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>I think the risk of direct NATO military intervention is very low I agree the military intervention risk seems low, but what about economic intervention? Isn'

>I think the risk of direct NATO military intervention is very low I agree the military intervention risk seems low, but what about economic intervention? Isn't this going to have some serious economic repercussions for Russia?

nradov 5y ago
Perhaps, but there are already significant economic sanctions in place since the previous invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Russia has survived those reasonably well. More sanctions will probably come but they can only be incremental. Several key NATO members are highly dependent on Russian energy supplies and can't afford to shut those off indefinitely.
mlindner 5y ago
Most certainly. This will end Russia's ability to continue to grow in any way.
- it_does_follow 5y ago
  Not if Russia takes Ukraine and controls the majority of wheat following into EU. Near term impacts of climate change will very likely leads to crop failures in many of the EU's largest producing regions. When you don't have enough food to feed your people, politics and economic sanctions become extremely flexible. When resources run low controlling food and oil will be a very big deal.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - mlindner 5y ago
    This is delusional.
    - SantalBlush 5y ago
      Yeah, I've already had my fill of hot takes from uninformed people on the internet, and this war isn't even 24 hours old. Links to actual expert analyses, on the other hand, would be much appreciated.
    - it_does_follow 5y ago
      Curious what's delusional about this? Russian and Ukraine combined account for 29% of global wheat exports, much of that to the EU. Near term climate change will most certainly lead to massive crop failures, particularly in currently bountiful parts of the EU. Countries like the UK (I know not EU) already cannot feed their people without imports, something like 50% of the UKs food supply is imported. It is nearly certain that within a few decades, perhaps even sooner, we will be at a point where there is not enough food. We've already see notable crop failures in the EU. Most of us have grown up in a time of plenty, but that time is running short. All of this is fairly well established, so is my "delusion" in that Putin is aware of this and acting on it?
      - MrMan 5y ago
        I agree with this assessment, and predicted this to be the year when consolidation around resources begins.
      - volkl48 5y ago
        One obvious answer is that the US massively overproduces food on a scale that's hard to fathom, which is part of why we make extremely inefficient biofuels (corn ethanol) out of a big chunk of it and use it for inefficient meat production. After some conversion through various bad units of measure (bushels->pounds->calories), and assuming ~2250 calories a day average), it looks to me like current US corn production could feed somewhere around 1.6 billion people their entire yearly caloric needs, if it was actually directed entirely at feeding people as efficiently as possible. And that is rather obviously not the only crop or source of food originating in the US. Math sources: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2022/01-12-2022.php https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2022/01-12-2022.php - corn output. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-corn-the-worlds-most-important-food-crop/2015/07/12/78d86530-25a8-11e5-b77f-eb13a215f593_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-... - bushel/pound/calorie conversion ------ In short, I don't think it's very realistic to think that Europe is going to face a literal inability to get enough food even if the entirety of Ukraine never grew another plant again.
- buran77 5y ago
  I'm reasonably convinced that the only reason for anyone relevant to float around the idea of a NATO-Ukraine relationship was to drag an already economically fragile Russia into a conflict that they may "win" but at a high cost for Russia and for Ukraine. I say "win" because Russia will poison Ukraine for NATO, making it less (or not at all) desirable for NATO but will pay a heavy price. Overall that's a win for NATO as many (most?) members can breathe a lot easier around a weakened Russia.
  - mlindner 5y ago
    Ukraine had been interested in joining NATO and the EU for 10 years now. The west has used this conflict very well but that is not the reason for the conflict. The reason for the conflict is entirely in Putin's head.
    - buran77 5y ago
      > Ukraine had been interested in joining NATO and the EU for 10 years now When Ukraine was flirting with the idea of a relationship with the EU in 2013-2014 the Crimean invasion happened. It was absolutely predictable even at that time and in fact many EU officials I have spoken to (including high ranking ones) agreed as much since back then. The signs of a regime which doesn't stand any proximity of a threat to their rule was obvious. > The reason for the conflict is entirely in Putin's head I have never been in Putin's head, nor met or talked to him. But to my pride I do forget more history every day than most people will learn in their lifetime and can't think of similar example of a superpower happily accepting adversaries at their border. In recent history look no further than when the US ordered a naval blockade on Cuba after Cuba's request for Russian missiles to be placed on the island to defend in the event of another US invasion attempt. Putin is literally taking a page from that book. I don't need to be in Putin's head because he's not some brilliant tactician doing something unheard of, he's just playing an old song to a new audience. If it's the first time you hear it you just have to pay more attention to what came before today.
      - pasabagi 5y ago
        > But to my pride I do forget more history every day than most people will learn in their lifetime and can't think of similar example of a superpower happily accepting adversaries at their border. Not to burst your bubble, but the USSR accepted Turkey with nukes on their border, and before them, Japan. China accepts being essentially surrounded by hostile powers, many of whom are part of NATO.
zx85wes 5y ago
We're talking about the 2 biggest nuclear powers here. A tiny mistake or misunderstanding is all that's needed. Google Vasily Arkhipov. After the EU sanctions overnight, it seems that Russia felt it had not much to lose, and they launched their attack.
- mahkeiro 5y ago
  This attack has been planned for months… EU sanctions have nothing to do with that.
  - zx85wes 5y ago
    I don't believe it was inevitable.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      It was inevitable since 2014. The only thing that is surprising is that it took this long.
      - avgcorrection 5y ago
        Whatever is inevitable for eight years is really not.
        CRConrad 5y ago
        Maybe not, if you're young enough to think eight years is a long time.
        jacquesm 5y ago
        Well, if you were looking a bit more closely you would have noticed a lot of little steps all leading to that goal, so as far as I'm concerned it was inevitable, but you are of course entirely entitled to your own worldview.
    - wbsss4412 5y ago
cobby 5y ago
> Isn't this going to have some serious economic repercussions for Russia? Russian economy is in decline since 2014. COVID-19 pandemic has increased its decline even further. So it seems that the upcoming EU + US economic sanctions will be used by propaganda as the ultimate explanation of the decline. I mean Kremlin actually looks forward to more sanctions in order to have plausible explanation ("we are at war and our enemies made your life worse; we need to stay strong around our leader mr. Putin" shit).
- caeril 5y ago
  > Russian economy is in decline since 2014. The vast, vast majority of the growth in US and EU economies since 2014 (really, much earlier than that, though) has been in fundamentally non-productive sectors like finance, real estate, entertainment, social media, and hospitality. This is all well and good in peacetime, but the GDP calculation changes dramatically when you're on a war footing and need to produce actual tangible things. Russia looks much, much, much better economically than GDP suggests in the context of its ability to produce theater materiel, power that materiel, and man that materiel. It's going to be a fun day for us when our pathetic "service-based economy" workforce of ad spent optimizers, real estate agents, attorneys, starbucks baristas, ReactJS programmers, UI designers, Buffalo Wild Wings servers, twitch streamers, instagram influencers, and "hustlers" of all kinds get drafted to fight hardened alcoholic roughnecks who've spent the last 20 years actually building things, backed up by Chinese rangefinders, optics, and target acquisition systems. Good luck to us.
  - eecc 5y ago
    You forgot to add some homophobia to your straw man depiction of the West.
  - dgut 5y ago
    You just depicted your world, not the West.
throwaway894345 5y ago
As an aside, I wonder why more people (especially on this forum) aren't discussing the likelihood of increased cyber attacks, not just on government and military institutions but on private businesses. If we sanction Russia, they might hit our hospitals, banks, etc. Seems like we should start ratcheting up our security.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  I posted a link about that earlier but it got flagged.
- kbart 5y ago
  I work at the big fintech with a large footprint in Eastern Europe. We have been ramping up our cyberdefence capabilities intensively for over a week now based on various public and non-public advisories. As far as I see from my extended network, we are definetly not alone doing that.
  - unixhero 5y ago
    For a week? You should have been preparing for years. Seriously.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    I guess I was thinking every NATO country and the whole of the EU should be boosting its security posture.
- cjrp 5y ago
  Agreed, this is a terrifying prospect. Governments, hospitals, transport links.. anything.
  - eecc 5y ago
    Dams, hydro, iron smelters, steel mills… What worries me is the idea that some ex-soviet apparatchik (someone like Vladimir himself) might want to take eye-for-eye, and reduce western infrastructure to the same level of ruin of the Soviet’s, after ‘89. Their industry and economy was struggling and fell apart overnight but the West wasn’t happy to just win, it wanted to Win Big. We rubbed the unproductivity of it in their face, kicked the market wide open to fire sales and mass demobilization… these humiliations create resentment, and you never know who’s the more spitefully determined.
shagmin 5y ago
Russia has grown its gold reserves drastically over the last decade, has relatively little debt and is increasingly trading with China without using US dollars at all. I'd say they've anticipated those serious economic repercussions to some extent. But I also suspect Russians may be more willing to tolerate things such as a weak economy if it helps achieve other goals. I kind of see it like a parallel with Russia shooting a bullet at its own economy, while the Soviet Union in the 20th century shot plenty of bullets at its own people...for various reasons.
- cjrp 5y ago
  Isn't something like 1/3 of their GDP energy exports though? Presumably most of the customers are European.
  - wbsss4412 5y ago
    The flip side of that is that the Europeans are heavily dependent on those exports.
    - cjrp 5y ago
      True, ultimately it comes down to which country is more willing to let their population suffer. I know where my money is.
      - wbsss4412 5y ago
        It’s not even about that. It looks like Putin is making the correct calculation that the west would suffer more. Look at the Chinese reaction, it is very unlikely he would be making this move without at least tacit Chinese support. He has an outlet for all of that energy and grain. Where will Europe recover that supply from?
        Fatnino 5y ago
        From wherever China is buying it now.
Mikeb85 5y ago
> Isn't this going to have some serious economic repercussions for Russia? Russia's been sanctioned for nearly a decade. They're probably the most resource-rich nation on earth and have a nearly fully self-sufficient economy. What little they need they can get from China. Also, when people look at Russia's GDP, they need to look at REAL numbers (ie. Adjusted for PPP). Russia's real GDP is ~3x higher than their nominal GDP (because sanctions drive down currency trade and make the nominal number basically useless).
- stepnovij 5y ago
  > Russia's been sanctioned for nearly a decade. They're probably the most resource-rich nation on earth and have a nearly fully self-sufficient economy. What little they need they can get from China. It might look so like we have a self-sufficient economy, but it's not true. We have lots of resources, but to mine them and produce things you need technology. We're mostly importing needed technology and it's not something that can be changed fast. And things didn't change much for the last 10 years. China is a good partner, they can produce and export all needed tech things, but I doubt that in the current world is a good option to depend on one partner. I'm Russian and I don't understand the reasons for the invasion of Ukraine. And I don't agree with our country leaders' decisions. It doesn't look the peace could be brought by war and aggression. And I'm feeling that we already lost. We lost opportunities to partner with Ukraine and other countries. We lost momentum to grow our own economy.
  - posix_me_less 5y ago
    > I don't understand the reasons for the invasion of Ukraine. I think I do. It seems to be the same as the reason for invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Ukraine also started a transformation, slipping away from Russia's influence and opening to West. Russia's rulers (whether that is Putin or whomever) understandably got pissed by this loss of influence "in their backyard" and they decided they have to do something. It was clear to Russians for a long time now that NATO was fractured on Ukraine and that even the hawkish Western powers won't go into direct war with Russians because of Ukraine. It's not that important to anybody in the West. Considering the fact West won't fight in Ukraine, and it did not provide any real concessions to Russia's demands, it is not surprising that Russia has taken initiative. It makes perfect sense, for Russians it is the only way to make sure NATO/EU won't happen and also win control and resources in Ukraine at the same time (which may be a substantial reason as well, despite the fact Putin does not talk about it). Considering the disproportion in military powers, I think now it would be best for Ukrainians to capitulate, admit defeat and avoid unnecessary deaths. Also, the West bears some responsibility for this misery in Ukraine. Even from western point of view, West should have never started this overture process with false promises and predictable bad results. Unless the Russian invasion was actually a desired result in some secret mastermind plan made in the West... which does not seem likely.
dangerface 5y ago
Russia does 5 times more trade with China than the US. Most of the west is reliant on Russian oil or Russian allies oil making it difficult to put down hard sanctions as Russia holds more power that the west would like to admit. Military intervention is the best solution Russia has a large army but its old and would be unable to deal with western military, but there is no real path for that to happen.
AlexCoventry 5y ago
Russia has been preparing for severe Western sanctions for the better part of a decade. Sanctions are obviously not a sufficient deterrent.

nradov 5y ago

Perhaps, but there are already significant economic sanctions in place since the previous invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Russia has survived those reasonably well. More sanctions will probably come but they can only be incremental. Several key NATO members are highly dependent on Russian energy supplies and can't afford to shut those off indefinitely.

mlindner 5y ago

Most certainly. This will end Russia's ability to continue to grow in any way.

it_does_follow 5y ago
Not if Russia takes Ukraine and controls the majority of wheat following into EU. Near term impacts of climate change will very likely leads to crop failures in many of the EU's largest producing regions. When you don't have enough food to feed your people, politics and economic sanctions become extremely flexible. When resources run low controlling food and oil will be a very big deal.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mlindner 5y ago
  This is delusional.
  - SantalBlush 5y ago
    Yeah, I've already had my fill of hot takes from uninformed people on the internet, and this war isn't even 24 hours old. Links to actual expert analyses, on the other hand, would be much appreciated.
  - it_does_follow 5y ago
    Curious what's delusional about this? Russian and Ukraine combined account for 29% of global wheat exports, much of that to the EU. Near term climate change will most certainly lead to massive crop failures, particularly in currently bountiful parts of the EU. Countries like the UK (I know not EU) already cannot feed their people without imports, something like 50% of the UKs food supply is imported. It is nearly certain that within a few decades, perhaps even sooner, we will be at a point where there is not enough food. We've already see notable crop failures in the EU. Most of us have grown up in a time of plenty, but that time is running short. All of this is fairly well established, so is my "delusion" in that Putin is aware of this and acting on it?
    - MrMan 5y ago
      I agree with this assessment, and predicted this to be the year when consolidation around resources begins.
    - volkl48 5y ago
      One obvious answer is that the US massively overproduces food on a scale that's hard to fathom, which is part of why we make extremely inefficient biofuels (corn ethanol) out of a big chunk of it and use it for inefficient meat production. After some conversion through various bad units of measure (bushels->pounds->calories), and assuming ~2250 calories a day average), it looks to me like current US corn production could feed somewhere around 1.6 billion people their entire yearly caloric needs, if it was actually directed entirely at feeding people as efficiently as possible. And that is rather obviously not the only crop or source of food originating in the US. Math sources: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2022/01-12-2022.php https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2022/01-12-2022.php - corn output. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-corn-the-worlds-most-important-food-crop/2015/07/12/78d86530-25a8-11e5-b77f-eb13a215f593_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-... - bushel/pound/calorie conversion ------ In short, I don't think it's very realistic to think that Europe is going to face a literal inability to get enough food even if the entirety of Ukraine never grew another plant again.
buran77 5y ago
I'm reasonably convinced that the only reason for anyone relevant to float around the idea of a NATO-Ukraine relationship was to drag an already economically fragile Russia into a conflict that they may "win" but at a high cost for Russia and for Ukraine. I say "win" because Russia will poison Ukraine for NATO, making it less (or not at all) desirable for NATO but will pay a heavy price. Overall that's a win for NATO as many (most?) members can breathe a lot easier around a weakened Russia.
- mlindner 5y ago
  Ukraine had been interested in joining NATO and the EU for 10 years now. The west has used this conflict very well but that is not the reason for the conflict. The reason for the conflict is entirely in Putin's head.
  - buran77 5y ago
    > Ukraine had been interested in joining NATO and the EU for 10 years now When Ukraine was flirting with the idea of a relationship with the EU in 2013-2014 the Crimean invasion happened. It was absolutely predictable even at that time and in fact many EU officials I have spoken to (including high ranking ones) agreed as much since back then. The signs of a regime which doesn't stand any proximity of a threat to their rule was obvious. > The reason for the conflict is entirely in Putin's head I have never been in Putin's head, nor met or talked to him. But to my pride I do forget more history every day than most people will learn in their lifetime and can't think of similar example of a superpower happily accepting adversaries at their border. In recent history look no further than when the US ordered a naval blockade on Cuba after Cuba's request for Russian missiles to be placed on the island to defend in the event of another US invasion attempt. Putin is literally taking a page from that book. I don't need to be in Putin's head because he's not some brilliant tactician doing something unheard of, he's just playing an old song to a new audience. If it's the first time you hear it you just have to pay more attention to what came before today.
    - pasabagi 5y ago
      > But to my pride I do forget more history every day than most people will learn in their lifetime and can't think of similar example of a superpower happily accepting adversaries at their border. Not to burst your bubble, but the USSR accepted Turkey with nukes on their border, and before them, Japan. China accepts being essentially surrounded by hostile powers, many of whom are part of NATO.

zx85wes 5y ago

We're talking about the 2 biggest nuclear powers here. A tiny mistake or misunderstanding is all that's needed. Google Vasily Arkhipov. After the EU sanctions overnight, it seems that Russia felt it had not much to lose, and they launched their attack.

mahkeiro 5y ago
This attack has been planned for months… EU sanctions have nothing to do with that.
- zx85wes 5y ago
  I don't believe it was inevitable.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    It was inevitable since 2014. The only thing that is surprising is that it took this long.
    - avgcorrection 5y ago
      Whatever is inevitable for eight years is really not.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        Maybe not, if you're young enough to think eight years is a long time.
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        Well, if you were looking a bit more closely you would have noticed a lot of little steps all leading to that goal, so as far as I'm concerned it was inevitable, but you are of course entirely entitled to your own worldview.
  - wbsss4412 5y ago

cobby 5y ago

> Isn't this going to have some serious economic repercussions for Russia? Russian economy is in decline since 2014. COVID-19 pandemic has increased its decline even further. So it seems that the upcoming EU + US economic sanctions will be used by propaganda as the ultimate explanation of the decline. I mean Kremlin actually looks forward to more sanctions in order to have plausible explanation ("we are at war and our enemies made your life worse; we need to stay strong around our leader mr. Putin" shit).

caeril 5y ago
> Russian economy is in decline since 2014. The vast, vast majority of the growth in US and EU economies since 2014 (really, much earlier than that, though) has been in fundamentally non-productive sectors like finance, real estate, entertainment, social media, and hospitality. This is all well and good in peacetime, but the GDP calculation changes dramatically when you're on a war footing and need to produce actual tangible things. Russia looks much, much, much better economically than GDP suggests in the context of its ability to produce theater materiel, power that materiel, and man that materiel. It's going to be a fun day for us when our pathetic "service-based economy" workforce of ad spent optimizers, real estate agents, attorneys, starbucks baristas, ReactJS programmers, UI designers, Buffalo Wild Wings servers, twitch streamers, instagram influencers, and "hustlers" of all kinds get drafted to fight hardened alcoholic roughnecks who've spent the last 20 years actually building things, backed up by Chinese rangefinders, optics, and target acquisition systems. Good luck to us.
- eecc 5y ago
  You forgot to add some homophobia to your straw man depiction of the West.
- dgut 5y ago
  You just depicted your world, not the West.

throwaway894345 5y ago

As an aside, I wonder why more people (especially on this forum) aren't discussing the likelihood of increased cyber attacks, not just on government and military institutions but on private businesses. If we sanction Russia, they might hit our hospitals, banks, etc. Seems like we should start ratcheting up our security.

jacquesm 5y ago
I posted a link about that earlier but it got flagged.
kbart 5y ago
I work at the big fintech with a large footprint in Eastern Europe. We have been ramping up our cyberdefence capabilities intensively for over a week now based on various public and non-public advisories. As far as I see from my extended network, we are definetly not alone doing that.
- unixhero 5y ago
  For a week? You should have been preparing for years. Seriously.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  I guess I was thinking every NATO country and the whole of the EU should be boosting its security posture.
cjrp 5y ago
Agreed, this is a terrifying prospect. Governments, hospitals, transport links.. anything.
- eecc 5y ago
  Dams, hydro, iron smelters, steel mills… What worries me is the idea that some ex-soviet apparatchik (someone like Vladimir himself) might want to take eye-for-eye, and reduce western infrastructure to the same level of ruin of the Soviet’s, after ‘89. Their industry and economy was struggling and fell apart overnight but the West wasn’t happy to just win, it wanted to Win Big. We rubbed the unproductivity of it in their face, kicked the market wide open to fire sales and mass demobilization… these humiliations create resentment, and you never know who’s the more spitefully determined.

shagmin 5y ago

Russia has grown its gold reserves drastically over the last decade, has relatively little debt and is increasingly trading with China without using US dollars at all. I'd say they've anticipated those serious economic repercussions to some extent. But I also suspect Russians may be more willing to tolerate things such as a weak economy if it helps achieve other goals. I kind of see it like a parallel with Russia shooting a bullet at its own economy, while the Soviet Union in the 20th century shot plenty of bullets at its own people...for various reasons.

cjrp 5y ago
Isn't something like 1/3 of their GDP energy exports though? Presumably most of the customers are European.
- wbsss4412 5y ago
  The flip side of that is that the Europeans are heavily dependent on those exports.
  - cjrp 5y ago
    True, ultimately it comes down to which country is more willing to let their population suffer. I know where my money is.
    - wbsss4412 5y ago
      It’s not even about that. It looks like Putin is making the correct calculation that the west would suffer more. Look at the Chinese reaction, it is very unlikely he would be making this move without at least tacit Chinese support. He has an outlet for all of that energy and grain. Where will Europe recover that supply from?
      - Fatnino 5y ago
        From wherever China is buying it now.

Mikeb85 5y ago

> Isn't this going to have some serious economic repercussions for Russia? Russia's been sanctioned for nearly a decade. They're probably the most resource-rich nation on earth and have a nearly fully self-sufficient economy. What little they need they can get from China. Also, when people look at Russia's GDP, they need to look at REAL numbers (ie. Adjusted for PPP). Russia's real GDP is ~3x higher than their nominal GDP (because sanctions drive down currency trade and make the nominal number basically useless).

stepnovij 5y ago
> Russia's been sanctioned for nearly a decade. They're probably the most resource-rich nation on earth and have a nearly fully self-sufficient economy. What little they need they can get from China. It might look so like we have a self-sufficient economy, but it's not true. We have lots of resources, but to mine them and produce things you need technology. We're mostly importing needed technology and it's not something that can be changed fast. And things didn't change much for the last 10 years. China is a good partner, they can produce and export all needed tech things, but I doubt that in the current world is a good option to depend on one partner. I'm Russian and I don't understand the reasons for the invasion of Ukraine. And I don't agree with our country leaders' decisions. It doesn't look the peace could be brought by war and aggression. And I'm feeling that we already lost. We lost opportunities to partner with Ukraine and other countries. We lost momentum to grow our own economy.
- posix_me_less 5y ago
  > I don't understand the reasons for the invasion of Ukraine. I think I do. It seems to be the same as the reason for invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Ukraine also started a transformation, slipping away from Russia's influence and opening to West. Russia's rulers (whether that is Putin or whomever) understandably got pissed by this loss of influence "in their backyard" and they decided they have to do something. It was clear to Russians for a long time now that NATO was fractured on Ukraine and that even the hawkish Western powers won't go into direct war with Russians because of Ukraine. It's not that important to anybody in the West. Considering the fact West won't fight in Ukraine, and it did not provide any real concessions to Russia's demands, it is not surprising that Russia has taken initiative. It makes perfect sense, for Russians it is the only way to make sure NATO/EU won't happen and also win control and resources in Ukraine at the same time (which may be a substantial reason as well, despite the fact Putin does not talk about it). Considering the disproportion in military powers, I think now it would be best for Ukrainians to capitulate, admit defeat and avoid unnecessary deaths. Also, the West bears some responsibility for this misery in Ukraine. Even from western point of view, West should have never started this overture process with false promises and predictable bad results. Unless the Russian invasion was actually a desired result in some secret mastermind plan made in the West... which does not seem likely.

dangerface 5y ago

Russia does 5 times more trade with China than the US. Most of the west is reliant on Russian oil or Russian allies oil making it difficult to put down hard sanctions as Russia holds more power that the west would like to admit. Military intervention is the best solution Russia has a large army but its old and would be unable to deal with western military, but there is no real path for that to happen.

AlexCoventry 5y ago

Russia has been preparing for severe Western sanctions for the better part of a decade. Sanctions are obviously not a sufficient deterrent.