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Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

reuters.com

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Re: Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

#91

Post by vnchr »

sandworm101 wrote: post #60
vnchr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ve got plenty of opportunities with China.

For now. But we are already seeing a few chinks in that armor. China prizes stability. Countries that start wars over imagined slights do not promote stability. China's largesse is not unlimited nor does it ever come without a price.

They waited to go to war until after the Beijing Olympics, in coordination with China [0]. And China has been cheering them on [1]. Looks like someone made a friend.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/us/politics/russia-ukrain... [1] https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/03/10/china/china-russia-disinf...

Re: Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

#92

Post by vasergen »

ComradePhil wrote: post #40
mulmen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia was always in control of when this ends. They can simply leave Ukraine.

Quoted post unavailable.

Why do you think this war is about NATO expansion? Even though Ukraine drifted to NATO, NATO would never take Ukraine as a member having conflict wit Russia in east of Ukraine and with Crimea being anexated.

Re: Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

#93

Post by udev »

kriops wrote: post #2

Maybe someone can enlighten me, but is this not the equivalent of saying "You can't fire me - I quit"? Are there any practical consequences from this besides symbolism?

The way you posed the question implies that the West and Russia are in a employer-employee type relationship, with Russia being the subservient employee, where the boss can fire, replace, demote, etc, and them have little to no control over such events.

I think this is a poor analogy.

(For context: I despise this aggressive Russian government.)

Re: Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

#94

Post by bryanlarsen »

dalbasal wrote: post #80
sandworm101 wrote: post #30

The Iron Curtain cut through the heart of Europe, dividing east from west. Curtain 2.0 looks to be forming only around Russia, walling it off from all of Europe. Things will be so much worse for people on the inside this time. It will be like Soviet Russia without the Warsaw Pact to support it. It is one thing to be without Twitter and Hollywood movies, but can Russia feed itself? Can any country? Modern industrial a…

They can probably feed themselves. Growing calories is something we're good at, especially Russia. The hard part is dealing with a scenario where there is plenty of wheat, but people have no money to buy it. Ireland, in the 1840s suffered a horrific famine. Grain was being exported the while time. Food existed. People couldn't afford it. During the US' great depression, people were hungry while agricultural products…

Keynes said: "Anything we can actually do, we can afford". Money is just a way of divvying up the productive capacity of a country, so not being able to afford a country's own production is either a preference for foreign trade or a distribution problem.

Not that is much comfort to Russian's -- Russia has a massively unequal distribution of wealth.

Re: Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

#95

Post by KennyBlanken »

sandworm101 wrote: post #60
vnchr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ve got plenty of opportunities with China.

For now. But we are already seeing a few chinks in that armor. China prizes stability. Countries that start wars over imagined slights do not promote stability. China's largesse is not unlimited nor does it ever come without a price.

It's not over an 'imagined slight', but bringing back in old soviet states, weakening the EU/NATO (or preventing its expansion), and capturing Ukraine's agriculture and industry, both of which are significant, but the economy was also $800BN compared to Russia's $4400BN and it would have been a sizeable addition.

China is somewhat happy to support those goals; while everyone is fussing with Putin, they get to kick off expansion in the south china sea.

Re: Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

#96

Post by erichocean »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #94
dalbasal wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can probably feed themselves. Growing calories is something we're good at, especially Russia. The hard part is dealing with a scenario where there is plenty of wheat, but people have no money to buy it. Ireland, in the 1840s suffered a horrific famine. Grain was being exported the while time. Food existed. People couldn't afford it. During the US' great depression, people were hungry while agricultural products…

Keynes said: "Anything we can actually do, we can afford". Money is just a way of divvying up the productive capacity of a country, so not being able to afford a country's own production is either a preference for foreign trade or a distribution problem. Not that is much comfort to Russian's -- Russia has a massively unequal distribution of wealth.

> Russia has a massively unequal distribution of wealth.

The Netherlands has the highest wealth inequality in the world.[0] No one considers that some backwater country, or its people starving or somehow impoverished.

There's more that's going in Russia than "a massively unequal distribution of wealth."

[0] https://uweb.berkeley.edu/2021/04/11/the-duality-of-the-dutc... It's also the oldest country to implement capitalism. Maybe capitalism plays a role in producing wealth inequality? It's certainly been increasing in the US since the 1980s, when "greed" was embraced as good and we started shipping jobs overseas.

Re: Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

#97

Post by outworlder »

pg_1234 wrote: post #89
dalbasal wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can probably feed themselves. Growing calories is something we're good at, especially Russia. The hard part is dealing with a scenario where there is plenty of wheat, but people have no money to buy it. Ireland, in the 1840s suffered a horrific famine. Grain was being exported the while time. Food existed. People couldn't afford it. During the US' great depression, people were hungry while agricultural products…

Well, the wheat will be affordable because Russia won't be able to export it.

But then that only means it's not attractive for the farmers either.

Re: Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

#98

Post by T-A »

sandworm101 wrote: post #30

The Iron Curtain cut through the heart of Europe, dividing east from west. Curtain 2.0 looks to be forming only around Russia, walling it off from all of Europe. Things will be so much worse for people on the inside this time. It will be like Soviet Russia without the Warsaw Pact to support it. It is one thing to be without Twitter and Hollywood movies, but can Russia feed itself? Can any country? Modern industrial a…

> Curtain 2.0 looks to be forming only around Russia

And Belarus.

Re: Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

#100

Post by outworlder »

philipkglass wrote: post #90
zdragnar wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some few Russian products are in high demand. Natural gas, as others have said. Russia is the third biggest supplier of nickel, and iirc the biggest supplier of high grade nickel- a key component in many applications, not the least of which is in lithium batteries. London recently had to suspend nickel trading because the price was astronomically high. There will be no getting off of fossil fuels without nickel, and…

Lithium iron phosphate batteries are a type of lithium ion battery that does not require nickel or cobalt. They're already used in many electric vehicles including standard-range Tesla vehicles. They're also a preferred choice for grid scale storage because the modestly lower energy density of LFP chemistry doesn't matter for a battery that sits in one place for years.

How are they tying up the cells together? That's usually done with Nickel bars.
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