after enabling that maniac for 22 years, I do think Russian citizens bear a little bit of responsibility for this senseless war (not to mention all the other ones!). And if you think that's unfair, well, how about what's happening to the citizens of Ukraine? Is that fair?

It's in everyone's interest that we all learn to get along. Nobody wants the Russian people to suffer for no reason. I hope you guys eventually figure out how to stand up an honest and functioning democracy, for your sake as well as everyone else's. But we can't condone this senseless brutality, and if that makes you see us as your enemy, that's unfortunate, but hopefully temporary.


> It's ironic to me, given how clearly Putin's worldview presumes that power is all matters, how quick Russia has been to cry foul over sanctions.

Unfortunately this is exactly how the world works. Decades of unipolar world order may have led to the wrong impression though

I really liked the recent Noam Chomsky's interview on the subject of geting along. It's called How To Prevent World War III

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/04/noam-chomsky-on-how-t...


Noam Chomsky has had a remarkable career, but he's really old and was never anywhere within shouting distance of the political center. Neither is Current Affairs, for what it's worth. His argument seems to be that Putin's belligerence is effectively an act of God, and that our only choice from now until eternity is to submit to it. Dr. Chomsky's childhood was apparently so long ago, he's forgotten that appeasing a bully only ever makes him worse.

For the record, no country is capable of making another country's citizens resist an invasion to the last man. Look what happened to the army in Afghanistan. Despite what Russian state TV is telling you, Ukrainians want to fight far more desperately than the rest of the world wants them to. They all grew up learning about the Holodomor, for one thing. And that was true even before Putin razed a bunch of their major cities and killed tens of thousands of people. The US is just providing weapons—many of them old and Soviet-made, no less—to a people desperate to protect themselves from what they clearly see as a fate at least as bad as, if not worse than, death.

Nothing about this is inevitable. The world works however the people in it want it to work. We can build a better one, or we can all decide that we're OK repeating the endless brutality of the past. The West has (imperfectly, sporadically) chosen the former since the fall of Nazi Germany, and the result, despite all the missteps, has been an unprecedented era of global peace and prosperity. Russia was welcome to join this fraternity in the 90's, but instead was consumed by corruption and mob rule and retreated inward to misguided nationalism and xenophobia.

It seems to have been forgotten in Russia that the Soviet Union was a disaster, and its primary victims were its own citizens. Stalin murdered tens of millions of his own people. It promulgated a culture that installed bloodthirsty dictators who were almost as bad in dozens of countries, and whose ideology was so ineffective that it led to devastating famine in many communist countries. It gave us Chernobyl. For all the talk about hating Nazis, the USSR (and, increasingly, Putin's regime) much more closely resembled Nazi Germany than any country you'd recognize nowadays, except maybe China or North Korea. Soviet vassal states all voted to leave the USSR by >80% margins the second the regime collapsed.

Russia is hell-bent on being recognized as a great power, but there's little to substantiate that claim. The country has been hollowed out economically by seemingly endless and endemic corruption. It turns out the military is only really good at committing war crimes. Russia's two greatest military victories—a point of great national pride—are both seen by historians as much more akin to enemy self-owns than great acts of brilliance or might. Its intelligence agencies have likely been the single most destabilizing force in world politics over the last hundred-plus years, dating back to the Tsars. Many of the most persistent and idiotic conspiracy theories—e.g. the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the CIA creating AIDS as a weapon to use against Black people—are literally fabrications of Russian intelligence programs. Your dictator deliberately creates refugee crises around "enemy" countries with the aim of exploiting their compassion and generosity to cause political unrest. And you're either one of the only countries brazen enough to regularly carry out state-sponsored assassinations, or the only ones sloppy enough to keep getting caught. You even cheat at the f--king Olympics.

Case in point, here's a list of Russian oligarchs who have conveniently decided to commit suicide after killing their families in the last two months: https://www.newsweek.com/every-russian-oligarch-who-has-died.... It's amazing how many of them have fallen from tall buildings over the years, too.

You're right, as long as Russia has a bunch of nukes, they'll be treated with a certain amount of deference. But don't conflate fear—which Putin wields very effectively—with respect, which will never, ever be earned on the world stage through this kind of behavior. You can't butcher and threaten your way to esteem. It's a lesson Xi could stand to learn as well.


I am not sure there is such a thing as "respect" at the very high level. The public opinion is easily swayed and important actions are dictated by pragmatism

>Despite what Russian state TV is telling you

I am trying to read as many different sources as I can. I think the only thing that every party could agree on is that ukrainians are fighting harder than expected. Nearly every other event and opinion is controversial and you have to check many sources first to get a vague idea of what's going on. The fog of war is real, despite what Twitter's collective opinion is telling you

>Your dictator deliberately creates refugee crises around "enemy" countries with the aim of exploiting their compassion and generosity to cause political unrest

Right, our dictator bombed Libya back to the stone age and killed Gaddafi who kept economic migrants from countries devastated by our colonial past and present at bay. Oh, wait, I am not from France!

>The country has been hollowed out economically by seemingly endless and endemic corruption

>Case in point, here's a list of Russian oligarchs who have conveniently decided to commit suicide after killing their families

Even the thought that another great purge has begun fills my heart with warmth and childlike joy


> I am not sure there is such a thing as "respect" at the very high level. The public opinion is easily swayed and important actions are dictated by pragmatism

This seems like a convenient way of just hand-waving away the entire concept of morality. Maybe this is how Russians view the world, but it's not how anyone else does. They say this is part of the problem with Putin: he just can't conceive of a world where every entity isn't a CIA or FSB puppet. It also illustrates why the civilized world feels like it can't in good conscience keep trading with a nation that acts like this.

It's not like this whole thing materialized out of thin air. Ukraine has been trying to free itself from Russia's grasp for decades. Everything that's happened there has Putin's fingerprints all over it: puppet leaders who promise one thing and then betray their people to Russia; the jailing of former leaders on garbage corruption charges; the red-handed vote rigging; the not-very-well-concealed assassinations. This isn't the norm anywhere else in the developed world.

Another hallmark of Putinist rhetoric is whataboutism. I mean, when everything you do is so cynical and violent, I guess it's the only real defense you have. Debating what actually happened in Libya is an enormous distraction—which may be the entire point—but the US had nothing to do with that uprising until Gaddafi sent a column of tanks after a bunch of poorly-armed rebels and the world reacted in horror. Was it a mistake to intervene? Maybe. But that's nowhere comparable to straight-up invading a peaceful country (twice!).

It's funny to hear anyone in Russia hand-wringing about the well-being of "economic migrants." Russia is one of the most ethnically segregated countries in the world and has done absolutely nothing for refugees anywhere except create more of them. It's widely believed that Putin's intervention in Syria was designed to displace as many civilians into Europe as possible, with the goal of causing a populist backlash. It may be downright evil, but he's gotten away with it for years.

In terms of which sources to trust, the Russian government has done nothing but lie to everybody for the last 20 years. US intelligence accurately predicted the invasion even when it seemed to take most Russian soldiers by surprise. There's all kinds of primary-source war footage, if you can stomach it. And Putin's objectives keep drastically changing, which sure makes any claims that he's succeeding seem suspect. As does the really harsh media crackdown and the threats to jail people for years just for saying the word "war." You don't have to aggressively "sway" public opinion like that when the truth is on your side.

> Even the thought that another great purge has begun fills my heart with warmth and childlike joy

I really hope you're kidding. Those things never stop where they're intended to, and it's certainly not your interests they're being carried out in.


I like how every time US has absolutely nothing to do with regime change and somehow the wiki page on that is mile-long. I guess this ok, because there are obviously "civilized" countries with proper morals and other countries that are eager to do a transition to democracy, just in need of a little push. With Yanukovich, it was already a democracy, almost a right one but not exactly

Whataboutism is about dropping the subject in favor of an unrelated topic, which is different from calling out double standards. I have a convenient example of the latter - the events that are unfolding right now on Solomon islands. Would you think threatening a sovereign nation for entering a military alliance while talking about Ukraine's freedom of association is hypocrisy? Please note that this not an attempt to justify the war, just questioning moral integrity

>the not-very-well-concealed assassinations

Wholly agree here, their incompetence is staggering

>Russia is one of the most ethnically segregated countries

What are you talking about? I lived most of my life in Russia and this is a ridiculous statement. Have you been to Moscow?

>You don't have to aggressively "sway" public opinion like that when the truth is on your side.

I am sorry to say that, but if you find your media tells truth and only truth that you can't question, it's time to get suspicious. I am saying that as someone who watched freedom of press deteriorating over the last 20 years

>I really hope you're kidding

I am. That was a phrase from a meme and I couldn't resist using it, sorry :)


I'm not saying diplomatic realism is useless, or that countries shouldn't act strategically to further their own interests. I'm saying that you have to balance those needs against the very basic moral standards that are hardwired into (almost) all of us. I'm not talking about hypocrisy, but about the basal revulsion all decent people should feel in seeing hospitals bombed and innocents massacred.

Yanukovich was caught rigging an election in 2004. He got caught and lost the subsequent clean version. He then had the gall to run again years later (with loads of support from Putin), somehow managed to win, immediately threw a bunch of the old leadership in prison, and then set about breaking the promises that got him elected. That's why he got run out of office, and the fact that he fled to Russia when things got hot is very telling. The US had nothing to do with any of this. _Of course_ we were cheering for the people of Ukraine. Of course we were excited to see a people we viewed as long-suffering fighting so hard for their freedom. But Putin drove them away on his own, and Americans have no particular interest in Ukraine (or Russia, for that matter) that goes beyond wanting to see the world be a peaceful place that's conducive to free trade. And fwiw, the length of a Wikipedia page likely has a lot more to do with the community's level of interest in a given topic than it does the level of State Department complicity in that topic. :)

I was imprecise with my wording. The population of the USSR, as I understand it, was pretty deliberately shifted around in the 20th century to prevent uprisings, and I'm sure the former Soviet ethnicities themselves aren't segregated. But I have friends of color—people who obviously are not from the area—who _have_ been to Moscow and say it was uncomfortable in ways that nowhere else in Europe had been. Anyway, my point was more that you don't see Russia accepting refugees from the Middle East or anywhere similar: the country exists entirely on the supply side of the migrant crisis.

The situation in the South China Sea is complicated. I'm not going to pretend it's my area of expertise. That said, the Western agenda there is to ensure freedom of navigation for everybody, and prevent China from seizing one of the world's busiest shipping lanes. I'd also point out that no one has invaded anyone else (with the arguable exception of the Chinese dredging operations that sparked this whole controversy to begin with).

I agree completely that when you can't question the truth, it's time to get suspicious. That's exactly the point I was trying to make about the recent Russian media blackout. People outside of Russia have access to all kinds of information about the war, including official Kremlin statements. The Western media report on what Putin's spokespeople are saying. It's just that it usually turns out to be demonstrably false. The Biden administration, on the other hand, announced the invasion days before it happened. I don't trust them because they're my government; I trust them because they accurately predicted the invasion and because the reporting on the ground continues to corroborate what they're claiming.

I think I do a pretty good job of listening to other perspectives. I even watched a few autotranslated segments of Russia-1 before YouTube blocked it. (Olga Skabeyeva is freaking terrifying!) But how many times do you have to be lied to by somebody before you stop trusting them?


Just before opening HN to check for your answer, I saw a headline saying "US won’t rule out military action if China establishes base in Solomon Islands". The US for sure respects their sovereignity, BUT. I guess there is going to be another entry on that wikipage soon - this is not about shipping lanes, it's a power flex and we all know that

>Anyway, my point was more that you don't see Russia accepting refugees from the Middle East or anywhere similar: the country exists entirely on the supply side of the migrant crisis.

While it's mostly true that Russia isn't very eager to accept refugees, I disagree that Russia is supplying them, with the obvious exception of the current situation - right now here is more than a million of refugees from Ukraine. Speaking of Middle East, at least we are trying to stabilize it and talking to and supporting governments instead of "shocking and awing".

I guess you talking specifically about black people feeling uncomfortably in Moscow, and you might be right becase they are a rare sight even in the capital, let alone all other place, of course they attract stares and curiousity

Props to you for going as far as watching russian TV and you are right about them lying a lot, but you are a tiny minority. If you are still interested at checking pro-russian points of view, I can recommend RWAPodcast on Twitter. Ironically, I discovered them from american journalist Glenn Greenwald whose writing I enjoy a lot


As an outsider, of course I dislike the average Russian and hold him at least somewhat responsible, for two reasons: 1. his collective historical actions led to Russia being led by a mafia regime and 2. his taxes directly fund the war.

> aside from diving deep into the history of the conflict after which many things started to make sense

I'm very curious about that... would you mind sharing?


"Dislike the average Russian"

I find that quite surprising, actually. I absolutely don't dislike a Russian I don't know. How could I?

Maybe I don't understand this correctly. I'd like to know more about this feeling.

I am upset by the slaughter with impunity that I see of Ukraine, guilty of nothing more than being in the way. (I realize this may sound hypocritical, coming from an American, but we can talk about that.)


See the reply below. I don't want this to be interpreted as hate or anything. I just think there's such thing as responsibility, bad decisions over a very long time and yes, even collective responsibility. So all in all, I can't say I have very warm feelings for the _average_ Russian, for all they did as a nation since... times immemorial, honestly.

Just like I'm pretty ok with Germans having had a few dozen years of collective guilt. I think they should be getting over it, and probably had - but I definitely think that just wiping the slate clean and pretending Auschwitz never happen would have been a horrible mistake. For about 20 years after it _should_ be a bit awkward to be a German tourist. And now it's Russian's turn - for a decade at the very least.

The very few russians I know personally - awesome guys. Last time I met one he was helping Ukrainians buy tactical gear.


1. How do you reconcile the two thoughts that, at the same time, it's a mafia regime and that people somehow elected them and therefore are responsible?

2. Do you also hold Germans responsible for funding the war? They pay for gas a lot and their contribution is indispensable

>I'm very curious about that... would you mind sharing?

Not sure I am able to direct you to one comprehensive place, but in short, this is a war with NATO that has been brewing for decades but most people thought it'd never happen. As a bonus, I'd recommend checking this thread https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1498491107902062592


(no idea why your reply below is dead. didn't flag it or downvote it, for what it's worth, and I don't find it flag-worthy anyways. we did fight with the germans in ww2 for reasons I'm not getting into right now, and it would be overly hypocritical of me to no accept that when I'm talking about responsibility)


Not sure how HN works, my comments seem to be dead by default and then resurrected after a while (manually?)

Anyway, thanks for a civil discussion. I am against this war, just wanted to share how I feel about this situation and the fact that Russia barely lasted 30 years without another historical shift


1. I'm Romanian, and we were a step away from the same mistake. In the 2016 we had two perfectly valid options, but for some reason we ended up with a majority coalition that weeks after elections started to dismantle the democratic state. Cue lots of protests, a few years of back and forth, them voting down their own government for not going far enough... a shitfest. Their leader finally got imprisoned a few years later for corruption charges, but in a way that made it abundantly clear that it was the result of his party losing a popularity vote, and not justice doing its job. tl;dr: we were fking close. And because we were in close to the same place, I can tell that some things we did - voting, freezing our asses off in protests, occasionally eating a mouthful of tear gas - were necessary. Having a mafia leadership doesn't happen overnight. By some accounts, even Putin had to stage fake attacks to make sure people vote for him in the beginning.

2. Yes, actually, to a much much lower degree. There's a huge difference between buying things in the open market and, well, every decision in domestic policy in the last 110 years.

Will read the link, thank you.


We actually tried to do the same thing with a coalition but it didn't work out for a few reasons. Putin is extremely paranoid about regime change (for a good reason) and he is well-prepared. Rumors are he was really going to leave around 2010 but Libya and then US-sponsored revolution in Ukraine made him change his mind

>Yes, actually, to a much much lower degree. There's a huge difference between buying things in the open market and, well, every decision in domestic policy in the last 110 years.

Yes, some of the decisions in domestic policy resulted in stopping your friends in WW2. Sorry for that


Skimmed the link. This is... I'm struggling to say this nicely, but taking it at face value, it pretty much implies Russia should be treated as an animal instead of a rational actor. tl;dr of it is "don't poke the bear".

Everything in that thread makes sense only with the assumption that Russia is not integrated in the global community and is still seeing things as a zero-sum game. This is the key here. Everybody else is _not_ seeing things as a zero-sum game. "you get this country, or we get this country".

90% of europe is living in a state of mind where border control buildings have already been razed down. We don't get this "control area" or "buffer country" concepts anymore, they're obsolete.

Let me give you a concrete example. I'm Romanian. Moldova is pretty obviously part of Romania, but for historical reasons (coughrussiacough) is now a separate country. We could theoretically go for reunion, but there are issues (coughrussia*cough). But we don't WANT to go for a union. We'd like it, it'd be nice, but it's, again, an obsolete concept. Gone with the 20th century. Archaic. What we want is for Moldova to be part of the EU, and ideally all of us part of Schengen, so we can trade with them and go there freely. Who cares if they have their own parliament or not. Fuck all that shit.

So when you say that "NATO expansion caused Russia's invasion of Ukraine" I can only look in disbelief. It makes no sense here. Did you even try to be part of NATO? EU? no? You like being your own little empire with a total economy slightly larger than Italy's? Well, good luck to you then, but the sympathy you're getting from me is dead zero.


> his taxes directly fund the war.

You could say the same thing about Germans, and all the gas they burn.


> Since the whole world seems to hate Russians right now,

No it does not. Don't fall for Russia=Putin propaganda. Russia can do very well without him, much better so in fact. Average Russians are among those that suffer the most under that monstrous band of criminals that inhibits the Kremlin. The last thing that Mafia wants you to know is that in fact you don't need their protection at all.


It's not Russians who are thinking Putin=Russia..


Yes they do. See those approval ratings. Or anyone in contact with non programmers really.


> Heavy censorship

> Approval ratings


I’m surprised I haven’t seen the right answers here yet, so I will chime in.

1. Russia produces 12% of the world's oil and has a similar share of global oil exports. [0] Those purchases are now being made in Rubels.[1] This was a direct retaliation to the USA and European sanction efforts. Before this oil was universally exchanged in USD or EUR. This has helped prop up the Rubel.

2. Russia moving back to a gold standard. [2] This is the single most interesting economic move in my opinion. Russia is continuing to buy more of the worlds gold supply. The Rubel is going to be pinned to the Gold standard. This makes the Rubel incredibly attractive as it can be a stable currency and easier to purchase than Gold itself. My personal feeling (contrary to most comments here) is that the sanctions have a terrible effect on the USA and Europe and have contributed to a world where China, India and Russia will be working to destabilize the USD and its allies. Moving away from the petrodollar, SWIFT and other USD centric methods is a very negative proposition for those of us who live in the west.

0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Russia

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/23/business/putin-russian-oi...

2. https://seekingalpha.com/amp/article/4498704-russias-3-step-...

Edit: Spelling


> The Rubel is going to be pinned to the Gold standard. This makes the Rubel incredibly attractive as it can be a stable currency and easier to purchase than Gold itself

The Rubel can be just as easy "unpinned" from gold on any given day by a politician's decision and that's absolutely something you can expect from Russia.


This. Those contracts werw not paid in Rubles for a good reason. Even at the height of the cold war communist countries used the USD for trade amongst themselves: the Kremlin is not and never was interested in creating the sort of rules-based systems that provide an expectation of long term stability.


> My personal feeling (contrary to most comments here) is that the sanctions have a terrible effect on the USA and Europe .. [etc]

Russia's GDP is about 5% that of the US and the EU combined. It's not big enough to "destabilise" anything. Brexit (loss of an economy 4x larger than Russia's) is not having a terrible effect on the EU.

Wannabe competitors to SWIFT are even smaller in relative size, and as for India and China working together on something for a long period of time... well, I think India wants to retain access to the developed world's economy.

Sure, Russia shutting off gas supplies to the EU would be inconvenient for a while, but it would be more than inconvenient for Russia.


> Brexit (loss of an economy 4x larger than Russia's) is not having a terrible effect on the EU.

By Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) the GDP of Russia (4,365,443 $MM) is larger than the GDP of UK (3,751,845 $MM) [1]. Stating that UK economy is 4x of Russia's does not seem to have a basic in reality.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)


Why would you use PPP in this case? PPP makes sense only for individuals spending their money.


This answer is wrong from what I read

Not all countries are buying oil and gas in rubble, just the ones russia considers “unfriendly”. But even from those, russia isnt enforcing it. Germany has said it wouldn’t pay in ruble. US doesn’t buy anything from Russia. Hungary is paying in ruble.

By paying in ruble they create an artificial demand for the currency, making it worth more. However Russian government can make the same thing with the euro / dollars they receive from oil / gas purchase. The only reason they asked others pay in ruble is so they don’t have to do the conversion themselves because you know, with all the sanctions it is a pain to do it.

The price spikes in Russia didn’t go back after the currency stabilized, so regular Russians are still screwed

I’ve never seen anything about the gold standard thing, but even if it is true 1- gold price is also volatile and 2- there is a reason people moved away from gold standard


“US doesn’t buy anything from Russia.”

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/russian-oil-flows-but-incre...

“Germany has said it wouldn’t pay in ruble.“

True. Due to long term contracts in place, some oil is not purchased using rubles. Still, other European countries including Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Greece and others are purchasing in rubles. Also, India and China are purchasing a large amount of oil. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/who-is-still-buying-...

“By paying in ruble they create an artificial demand for the currency, making it worth more.”

The demand is not artificial. The demand is the damn. Europe still imports 27% of oil from Russia.

“However Russian government can make the same thing with the euro / dollars they receive from oil / gas purchase. “

This is false. They cannot “do the same thing with the euro / dollars”.

“The only reason they asked others pay in ruble is so they don’t have to do the conversion themselves because you know, with all the sanctions it is a pain to do it.”

Again, false. They are deliberately increasing the value of the ruble.

“I’ve never seen anything about the gold standard thing”

https://seekingalpha.com/amp/article/4498704-russias-3-step-...


"other European countries including Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Greece and others are purchasing in rubles. Also, India and China are purchasing a large amount of oil. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/who-is-still-buying-..."

I did a bored skim read through the linked article, but couldn't find any reference to " Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Greece and others are purchasing in rubles" Do you have any other sources? Btw thanks for the link, interesting info


Everyone is now paying in rubles.


The link you posted has absolutely nothing to do with what you quoted

You can say what I am saying is false

I can say what you are saying is false

Sharing so you can learn a bit… https://youtu.be/_PwsU43S_Cs


Ok. Everyone now paying in rubles.


Any sources on Netherlands and others paying in roubles? Your link doesn't say anything about it. All I heard is about Hungary said they'll pay in roubles, but not sure about any actual payments made.


How about now


> This makes the Rubel incredibly attractive as it can be a stable currency and easier to purchase than Gold itself.

I'd rather buy tether, or the latest crypto fad. It may be pegged to a gold amount, theoretically, but trying to get your gold out of Russia is the object of many jokes in my home country. Currencies are based on trust, and Russia will get out of this with maybe half a bucketfull of it left intact. I literally can't remember when they said anything not obvious and true.


please fix nytimes link


Apologies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/23/business/putin-russian-oi...


Those payments are not being made in roubles yet, most western countries have declined to make them directly. Instead Russia is offering them to open bank accounts in Russia where they could deposit euros or dollars, which then are converted into roubles.

The rouble is currently propped up by the dwindling currency reserves of the central bank and by the fact that you can't buy $/€/£ anywhere as a private citizen. The banks are out for the most part, the exchanges work with a giant commission and the supply of cash is just not there. You can exchange it virtually, but the rate is about 30% worse than the one advertised by the CB. This can't go on for much longer.


Dead Cat Bounce brought to you by lots and lots of spending/maneuvering. Not sustainable. In about 2-3 months, Russia is fucked and will be forced to move to a new economic model apart from the world. The entire gambit was to take UA quickly and then use it as a pawn to get concessions from the West

Now they are finding themselves fighting a nation with a direct IV line from the US defense budget (similar to Israel) and that's not a winning position to be in given that the US alone is 10x defense spend - not even counting UK, the baltic states, etc.


> The entire gambit was to take UA quickly and then use it as a pawn to get concessions from the West.

Nope, it was to take Ukraine quickly and parade it as an internal trophy, while also taking out a possible big competitor for the oil and gas market.

Putin didn't want any concessions from the West, just business as usual. He wanted to be left alone to "digest Ukraine" and ponder next steps.

Edit: I'd want to hear proof for contrary opinions.


As is usually the case when monstrous plots are afoot, the villain cheerfully told the world exactly what he was planning to do and why. He wants to recreate the Soviet Union.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/22/putin-...

Initial "peace proposals" from Russia included a rollback of NATO's military assistance to its 1997 condition, explicitly limiting the sovereignty of Poland and the Baltic states:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/17/russia-issues-...

It is, of course, absurd to think that Putin would have stopped at Ukraine's borders, if given a free hand (and a functioning army). He is a follower of Alexander Dugin's geopolitical school, in which Russia is the rightful caretaker of "Eurasian" civilization:

https://theconversation.com/alexander-dugin-eurasianism-and-...


> The entire gambit was to take UA quickly and then use it as a pawn to get concessions from the West

How does your comment follow logically from this one?

"We'll occupy Ukraine and we'll keep occupying it and we want you to give us more!"

What kind of negotiation with Ukraine was that?


A deeply deluded, aggressive one. Russian soldiers seem to have genuinely believed they’d be welcome.


I never said that the plan was to use Ukraine as a pawn to get concessions from the West. That was someone else. Putin sees his conquest of Ukraine as a milestone in his own country's spiritual destiny.


My reply was to that comment...


[flagged]


I don’t understand what “caretaker of Eurasia” is supposed to mean.


That’s an interesting take; what makes you say that?


Russia can't manage its economy. That's step 1 for any solid plan of taking care of anything.


All else being equal, I guess I'll go with the people who don't launch artillery strikes on the grounds of nuclear power plants.


Proof of contrary opinions is required, but proof of yours isn't?

Typical.


[flagged]


What does a smiley face with extra mouths mean? Sorry, I'm not up to date with my emojis.


Laughing. It's an emoticon, from way back before emojis.


I'm not sure anyone knows the "real" reason for all this, although we've heard a lot of stated ones.


Ukraine was "not negotiable" Russian according to multiple statements from Putin, so that part about "negotiating concessions" is provably false.

Why that was the case is indeed complex.

Russia did not try to negotiate Ukraine away initially. The messaging was clear: it's ours. Now they might negotiate something because Ukraine is kicking their teeth in, but that's after the fact and completely forced.


Lies of the Russian government about non-negotiability can be ignored much like the statements about non-invasion turned out to be lies. I don't see how they'd prove anything.


> Ukraine was "not negotiable"

Like cutting the gas supply to the country itself to drop the transfer fees?


Expecting concessions or not, it is undeniable that a quick victory wouldn’t have brought this amount of pain and isolation. Foreign reserve confiscation was enacted immediately and definitely unexpected, but other measures are being enacted with every passing day the conflict lingers.


Interest rate increases, selling reserves, RUB sales bans, demanding customers pay for energy in RUB, demanding local businesses sell non-RUB reserves, banning foreign sales of Russian assets

The rate may look similar, but it is against a backdrop of a significantly different and far worse economic environment, not least the use of reserves to prop the currency will have depleted their reserves.


This is exactly the same playbook that the ministry of finance followed when Nazi Germany went the autocratic route. They also confiscated personal stores of foreign currency, and eventually pulled the sort of financial wizardry that I'm unqualified to explain.

Adam Tooze's Wages of Destruction is an incredible book if you're into economics.

If I learned one thing from this book, it's that central banks have a lot of tricks up their sleeves if the situation demands it.


The Economist (I’m a subscriber) did a podcast on this recently. Lots of measures, but bottom line it is not a convertible currency. The published rate is a bit of a fiction.


I don't see how that can really work unless the published rate isn't the actual market rate which would be ridiculous.


This seems to be going towards the system which soviet union used. The official rate is an illusion created by the government while actual market exchange is basically illegal:

The Soviet Union officially valued the ruble in the planned economy at an average of 0.74 руб per USD ... However, as the ruble was not internationally exchangeable and as Soviet citizens could not legally own foreign currency, rubles changed hands in the black market at an average of 4.14 руб per dollar in the same period

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_ruble#Exchange_rates


At least here in Argentina, the official exchange rate is US$1=AR$100.

But if you want to buy US$1 you must pay from AR$150[1] to AR$200[2] or even more. There are a few methods and each one has different maximal amounts, delays, technical problem and level of legality.

[1] It's a very optimistic number, discounting a rebate that will get paid in may 2023, up to US$200 per month per person.

[2] Or even more, probably AR$215 or something.


>But if you want to buy US$1 you must pay from AR$150[1] to AR$200[2] or even more. There are a few methods and each one has different maximal amounts, delays, technical problem and level of legality.

The recent return to dolar azul after the brief period of the official rate actually being meaningful is very sad.

You have hit on, by the way, why Russia's equivalent to dolar azul is not so different from the official rate. You and any other Argentinean can, with US dollars, buy things from/travel to abroad. As spaceheater said, "Since the whole world seems to hate Russians right now, I guess no point buying USD and traveling somewhere".


Easy. Try buying and selling at this rate. It’s a hugely constrained market.

I can tell you I have an asset worth 1e12 dollars but no one can buy it or sell it. This is kind of the same.


Ok but is the market rate not derived from the prices that people actually are buying and selling at? If not that's kind of insane.


That’s my point, there isn’t really a free market for rubles. It’s so tightly controlled by the Russian state, they might as well name a price.


Exactly, what their govt called "market rate".

Similarly, I remember at one point there was almost 0 cases of COVID positives officially. But a huge spike in respiratory problems or other causes deaths for some reason.


The value of a currency isn't exactly decided by what it is worth to Americans. Russia still has everything they had before the war, which is still as intrinsically valuable as ever & they are still willing to trade. They haven't changed their regulatory environment in crazy ways and haven't suffered major hits to their productive capacity.

In some senses, it is difficult to see why a sanctions attack against Russia would damage their currency that much. The fundamentals are still much the same. I still bought US products after Iraq and I'd still buy Russian products after Ukraine. I imagine most of the world feels similar. There are even some hints that parts of Europe feel that way.

Although, because I'm something of a gold bug, there are some unreliable claims they've re-introduced the gold standard (https://theconversation.com/why-russia-has-put-the-rouble-on...). That is an interesting thing that happened on the way through.


> I'd still buy Russian products after Ukraine

Good to announce your cheerful complicity in mass murder on here so we know not to take you seriously.


I am thankful to the other comments for the defence but I'll add - seriously, how many lives do you think sanctions are going to save? They won't accomplish much, especially unless China and India seriously get involved. In the worst case scenario, they inflame tensions and we all die in a nuclear fireball.

I'm not complicit in anything. That is war fever talking saying there is anything here to support. I just want to see peace and prosperity, which sanctions do not achieve.


You never buy anything from China?


And this is a huge problem we as people, including myself, don't shape the world we could have. We have the power to not support evil and we don't use it (enough).


(I'm hoping you wouldn't be downvoted/flagged into oblivion by the time I'm done with drafting and sending this).

> Good to announce your cheerful complicity in mass murder on here so we know not to take you seriously.

I attended a critical-thinking and logical reasoning class in University back in the day, and I'm trying to see what all logical fallacies you have committed (I'm not very good at this):

1. Non sequitur [1]? Because I don't really see how buying a Russian product supports mass murder.

And I think you have committed it again, because your conclusion that if somebody supports mass murder, then they shouldn't be taken seriously, is questionable.

I mean, for example, should the leader of Russia (think about their stand on mass murder) be taken seriously?

(I might also argue you committed the hasty generalization [3] fallacy here).

2. Cherry picking [2], because in the clause you quoted, you conveniently chose to omit the earlier clause of that same sentence.

3. Sweeping generalization [4], because you implicitly assume all Russians support mass murder.

4. Straw man fallacy [5]. You're not even addressing anything the parent commenter actually said.

5. False dilemma? [6]. I'm not too sure about this one, but I feel you're implicitly saying that because the parent commenter buys Russian products they must be supporting mass murder.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_fallacy

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization

[4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secundum_quid

[5] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

[6] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma


Where was the device you typed this message on made?


If you pay taxes to a western government you are complicit in killing innocents all over the world. We just do with drones from an office park in Nevada.


It's also stated here:

> I still bought US products after Iraq

Which I suspect is true for yourself as well, although I have no means to verify it.

It is true for most of the world though.

Let's look at all the other mass murders committed by the US and their allies and stop buying goods from them too, shall we?

And before the "whataboutism" flame war starts, I don't care. It's not whataboutism when you're specifically stating (implicitly or otherwise) that one is fine and the other is not.


Russian exports have been badly dented, but some oil and gas remains. Russian imports have been completely wrecked. Effectively the sanctions have _improved_ their balance of payments.

They have some money, but nobody will sell to them. Slightly different situation from their money being worthless because they're outspending their ability to earn hard currency.


>but nobody will sell to them.

The self anointed "international community" is only a very small fraction of the actual world. This is typical western hubris and arrogance thinking that everyone will blindly follow them and those who don't, will powerlessly suffer the consequences of the wrath of the west. Russia has money, the world loves money, the world will sell to Russia. Not only that, but there's no shortage of western corporations busy trying to find ways to covertly sell to Russia because that's what they've done to every other pariah state. Russia will incur higher costs to acquire the things it wants but it will still be able to get them and it will often be western companies covertly doing the selling.


This is unfortunately true. https://ukrainetoday.org/2022/04/23/exclusive-france-and-ger...


>60% of global GDP is not a small fraction. As for countering sanctions, no one doubts the cat and mouse chase, but the Kremlin will be forced to funnel these to its weapons industry undermining economic and social development, akin to North Korea mid/long term.


60% is a lot, but it may not be enough to be existential here


yup, international community = less than 1/4 of countries on this planet

judging by Western MSM you see here in Europe you would think everyone in world sanctioned evil Russia while opposite is true


Maybe look at the relative size of the countries’ respective economies. Whether French Guiana sanctions Russia doesn’t matter nearly as much as e.g. the European Union doing so.


Do you have also conversion chart for human life cost based on GDP? Since clearly small minority of world population and their politicial representation is more important to you than actual number of people/countries who don't care about sanctions against Russia.


>Russian exports have been badly dented, but some oil and gas remains. Russian imports have been completely wrecked. Effectively the sanctions have _improved_ their balance of payments.

Yes, I think this is the key.

The difference between Russia and Argentina (where gus_massa is) is that in the latter, anyone with US dollars can buy things from/travel to abroad. Thus there is meaningful demand for dollars that contrary to the "official" exchange rate, appears in the unofficial "dolar azul" rate.

By contrast, as spaceheater said, "Since the whole world seems to hate Russians right now, I guess no point buying USD and traveling somewhere".


In Argentina you can legally buy USD without any limits now through "contado con liqui". The USD 200 limit applies only to individuals not commercial operations.

https://www.infobae.com/economia/2022/03/03/el-gobierno-flex...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEpk_yGjn0E Decent analysis of current Russia economy.


Thank you. Excellent and informative


> "One of the most frequent lines heard in Washington is that Russia is now globally isolated — with China being the key prevaricator. America risks being seduced by its own public relations. The world’s reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is far more complex than that. Since February 24, the west has been galvanised into showing more unity than it has in years. Yet most of the world is on the sidelines waiting to see which way it goes. Not for the first time, the west is mistaking its own unity for a global consensus" [0]

[0] https://www.ft.com/content/d7baedc7-c3b2-4fa4-b8fc-6a634bea7...


It didnt stabilize, only an illusion. The government introduced strict currency controls forcing business to hold rubles. Also foreign stock holders are not allowed to sell stocks and covert to dollars. The price listed isnt real because the market isnt real, I imagine buying an iphone in Moscow right now would cost much more than the rate would lead you to believe.


Thats exactly right.

Who is buying and selling roubles? Yes, there are apparently some transactions, since there is a price, but it’s hardly a market controlled by supply-demand.

Russian exports have always been priced in USD or other foreign currencies; Russian companies don’t want to get roubles, it seems.

Similarly, with imports, companies probably need to pay in whatever non-rouble way possible, I can’t imagine any serious exporter would take roubles.

Companies receiving foreign currency are forced to exchange them immediately to roubles according to a central bank’s rate.

It’s a theatre, not a market, and so the price is mostly anything.


Not an economist, but my understanding is that they propped up the ruble by requiring it to be used for transactions that could previously have settled in other currencies, and by forbidding certain foreign currency purchases. If you can't buy dollars, it doesn't matter what the exchange rate is.

Obviously that won't work, long term.


I heard that the black market rate is something around 120 RUB per dollar which is almost double the official rate.


Nope. 88-91 RUB/USD if you want to buy crypto (something like USDT), and 83 RUB/USD if you're buying something at Aliexpress (i.e., buying from China and paying in USD).


20% interest rates.

Yes, just raising rates to a high enough level is enough. This is macroeconomic policy 101. It will seriously deflate the Russian economy, recent World Bank projections are for a -11% GDP drop (Ukraine: -40% drop). That's a very severe recession. You can always defend a currency at the expense of jobs, it was done in the US too, by Paul Volcker.


Even with this internet rate they are experiencing elevated inflation. The ruble may be stable, but these conditions of high interest and capital controls are expected to severely damage the economy if they are maintained.


Point is, if you raise them high enough and keep them there for long enough you can disarm any inflation and any currency depreciation, at the expense of economic throughput. And so that's what they did: https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/interest-rate

It's macroeconomic policy 101, tested many times throughout history in various countries, both positively (when you do this then inflation/depreciation stops) and negatively (when you don't do this then inflation/depreciation continues).

There are many unanswered question in macroeconomics, but this isn't one of them.


Russia is backing it up with Gold. Gold is accepted everywhere in the world, this makes the Ruble stable.

Edit: Watch this video for more info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SjvimH42po


Thanks for the video link, I think gold is the most plausible explanation why Russian currency is still stable albeit plunging in the initial stage of the war. Iran has been doing it for a long time, and even selling their oil and gas using gold not US dollars [1].

[1]Turkish-Iranian gold trader's ‘Beautiful Mind’ testimony drove U.S. sanctions case:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gas-gold-turkey-iran-scheme-e...


Let me tell you an old Jewish anecdote from Odesa (Ukrainian city with a significant Jewish population; russians hit a residential building there using a missile strike today, a few people died, 1 kid among them). - Moisha, what’s the price of this meat? - Abraham, it is 300 UAH/kilogram. - But your neighbor is selling at 200 UAH/kg. Why yours is so expensive? - Why don’t you buy there then? - He doesn’t have it anymore. - Well, when I don’t have meat, I sell it at 100 UAH/kg.

So, the price can be any when you don’t have a free market. In USSR, the official exchange rate was 0,7 rouble per dollar. Black market was 2-3 (might differ, depending on the year, of course).

Recently I have seen photo with X-rates in moscow: USD buying at 70, selling at 300 EUR buying at 80, selling at 100 Looks silly, right? Everyone knows EUR costs more than USD. The reason is the same as in the anecdote above.


I remember hearing on France 24 (from Anastasiya Shapochkina iirc) when the sanctions were just being introduced that the sanctions would effectively make it cheaper for Russia to finance the war as most their monetary assets are in foreign currencies while most of their expenses are in rubel.


The big problem being that they can’t actually access most of those foreign assets now.


The way she put it led me to believe that there were significant non-rubel monetary assets inside the country, which I could totally believe to be true.


> problem

Makes you think about the inherent subjectivity of certain words.


> access

true. I can't access my wallet that was robbed from me


There's no doubt extensive manipulation, but don't forget the EU is still buying ""essential"" gas and other petrochemicals from Russia.

Grow a pair: Lift the ban on domestic exploration. Open the floodgates from other countries. People's are dying over cheap gas.


And face mass layoffs, shutdowns, etc in europe?


Isn't the reasoning for this whole thing humanitarian? That's why it's okay that many poor Russians will starve if the economy is successfully damaged. Seems losing a few jobs is worth saving lives


It would take a long time to dramatically increase petroleum production. Doesn't seem relevant to the crisis.

And long term we want to reduce fossil fuel production.


Don't forget, most petroleum markets are driven on speculation. In my anger with my og comment I didn't consider the EU, especially Germany's, market might not be.


The Russian government has done a couple of things to dramatically decrease the demand on the ruble -> hard currency conversion.

If you own Russian bonds or stocks outside of Russia, you used to get paid in hard currency. You now get paid in rubles. So suddenly the government and major companies no longer need hard currencies. Individual citizens can no longer convert rubles to hard currency. So, a lot less demand.

Meanwhile, the Russian government still has hard currency reserves and gas/oil they can use to buy rubles. Since someone still wants to buy rubles, and there isn't a group that needs/wants/is allowed to sell them, the price is going up.


The more interesting question is why Hryvnya is so stable despite the prices is rocketing up (except of some goods which has layed too long on warehouses) and you even can buy dollars on 34 UAH per USD (on today's black market).


as far as i understand it they just keep buying stocks and keep buying Ruble

obviously this can’t go in forever and this is just a crutch


Nobody inside Russia can sell rubles and no one outside Russia wants to buy rubles.

How can you value something that is not transacting? The published “worth” of the ruble seems like a fiction.


Could be the western powers actually don’t have as much global influence as they once had. China, India, Turkey and Israel (along with a host of others) have no problem interacting with russia economically. The recent crash was just another opportunity to make some money and buy the dip.


Official exchange rate is a useless measure, it doesn't mean anything (what's the exchange rate of a toilet paper?). However, real (black market) exchange rate is way worse than before the invasion.


Nicely covered in Adam Something's latest video, "Who's Winning the War for Ukraine?":

https://youtu.be/IpIWswLYAbA


Simple.

1. Russian anticipated the sanctions - this isn't the first time - so Russian had some plans in place. They've been dumping US Fed Treasuries and hoarding gold. That's part of removing USD dependence.

2. Russian has plenty of internal resources with plenty of industry to replace enough (not all) of the sanctioned imports.

3. Russians support Putin at nearly 80%. Sanctions have electrified Russian patriotism. A funny set of Tweets are Russian women tearing up the expensive Coco Chanel products. That's thousands of USD worth torn up because patriotism.

4. Russian has the EU by the balls because Green Energy doesn't and won't replace the Russian exports of oil and nat gas; compounding that is Germany shutting down nuclear power plants exactly when they can least afford it. The next play: demanding payment of the same oil and gas in Rubles rather than USD. The assumption that the USD is supreme is wrong and provably so now with the Ruble rebound.

5. Russian has plenty of allies who leak past the sanctions - like 2/3rds of the world's countries by population - it's LITERALLY only the West who is sanctioning. This is akin to how Cuba was/is embargoed ONLY by the US but not Canada or Mexico.

6. By doubling down on sanctions the US has primarily weakened the Petrodollar which is the ONLY REASON the USD is as strong as it is and the only reason we have the lifestyle levels we have today despite having very low economic production - we'd be closer to Portugal in effective economic strength without having USD reserve currency status. It's a subsidy that has made and still makes us super lazy and entitled.

6a. The US is still living in the delusion of being unipolar and "indispensable". That is no longer reality and sanctions accelerated the move to multipolar.


The Economist has an interesting take on this

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/03/31/why-is-t...

Behind a paywall but if you turn JavaScript off you can read it for free


This works too https://archive.ph/OB3hK


You can also use Chrome's Reader mode. It doesn't work for every site, but it works for this one.


Russia used their funds to prop up the Ruble, so it's massively inflated right now.

We'll know when the funds run out, it's a expensive task to keep it inflated.


20% interest rate (now 17%).


Krugman looked this a few weeks ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/01/opinion/russia-ruble-econ...

tl;dr: Russia is propping up the Ruble with all the means at their disposal


Extra tidbit: the number (exchange rate) is a visible marker of "The Western world is against us", and it's very hard to preach "Everything is fine" when that number is massively worse compared to before the war; so they're destroying the future of the economy just to make sure it looks right currently.


My suggestion is reading one/some Antony Sutton books, simply to visualize a bit the fact that money is not anymore and since decades and decades a shared unit of measure of nearly anything being instead a virtual substrate of nearly anything under private control. With that in mind you can metabolize the fact that the actual dollar hegemony is at the end because it's tangible value is less and less accepted.

Russia, and perhaps even more China, simply have done without saying a new Bretton Wood where instead of electing a currency the one for anything, a currency based on thin air, handled by a private cleptocratic company remaining in power thanks to propaganda and the army power, they propose one based on something tangible like natural resources and industrial power. Other countries have started to join (like Saudi Arabia, Israel and partially EU so far, the first two accepting renmimbi for oilm tge last for accepting paying Russian gas in rubles) and others "ante litteram" have already tested that and was crushed (like Saddam's Iraq with oil in euros vs dollar, just before Iraqi invasion by the USA or Qaddafi's Libya against the Paris controlled CFA designing a new local pan-African currency).

In the past the west have had the biggest world power in tech, industry, military, science etc than all those start to wane crushed by an economically-driven society. EU lost its place from WWI, USA gain back than and thanks to WWII establish a global power but now de-industrialization, new cyclic big crisis typical of all neoliberals models, with no one left to invade and steal big resources, internal populations reactions (strikes, social unrest, scandals etc) and the growth of big enough superpower, one industrial (China) and one in natural resources terms (Russia) have made the change. Neoliberals need a war to remain in power but they lost such war even before it's start. So countries with neoliberals dominance and their currencies (dollar, sterling and euro) decline while new affirming powers rise. Not that much just because China have an extremely deep food problem: they can't nourish it's own people and their industrial system is still to lean toward export for the west, Russia have natural resources, but it's not anymore Soviet Union, it's economy is in a terrible shape and the need of China for mass production is a big vulnerability. But still enough to make the ruble rise and stabilize.

EU have admitted, while informally/in actions not words, that no solution exists to makes a real embargo on Russian resources, we have started to buy gas in ruble [1] oil is still exchanged [2] with tricks, we still need aluminum, palladium, titanium, ... from Russia etc. Nothing can be done quickly and effectively. Neoliberals have clearly pictured how powerless they are [3] like believers who say "to solve any issue we pry the god of the market that by market magic it will solve our crisis". So Russia know well that like the Korean war no compact front will exists against them. USA know fully well they haven't anymore an industrial complex sufficient to get rid of China quickly and UK know fully well they do not have anymore an empire, they can just hope for USA help in exchange of Commonwealth natural resources witch aren't really much under UK control anymore. On the other side the above described issues impede a quick win so we are there faltering a bit.

The first winner anyway is China: they get Russia, so the biggest reservoir of natural resources and probably high tech Russians military tech they equally need. USA have re-win EU, at least until EU Citizens will revolt against our corrupted government that act against our interest for some third party that prove countless time being no friend of us. So they are the II winner. Others are just looser. Many new movement will happen for India, the Gulf, Iran, Myanmar etc that will surely try to earn something in the game and while "marginal" just by their size and resources they are contended and contenders. That's is. The Rand idea to weaken Russia [4] works at a so high price that dollar can't win. The actual WWIII will probably see no real winner, but probably the least looser will be eastern-shifted and currencies start to reflect that a bit.

[1] https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/world-int/21419-european-commis...

[2] https://mishtalk.com/economics/how-russia-avoids-oil-sanctio...

[3] https://voxeu.org/article/how-solve-europe-s-russian-gas-con...

[4] https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/R...


Which book by Sutton do you recommend beginning, in order to understand the context behind the end of Bretton Woods and beginnings of neoliberal finance capitalism? One part of history many leftists seem to have trouble explaining is the continuity between the two “eras” of wartime Keynesianism and neoliberalism (many essentially describing it as a sudden change in powers but this sounds ridiculous). Some of his books seem to bring light to the processes behind this political change, but where should I start?


The Federal Reserve Conspiracy, it's short and mostly collect former USA President's memories and few other public archive, just connecting the dots.

In terms of switch between liberalism->keynesianism->neoliberalism honestly I do see much of substantial change in élites terms: liberalism have made very few very rich and create a big mess. Those behind this school of though just want to protect their fortune and so they push another school of though, keynesianism, witch formally is a radical change, but in practice is the old game of the two horses [1]: when their cleptocratic system collapse and people start to move around a potential revolution (Socialism) they just pushed some who "do the right thing" witch actually was a way to save failed private corp with public resources. Some of the puppet colonize socialism to transform it in a red fascism, some create nazi-fascism. Both disperse/degenerate the "new" socialism. Keynesianism alone was not sufficient but generate enough economy to face a war and overthrown the table to start a new game. That new game is neoliberalism witch pick some aspect of false socialism with classic liberism. Now we are in a similar situation: neoliberalism have reached it's cyclic crisis, people unrest, unionize, protest, we are heading to a rush of civil wars, so it's about time to overthought the table again, an external war silence potential civil wars and justify the crisis, the urgency justify a kind-of new keynesianism, witch is now the Chinese system, a false socialism again.

It might be a bit hard to condense in a post, but if you skim-re-read the late '800 till today economic history seeing how it touch the politics all brick will enter in their right place...

[1] to being sure to win in politics you run two puppet-horses (a system party and an anti-system one), apparently completely different, one against the other, in practice being from the same puppet-master they just intercept discomfort created by the previous government generate an alternation of powers who impede the ascension of third party parties.


Alex Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris (happens to be nephew of Melina Mercouri) have a detailed discussion on this, I recommend starting at 3′22″:

> We said it right back in February, that it was economic “shock and awe” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_awe], financial “shock and awe”, you sieze the assets of the Central Bank (at least half of them), you sanction the Central Bank so that they can’t operate with contacts with other Central Banks.

> The expectation was, and this is indisputable, because the briefing notes are all there, they’re still up there on the White House website, that that would mean that the Central Bank would not be able to support the Ruble, the Ruble would then go into freefall, that was what was said, Biden subsequently talked about it, you know, the Ruble becoming rubble, 200 Rubles to the Dollar, all that sort of thing, and of course it did not turn out that way at all.

> And the reason it did not turn out that way at all, is because Nabiullina [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvira_Nabiullina] did her job as governor of the Central Bank, and prevented it from happening.

> She raised interest rates, I know this is controversial with some people, but I think as an emergency reaction that was absolutely the correct thing to do, she provided the necessary liquidity to the financial system, she made sure that the financial system was operating properly, and she held it all together. And she proved herself to be, this year, an extremely effective financial crisis manager.

> So we have a very stable situation with the Ruble. In fact, the problem with the Ruble at the moment is that the Ruble shows signs of appreciating too quickly. There is a massive amount of cash, of foreign currency swishing around the Russian economy, as Euros and Dollars pour into Russia from Russian energy sales.

> The Russians are prevented now from importing many goods, and of course they are afraid to take this money out and put it in foreign accounts because if they do, it could easily be stolen. So all of this money is piling up in Russia, and there are comments, some members of the government are saying, you know, we should convert it all into Rubles, others are saying, if we convert it all into Rubles that would make the Ruble too strong, it could go to 50, 60 Rubles to the Dollar, and that would not be good for the underlaying competitiveness of our economy.

> [...] and of course the other problem she has is that because of the massive, orchestrated pull-out of Western companies from Russia there are now gaps appearing in the Russian consumer market, there are problems in supply chains for Russian companies, and that is causing a fall in production. And that in turn, is leading into higher inflation within Russia itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgTcha5-Pj0&t=202s

Alternative: https://rumble.com/v11paoj-nabiullina-and-putin-discuss-the-...


[dead]


For now.

And it's stuff like this that will probably lead to most cryptocurrencies being banned in developed countries. At this point they turn into national security risks and nothing survives a head on collision with the military-industrial complex.


https://newrepublic.com/article/156788/zero-hedge-russian-tr...


Doesn't make sense does it? Lies usually don't. The truth does make sense, but they don't want you to hear it.

https://tomluongo.me/2022/03/28/got-gold-rubles-russia-just-...


I tried to read that but couldn't get over the conspiracy-theory-sounding language.


What are you even talking about?


No yeah, "But, whatever, Neocons never met an ugly stick that they didn’t want to use to beat someone over the head with. Too bad all they’re doing is hitting a rubber tire." sounds like the least biased sentence ever.


it's not a conspiracy, neocons are widely known to be war hawks- or are you asserting that 'neocon' is an unreasonable characterization?


“Other side bad”


Ah yes, the shadowy, nebulous "they" that are suppressing the "real truth". Not surprising the linked post reads with a serious undercurrent of conspiracy theory.


As long as you can export 1) energy, 2) food, 3) weapons, you will be okay anyway. What's the real value of ruble anyway? Did Russia just shrunk to 50% of its size? It is all manipulations.




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