Ukraine: The Aristoblyats

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Internet VFW > Ukraine: The Aristoblyats

Hopper: Dec 28, 2004; BOOING! BOOING!; Grimey Drawer

Yeah the sanctions are pretty toothless. It is fine to pretend to hurt number with sanctions, so you can say you did something. But actually hurting number? Then you get called out and told to stop it.

# ? Mar 24, 2024 07:33

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# ? Jun 1, 2024 10:21

Hyperlynx: Sep 13, 2015

OddObserver posted:

US didn't say "Russia is under sanctions, nobody can buy their oil".
US and EU did setup a complicated scheme where Russian oil is supposed to be price-controlled so they don't get too much money for it --- and then promptly did nothing to enforce it when a bunch of Greek ships helped bypass it.

Edit: there are Western companies doing business in Russia. There are Western companies buying things from Russia, and often their governments lobby for sanctions carve outs.

Oh. Well, that sucks 😔

# ? Mar 24, 2024 08:39

Alchenar: Apr 9, 2008

Hopper posted:

Yeah the sanctions are pretty toothless. It is fine to pretend to hurt number with sanctions, so you can say you did something. But actually hurting number? Then you get called out and told to stop it.

Eh, you have to live in a world where international shipping is already a deliberate shell game of ownership and accountability and large parts of the world won't go along with sanctions, and oil is extremely fungible. A price cap means that Russia does take an enormous revenue hit but there's still the same amount of oil in the global market so you don't have the problem of economies all over the world falling over. Probably the best balanced solution.

# ? Mar 24, 2024 09:06

DTurtle: Apr 10, 2011

OddObserver posted:

US didn't say "Russia is under sanctions, nobody can buy their oil".
US and EU did setup a complicated scheme where Russian oil is supposed to be price-controlled so they don't get too much money for it --- and then promptly did nothing to enforce it when a bunch of Greek ships helped bypass it.

Edit: there are Western companies doing business in Russia. There are Western companies buying things from Russia, and often their governments lobby for sanctions carve outs.

One of the main guidelines of the sanctions against Russia has been that they should generally hurt Russia more than the West. This does of course introduce the problem that in some areas, alternatives to exports from or to Russia aren't really pursued (see for example Austria still importing almost all its natural gas from Russia).

Totally cutting off Russia from the world market in all respects was never a goal.

I think it should be.

# ? Mar 24, 2024 09:29

Comrade Blyatlov: Aug 4, 2007; should have picked four fingers

DTurtle posted:

One of the main guidelines of the sanctions against Russia has been that they should generally hurt Russia more than the West. This does of course introduce the problem that in some areas, alternatives to exports from or to Russia aren't really pursued (see for example Austria still importing almost all its natural gas from Russia).

Totally cutting off Russia from the world market in all respects was never a goal.

I think it should be.

How would you suggest that takes place?

# ? Mar 24, 2024 09:48

DTurtle: Apr 10, 2011

Comrade Blyatlov posted:

How would you suggest that takes place?

As a first step, systematically target Russian exports to Western countries with tariffs and subsidize alternative sources (whether on the world market or for building new infrastructure to create alternative sources) for those exports with the long term goal of implementing bans on Russian exports. As a second step, systematically subsidize alternatives of Russian exports to third countries. The goal would be to make it cheaper for countries to buy from sources other than Russia. This should choke off Russian exports over the short, medium and long term.

For Russian imports, gradually grow the number and size of bans of exports to Russia by Western countries. Systematically target third countries being used to work around those bans by threatening (and then pulling through) those countries with export bans of those products. This should choke off Russian access to western products. Direct exports from third countries to Russia would not be affected by this. It would be a lot more difficult to stop those, as subsidizing (or lowering tariffs) those exports so that they would instead go to Western countries could also disrupt the internal industries of Western countries. However cutting off Russian exports could lead to problems for Russia of having enough foreign capital for the imports needed.

All of this would obviously be quite expensive, would lead to some disruption of world trade, and would run counter to the free trade dogma of the last decades. It would also obviously face a lot of resistance from some countries and industries in the West. However, that's what politics is about sometimes: implementing and pulling through and enforcing difficult decisions against resistance from various areas.

DTurtle fucked around with this message at 10:40 on Mar 24, 2024

# ? Mar 24, 2024 10:21

psydude: Apr 1, 2008

DTurtle posted:

As a first step, systematically target Russian exports to Western countries with tariffs and subsidize alternative sources (whether on the world market or for building new infrastructure to create alternative sources) for those exports. As a second step, systematically subsidize alternatives of Russian exports to third countries. The goal would be to make it cheaper for countries to buy from sources other than Russia. This should choke off Russian exports over the short, medium and long term.

This is basically what the oil price cap and LNG investments did. Russia is still able to sell crude, but the buyers are demanding massive discounts. It hasn't completely choked off Russia's economy, but Gazprom did take a hit.

# ? Mar 24, 2024 10:29

Borscht: Jun 4, 2011

Sanctions are not about the flow of goods as much as they are about the flow of payments. And a country can keep an economy chugging along while sanctions are biting by spending their way through it but for a country like Russia, this cannot last forever. There are also ways around sanctions for critical parts but not at the scale or price that are sustainable.
Supply chains are hard to manage and can lead to spiraling costs when you don�t have sanctions to deal with.

# ? Mar 24, 2024 11:43

Murgos: Oct 21, 2010

orange juche posted:

Kinda figured Putin would shout that it was Ukraine, even when ISIS is screaming for everyone to pay attention to them.

Lmao watch this predicate a follow on attack from ISIS because Russia didn't credit them.

Doesn�t matter, Alex Jones says it�s well documented that ISIS is a CIA front so it�s just evil US behind it all anyway.

# ? Mar 24, 2024 13:44

Madurai: Jun 26, 2012

Some folks got Storm Shadowed this morning: Two Russian Black Sea Fleet Ships Hit in 'Massive' Crimea Strike

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1771645130266563034

# ? Mar 24, 2024 17:45

ChubbyChecker: Mar 25, 2018

GD_American posted:

I think both of them knew beforehand (look how many times they've rattled the spicy metal sabre for concessions), but gently caress me if it didn't drive the point home never to give up your nukes.

South Africa is the only country that had and gave away natively-developed nukes, isn't it? (ie, not inherited from the Soviet collapse)

sweden's nukes were almost ready, but they stopped the project

e: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_nuclear_weapons_program

# ? Mar 24, 2024 18:09

Alan Smithee: Jan 4, 2005; A man becomes preeminent, he's expected to have enthusiasms.

Enthusiasms, enthusiasms...

the spiciest meatball

# ? Mar 24, 2024 18:48

Xakura: Jan 10, 2019; A safety-conscious little mouse!

ChubbyChecker posted:

sweden's nukes were almost ready, but they stopped the project

e: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_nuclear_weapons_program

Wouldn't need nato now if they had Robot-239 to defend them :colbert:

# ? Mar 24, 2024 18:57

Coasterphreak: May 29, 2007; I like cookies.

The other thing to remember is that NATO sanctions are great and all, but China, India, the DPRK, Thailand, Vietnam, and others are not members. Russia still has a huge audience for exports and access to transport it there, and that will not change with some western sabre-rattling.

Blow up all of the refineries.

# ? Mar 25, 2024 03:53

bird food bathtub: Aug 9, 2003; College Slice

The tallies on the naval battles are going to be hilarious for decades to come.

Belligerent: Russia.
Naval forces: "all that crap".
Losses: "lots of that crap".

Defender: Ukraine.
Naval forces: *shrug*.
Losses: ammunition.

# ? Mar 25, 2024 04:10

The Door Frame: Dec 5, 2011; I don't know man everytime I go to the gym here there are like two huge dudes with raging high and tights snorting Nitro-tech off of each other's rock hard abs.

Ukraine has done an undo amount of damage towards the global projector of power that is the Russian Navy, even after the sinking of their own ~~Coast Guard~~ Navy, but Russia has to have some powerful assets in the Ukrainian shipyards
All of Ukraine's newly launched boats seem to explode every time they enter combat

# ? Mar 25, 2024 04:24

Cable Guy: Jul 18, 2005; I don't expect any trouble, but we'll be handing these out later...; Slippery Tilde

The Door Frame posted:

All of Ukraine's newly launched boats seem to explode every time they enter combat

# ? Mar 25, 2024 04:40

Qtotonibudinibudet: Nov 7, 2011; Omich poluyobok, skazhi ty narkoman? ya prosto tozhe gde to tam zhivu, mogli by vmeste uyobyvat' narkotiki

The Door Frame posted:

Ukraine has done an undo amount of damage towards the global projector of power that is the Russian Navy, even after the sinking of their own ~~Coast Guard~~ Navy, but Russia has to have some powerful assets in the Ukrainian shipyards
All of Ukraine's newly launched boats seem to explode every time they enter combat

was the russian navy ever a global projector of power outside their sub fleet

like the kuznetsov is mostly a global projector of smoke and drydock company profits

# ? Mar 25, 2024 04:43

Telsa Cola: Aug 19, 2011; No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

Qtotonibudinibudet posted:

was the russian navy ever a global projector of power outside their sub fleet

like the kuznetsov is mostly a global projector of smoke and drydock company profits

No, they had their nuclear subs but after the Russian Navy got their poo poo kicked in by the Japanese its never really been a global sea power or able to project power navally. Well again outside of the nuke thing.

# ? Mar 25, 2024 04:49

McNally: Sep 13, 2007; Ask me about Proposition 305

Do you like muskets?

Telsa Cola posted:

No, they had their nuclear subs but after the Russian Navy got their poo poo kicked in by the Japanese its never really been a global sea power or able to project power navally. Well again outside of the nuke thing.

How dare you, Admiral Rozhestvensky's 1905 expedition to chart the sea floor was an unqualified success.

# ? Mar 25, 2024 05:09

Comrade Blyatlov: Aug 4, 2007; should have picked four fingers

McNally posted:

How dare you, Admiral Rozhestvensky's 1905 expedition to chart the sea floor was an unqualified success.

The crocodile was the clear winner of that, let's be honest

# ? Mar 25, 2024 05:14

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

Coasterphreak posted:

The other thing to remember is that NATO sanctions are great and all, but China, India, the DPRK, Thailand, Vietnam, and others are not members. Russia still has a huge audience for exports and access to transport it there, and that will not change with some western sabre-rattling.

Blow up all of the refineries.

Vietnam may be doing some deals with the Russians, however they are not happy with Russia given Russia supporting China's claims over Vietnamese water rights. Same with Thailand.

There's a reason Vietnam has been making friends with the US again

# ? Mar 25, 2024 11:39

Crab Dad: Dec 28, 2002; behold i have tempered and refined thee, but not as silver; as CRAB

CommieGIR posted:

Vietnam may be doing some deals with the Russians, however they are not happy with Russia given Russia supporting China's claims over Vietnamese water rights. Same with Thailand.

There's a reason Vietnam has been making friends with the US again

China hasn�t been friendly with Vietnam since the U.S.-Vietnam war.

# ? Mar 25, 2024 11:59

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

Crab Dad posted:

China hasn�t been friendly with Vietnam since the U.S.-Vietnam war.

Yes, that's not what my point was though - Pretending Vietnam and Thailand and jumping at the chance to buy Russian while openly dealing with the fact that Russia and China are allies is the issue.

# ? Mar 25, 2024 12:03

psydude: Apr 1, 2008

Crab Dad posted:

China hasn�t been friendly with Vietnam since the U.S.-Vietnam war.

One might say they haven't been friendly since the China-Vietnam war.

# ? Mar 25, 2024 12:40

Crab Dad: Dec 28, 2002; behold i have tempered and refined thee, but not as silver; as CRAB

psydude posted:

One might say they haven't been friendly since the China-Vietnam war.

You�d be surprised how many people don�t know that was even a thing.

# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:03

Borscht: Jun 4, 2011

After I found out that after kicking our rear end, the Vietnamese turned around and whipped china�s they gained a permanent place on the �do not invade under any circumstances� list right above Russia but below Afghanistan.

# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:34

Stravag: Jun 7, 2009

The French, the us, and China. All back to back over like 3 decades.

# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:46

Stultus Maximus: Dec 21, 2009; USPOL May

Stravag posted:

The French, the us, and China. All back to back over like 3 decades.

Don�t forget Cambodia.

# ? Mar 25, 2024 14:35

Der Kyhe: Jun 25, 2008

Stultus Maximus posted:

Don�t forget Cambodia.

And not just any Cambodia, the one lead by Pol Pot who stirred poo poo with Vietnam for long enough for them to invade and kick him out and hide in the jungle for the rest of his life.

# ? Mar 25, 2024 14:39