Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why did the ruble stabilize and what's going on?

news.ycombinator.com

181–190 of 253 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why did the ruble stabilize and what's going on?

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

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 l…

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

Re: Ask HN: Why did the ruble stabilize and what's going on?

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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. Apparen…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Why did the ruble stabilize and what's going on?

#184
post #178
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $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...

Re: Ask HN: Why did the ruble stabilize and what's going on?

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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 wa…

(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)

Re: Ask HN: Why did the ruble stabilize and what's going on?

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

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".

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.

Re: Ask HN: Why did the ruble stabilize and what's going on?

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

Re: Ask HN: Why did the ruble stabilize and what's going on?

#188
post #31

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…

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 p…

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

Re: Ask HN: Why did the ruble stabilize and what's going on?

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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 Czechoslova…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Why did the ruble stabilize and what's going on?

#190
post #73
post #31

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…

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

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?

Post reply on HN