What is his “escalating posture towards the coalition”? Like NATO has imposed massive sanctions, sent huge piles of arms to Ukraine, provided training to the Ukrainian army, etc. As far as I can see Putin has basically done nothing in response to this other than rhetorical bluster.
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If Russia can maintain a defensible position in Ukraine until winter, with Germany and Turkey feeling the pinch and the Putin wing of the US Republicans winning both houses of Congress, I can see maybe pressure on Ukraine enough for a peace deal by like February. Regroup and try again in a few more years. It would be a huge mistake on our part imo, and not even likely, but that may be the best case scenario for Russia from here.
putin has so far mostly done economic measures, but he has forced companies into his own payment system, with mixed results. he is going to cut off oil and gas, like finland, and ukraine in the past. he has tried to get economic and failed to get military assistance from china, india, and kazakhstan. it’s not that much, but he is obviously trying. i read that shuffling rockets to finland border is basically for show, but putin definitely wants to be noticed.
the next thing he might do is to visibly park some nuclear subs or cruisers in the baltic, or interfere with of a freight ship with some pretense. if you remember syria, russian jets were flying so close to turkey, one of them got shot down. that’s definitely in his range.
an important consideration is probably opening up the cyber attacks to western targets, but the last three months have so far shown multiple breeaches of russian infrastructure and a lot less than expected in ukraine. i’m willing to believe that the west is assisting ukraine IT, but i don’t know obviously
turkey isn’t participating in the sanctions, so they are not in the calculus. germany and france just held elections, it will be awhile for them to pivot away from countering putin. germany has 6 months to prepare. it can be done. in the usa, lend-lease is passed, so a new congress will be limited in what they can change until the $40b run out. still, i agree it would be a good development for putin.
regardless i don’t see any pressure other than the battlefield that can make urkaine agree to a loss, or even a “win”-“win”, where both Ze and putin come out with a victory. but hey, 6 months is a long time
Can someone ELI5 why the ruble is so strong lately?
Gas was cut off to Finland because the Finns refused to pay in roubles, which Russia wants them to do to avoid sanctions. Russia also has a compromise lined up:
Still, if Russia were to cut off big importers, it would deprive itself of some of the cash it needs to fund a costly and protracted war. So who will fold first? Most European buyers have already ruled out paying directly in roubles. But Moscow is offering a compromise. Buyers would open two accounts with Gazprombank (a lender that is not under sanctions). They would pay euros into the first, and ask the bank to convert the sum into roubles and deposit the money into the second account, which would then be wired to Gazprom.
Many European countries dislike the plan, which would look as though they were giving in to Russian bullying and risks creating legal headaches.
The way this is characterized is very odd to me. Russia has been placed under sanctions, they are trying to avoid those sanctions - which is a defensive measure against economic warfare - and this is referred to as “Russian bullying”. If having super-harsh sanctions imposed then trying to avoid those sanctions is “escalation” then ok, but youkeepusingthatword.jpg.
My point here is not “Russia good” or whatever but rather that the tone of this thread keeps being that Putin is adopting a super-aggressive posture and we’re about to see Russian troops in the centre of Tallinn, but what I see is an incredibly muted response to aggressive economic and proxy war on the part of NATO.
Sure it’s muted. It’s not like they’re in a position to escalate further and everybody knows it and they know everybody knows it. That’s half the reason Finland can try to join NATO now, the threat of Russia invading is at an all time low as long as they’re tied up in Ukraine.
Seem to have read something about Russia using gold reserves to prop it up. Also if nobody outside Russia is trading it the price isn’t a real thing.
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it’s not a real price according to everything I’ve read. You can’t trade it normally.
i think it seems muted because it does not appear to be effective. it’s not really a surprise though, they are all tripping over their own dicks and into land mines over there.
there are a few other things i suppose, putin has taken almost 2500 hostages, and his proxies have basically called to put them on tribunal, like nuremberg. he has also moved to create as many ukrainian and russian refugees as possible in the west, thinking that europe will have had enough soon, much like afghani and syrian crisis. yeah, it would be wrong to assume that will not get used by the far right everywhere.
a lot of putin’s counteractions are inflicted onto russian people. like he’s out there taking away copyrights and seizing macdonald’s restaurants to give to a local sheriff.
still think he can do worse.
Thanks, but I still don’t get how an imaginary price gets reported as the value. If it’s not real, where does it come from?
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Russian central bank afaik.
Wait, so you’re telling me the WSJ just calls up the Russian Central Bank and asks “I’m wondering if you can help us out. Rubles aren’t really traded right now, so maybe you could just tell us what they’re worth…What’s that? Highest it has been in a year? Wow, who would have thought that? Thanks for the info, Russian Central Bank!”
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No, they just publish the price same as they always have and everybody reports it same as they always have. There is no market outside Russia for it so it’s not a ‘real’ price like it was in February.
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So, in the past Russian Central Bank could have published any number, and everyone would have just reported that number?
In the past they weren’t the only buyer and the only seller
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Ok, so if I understand you correctly, in the past lots of banks reported the exchange rate, but now only the Russian one does? That makes sense.
Sorry, it took me a while to get there. In my defense, I did say I needed it explained like I was 5.
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I think it’s something like that. There’s no central exchange for currency so you can make a trade through a broker but ultimately it goes through a central bank and price discovery is distributed over many banks and central banks normally. Is my understanding. In the past, banks that did business in/with Russia would need to buy and sell rubles, now nobody does.
It also sounds like there are two exchange rates - the Moscow rate and the international rate. Normally they would be the similar but right now they are diverging due to the fact that Russia is manipulating it’s exchange rate.