Earlier quoted context omitted.
True. That part is beyond what's required by law, right? It also promised to contribute a $2 million for humanitarian relief.
That’s the equivalent of me giving $2
No it's not, it's the equivalent of you giving $2m
Visa, Mastercard block Russian financial institutions after sanctions
111–120 of 201 posts
Re: Visa, Mastercard block Russian financial institutions after sanctions
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how many of those promises will actually be fulfilled before Putin gets frustrated.
I don’t get comments like these. Does Putin strike you as an overly emotional guy who gets frustrated easily? My take is that he is cold and calculating. Not one I’d take lightly.
It's safe to assume this operation was in the planning at least since 2014. 8 years. It had weeks of operations at the border to sort out the logistics. And it had overwhelming military/intelligence superiority and access to the front from 3 sides.
It should have taken hours to break through. The operation was a shamble, even if it might succeed over time.
In 20 years of NATO operations over 5 different war theatres there have been 74 captured soldiers (src: https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/prisoners-in-the-war-o... ). Here there have been 10's in a matter of days.
Either he's gone full potato, or he's still very calculating but everyone around him is feeding false information upwards to "look nice" and because they can't say no. Neither scenario bodes extremely well for his chances of success.
Re: Visa, Mastercard block Russian financial institutions after sanctions
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
That does not seem to be the case. The leadership of China has been rather quiet the last few days. China Daily is not spouting a pro-Putin line at all. The party line may be to sit this one out.
It seems like China is in a great position to "buy" Russia: an embarassed Putin can't go to the people who sanctioned him and say "I'm sorry, I was wrong, I'll stop now, can we go back to the way we were before", but when he does retreat after declaring "Mission accomplished!" he can still go to Xi and say "My friend Xi!". Maybe Russians will get AliPay and WeChat in the near future...
And Xi will squeeze him much harder than he squeezed Iran.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93China_25-year_Coo...
Re: Visa, Mastercard block Russian financial institutions after sanctions
#114great. this is why india is furiously pushing for "rupay" card system that they ingenuously developed rather than just lapping up whatever visa/mastercard offer. they can do 30/50% less fees than incumbent visa/MC and still operate in the ecosystem because all local gateways and tech stack has been built to incorporate Rupay card system same as visa/MC. the end result is, suppose tomorrow USA orders visa to quit indi…
I don't agree with many of your statements, but I agree very hard with one thing.
Every country needs to stop letting US tax all the transactions. Not because sanctions - if you act like North Korea you'll be treated like North Korea - but because it's just stupid policy.
Re: Visa, Mastercard block Russian financial institutions after sanctions
#115Re: Visa, Mastercard block Russian financial institutions after sanctions
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t get comments like these. Does Putin strike you as an overly emotional guy who gets frustrated easily? My take is that he is cold and calculating. Not one I’d take lightly.
I thought he was cold and calculating until he attacked Ukraine. This looks downright ham-handed and heedless compared to the maneuvering of the decades leading up to now. He's made a damned fool of himself, if you ask me.
They waited 8 years for the Minsk accord to be implemented while ethnic Russians are dying and being displaced. When the Berlin wall was removed they were assured NATO will not arrive on their borders, that was decades ago. Ukraine in NATO was the redline it was communicated for how many years now. Before the invasion Zelensky wanted a nuclear weapon for deterrence and the German foreign minister said the accord it's signed was not legally binding giving a go signal that yes you can develop your own nuclear weapon. The west just don't care and wanted war because it will benefit them. Sadly the Ukrainians and Russians will be the one suffering. Russia will survive for sure it's has vast resource and food supply. We will probably just see the old cold war back again with all the defense company so happy to sell weapons to everybody.
Re: Visa, Mastercard block Russian financial institutions after sanctions
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how many of those promises will actually be fulfilled before Putin gets frustrated.
I don’t get comments like these. Does Putin strike you as an overly emotional guy who gets frustrated easily? My take is that he is cold and calculating. Not one I’d take lightly.
Sure he does.
The picture he had portrayed of him doesn't match reality.
Just look at how scared he is of catching COVID. Since 2 years, almost no one is allowed near to him.
The amount of COVID tests his bodyguards and others need to do daily is pretty insane too. Everyone he sees/greets needs to be in isolation for 2 weeks upfront to get near.
https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/10/02/thanks-to-covid-...
And many other sources for many years. Here's a video from him in a hazmat suite, one of his last public appearances - https://abcnews.go.com/International/putin-dons-hazmat-suit-...
Fyi, sitting at a 20 meter table is not a public appearance and Putin has met his big/important friend Xi only virtually as far as I'm aware the last years.
I don't think he's calculated at all. Many things have wrong that he didn't suspect:
- Their 'advanced' malware was finished off by Microsoft within 3 hours
- Their 'advanced hacking culture' has been reversed within days, state tv programs and websites have gone offline within hours.
- Their decade long effort of a propaganda machine has been severely reduced within days ( RT, ...)
- Their portrait of having an 'advanced military' has been decimated. The world now knows that his army is mostly old, rusty, unmotivated and his troops are clueless.
- He miscalculated Ukraine, who he practically trained for 8 years. He also raised serious awareness under Ukrainians what happens with inaction.
- He's giving up his independence, isolating himself from the world and it seems that he's fully aware of that.
- He is constantly ( for years) angering his biggest and most profitable clients ( Europe).
He overstepped his carefully crafted image and failed every step on the way. Not even taken into consideration that he literally had 8 years ( or more) to plan this.
His image of being a world power ( while Russia has the same GDP as 30 years ago and America has grown 14 fold) is just an illusion, but real for him. We have given him too much attention on the world stage.
He has nukes, not brains... Should have been known years ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679110 ).
Europe is prioritizing energy independence now, Russia still had multiple decades to profit from that to improve their situation.
Now, they became 100% China dependent.
Re: Visa, Mastercard block Russian financial institutions after sanctions
#118And I cannot send donations from Russia to Meduza.io - Lativan based Russian speaking media targeted at Russia mostly. And other Russian people connot do this too.
Since Meduza was declared a "foreign agent" by Russian authorities (there's such a heavily burdening law here), they lost most advertisement and changed their model to donations.
I'm afraid they wouldn't survive this.
And government-owned media will continue to receive their subsidies from a country budget.
I feel like some things done these days are inflicting more collateral damage than supposed effect.
Re: Visa, Mastercard block Russian financial institutions after sanctions
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Does Putin strike you as an overly emotional guy who gets frustrated easily? He's a hardliner, I would not say that he could be frustrated easily but this absolutely is not an easy situation. His currency has collapsed and his country is on the brink of defaulting on foreign debt. He has no support anywhere but from his puppet dictator Lukashenko. I think Putin did not expect such coordination and global effort in…
> I believe that he wanted to take over Ukraine in just a few days and was surprised by Ukraine's defence and multiple desertions in his own army. Everything I have read that isn't heavily biased anti-Russia propaganda says Russia has exercised enormous restraint so far in this invasion. There's no reason I see to believe Putin's been surprised by Ukraine's defenses, it's not as if all of Russia's forces at the borde…
While I mostly agree with your assessment you lack to point out that using less troops saves costs, bombing less cities/civilians will make installing a controllable regime to rule there easier. These are all strategic decisions.
Implying Putin held back for the sake of the ukranian people is misleading.
Re: Visa, Mastercard block Russian financial institutions after sanctions
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how many of those promises will actually be fulfilled before Putin gets frustrated.
I don’t get comments like these. Does Putin strike you as an overly emotional guy who gets frustrated easily? My take is that he is cold and calculating. Not one I’d take lightly.
Yes, he and especially his fans have been working on establishing the image of a strategic mastermind.
But in reality, he's just a short, puffy old man, living in ridiculous kitschy palaces, sitting on ridiculous long tables because he's afraid of even his most loyal underlings.
With attacking Ukraine, he made a huge mistake. He simply counted on the west doing nothing, as usual, but this time he went too far. But because he's just a powerful man, not a great man, he's unable to admit that.