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US Sanctions Vladimir Putin
- fudged71 5y ago[flagged]
- mirntyfirty 5y agoCan someone explain whether this has a meaningful effect on those that are targeted?
- Ancapistani 5y agoShort term? No. Longer term? Maybe. Enough pressure on those in power will erode Putin’ support base. Cut off enough of his wealth and he’ll have a harder time holding on to power.
- shmobot 5y agoIn any case it won't stop him from continuing his anschluss of Ukraine at this very moment.
- tartoran 5y agoOh no, he could crush Ukraine for now but that does not guarantee a definitive victory. But think about the hate Ukrainians have for Russian oppression, they’d stay quiet for a while if needed (for lack of viable options) but at the next chance they’d stab their captor in their back in a moment of weakness. Brothers they will never be by force.
- kamih 5y agoVlad is already a billionaire, so probably not a whole not.
- jdrc 5y agovlad is a romanian name
- tartoran 5y agoHow is this relevant? Vlad here is short for Vlaidmir anyway, a russian name. Romanians have Vlad but I suspect its origins are Slavic.
- jdrc 5y agoI ve been told it's not the right way to refer to Putin, which is probably correct, there are are other dimunitives
- phreazkzaway 5y agoIt's just a transliteration of 'volodya'. Not many English-speaking people would understand if you used the proper diminutive form of the name.
- pshirshov 5y agoYeah, and the particular associations with that name fit well into current madness.
- _jal 5y agoIt really depends on whether or not they choose to meaningfully go after their offshore assets. Krugman wrote a useful discussion of the topic: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/opinion/russia-ukraine-sanctions-offshore-accounts.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/opinion/russia-ukraine-sa...
- huksley 5y agoIt have trickle down effect, if that person owns >=50% of some other business, it is also on sanctions list automatically.
- sebmellen 5y agoDoes this really do anything? I read a decently insightful article in the Economist yesterday, claiming Putin's inner circle doesn't have anything to lose, as they have all already been sanctioned by the Treasury: https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/02/19/alexander-gabuev-writes-from-moscow-on-why-vladimir-putin-and-his-entourage-want-war https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/02/19/alexander....
- prozapari 5y agoI don't have a subscription unfortunately so I can't read the full article, but even if US sanctions don't do much, there are tons of other countries sanctioning them now.
- sebmellen 5y agoThe key part is as follows: > Why then are the people around Putin not scared about possible fallout from a new round of far-reaching economic sanctions? In their eyes, the sanctions that the West imposed to punish Russia for the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas were intended largely to check Russia’s rise. America and its allies would have found a way to introduce them one way or another, they were just looking for an excuse. > Since 2014 such views have solidified. Messrs Patrushev, Bortnikov and Naryshkin all find themselves on the US Treasury’s blacklist already, along with many other members of Mr Putin’s inner circle. There is no way back for them to the West’s creature comforts. They are destined to end their lives in Fortress Russia, with their assets and their relatives alongside them. From: https://archive.is/rHcmU https://archive.is/rHcmU
- deutschewelle 5y agoNo since all of Russia can be declared his.... he could lose access to fiat USD/EUROs but his assets are good as gold: Gazprom,Rosneft etc
- tartoran 5y agoYes but if the whole country goes through enough unnecesary hardship (Russians have a tough life) and his manupulative PR apparatus stops functioning he could start fearing for his life. Any of his thugs he’s surrounded by could at some point initiate a mutiny and eventually after failed attempts it could end his reign. Putin is bluffing big time too, he knows it. At the same time he achieved so much power and wealth that he may want to go for a different glory, he seems to want to revive a broken empire, broken in the sense that at some point Russia was looked up and now he’d need to coerce friends into an involuntary hug. Russia is so broken (not defending US, which is on the verge of catastastrophe too) that nobody wants to be their friend beside getting cheap gas. Cheap gas has been one thing to keep Russia from collapsing altogether though, it’s a bargaining chip but not really the best hand in the game
- ekianjo 5y agoAs if it's going to change anything
- H8crilA 5y agoSanctioning me, a random non-US-citizen, would have a bigger effect on the world than this.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoSanctioning the wealthiest person on the planet…
- 3pt14159 5y agoWealthier than the Queen of England? Wealthier than the Saudi Royal Family? Wealth stops making sense for heads of state because it's wrapped up in politics and tradition. Vladimir can't come to Austin Texas on a whim and buy himself a mess of grouper and bourbon. I can. I'm here now. I traveled here from Toronto on a whim. Is he is wealthier than I am? The answer is still obviously yes, but it starts to get fuzzy vs people like Elon Musk who have functionally more freedom and massive amounts of assets.
- actuator 5y agoWell, for one Queen of England(queen of a lot of other nations as well) doesn't have any power like say what Saudi King or Putin has. She is a mere ceremonial head. Also, from what I have read, the estimates of her wealth doesn't even make her a billionaire.
- Terry_Roll 5y agoI think she is worth about £350 million private wealth but the British Monarchy as an entity is worth about £70billion so a lot more than Putin's reported £18billion. The Queen is reportedly also able to spend 15% of the Crown Estate which holds about about £10billion in land assets. Prince Philip was paid half a million a year by Govt and the Queen is paid £65million a year. https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/royals/queen-elizabeth-net-worth-royal-family-wealth-money-a4260986.html https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/royals/queen-elizabeth-ne... On the point of power, she is the law in the UK, as head of state she is the top, so whilst she has never exercised her powers to cancel Govt, she has the legal authority to do this. She also receives weekly updates from not only the Prime Minister, but she also gets weekly updates from the heads of the arm forces, security services and other heads of public entities. So when considering her Royal Advisors, these are perhaps best seen as a form of long running Shadow Govt not to be confused with the Govt opposition parties, so she can influence govt overtly and covertly, in much the same way as a teacher might make a passing remark to a pupil, or another person in a position of authority making a comment to an inferior. Its subtle but right there on display, with nothing to hide because people dont recognise the psychological Obedience to Authority.
- kerneloftruth 5y ago
- bushbaba 5y agoAlso tells China they can go get Taiwan without retaliation from the US.
- 323 5y agoIt's a symbolic thing. > It is extremely rare for the U.S. to sanction a sitting world leader, and the Kremlin had previously said it would consider sanctions on Putin himself to be a de facto severing of relations between the U.S. and Russia. https://www.axios.com/putin-russia-ukraine-sanctions-82883e89-4e52-4ea0-be05-581f730a3631.html https://www.axios.com/putin-russia-ukraine-sanctions-82883e8...
- lamontcg 5y agoSeems like it sends a message that we have a problem with these particular guys, and we'd prefer to be talking to people representing Russia who aren't these particularly guys, however that might happen.
- jmyeet 5y agoIt's unknown how rich Vladimir Putin is exactly. It's suspected he may be the richest person on Earth with a net worth in excess of $200 billion however. Sanctions against Russia are completely ineffective because the US and the EU are unwilling to include things that would actually hurt Russia, namely access to the financial system (ie SWIFT), energy exports (because Germany in particular is dependent on Russian natural gas, the assets held by Russian kleptocrats). On the security front, the EU woulld never accept Ukraine as a NATO member and the US won't put troops in Ukraine because that would put nuclear powers in direct conflict. So given no effective sanction options and no military options, the US and the EU should've realized the only way to defuse this situation was to negotiate. Yet Biden categorically ruled out the possibility of formally refusing to admit Ukraine to NATO, something that was never going to happen anyway. This situation bears some similarity to the US and Japan pre-WW2 actually. The US moved to block Japanese access to oil. That made war all but inevitable. I'm not saying the US was wrong there but it's just a consequence of that policy. LIkewise, leaving the door open to an anti-Russian military alliance expanding to the borders of Russia put Putin in a corner. Putin is still in the wrong here, straight up. But the options are to deescalate or World War Three. Given the invasion it's not much harder to negotiate out of this but what other option is there? One thing I will say is that on the issue of seizing assets of Russian kleptocrats, real estate has long been a way of hiding money in developed countries. London real estate in particular is awash with Russian money. Maybe it's time we end anonymous ownership of property.
- vkou 5y ago> US won't put troops in Ukraine because that would put nuclear powers in direct conflict. That's the reason it won't put troops in now (and the reason anyone asking for that now is insane), but that wasn't the reason it couldn't put troops in 4 months ago. Note that Russia is about to border NATO across its entire eastern border. This puts two nuclear powers directly staring eachother down at a border. If Russia grows truculent over, say, Estonia, it's unlikely that the US response will be withdrawing troops from it.
- frogblast 5y ago> So given no effective sanction options and no military options, the US and the EU should've realized the only way to defuse this situation was to negotiate. Yet Biden categorically ruled out the possibility of formally refusing to admit Ukraine to NATO, something that was never going to happen anyway. You undermine your own argument. Ukraine's admission was never going to happen anyway, and everyone knows it. Putin also knows it. So that isn't why he is invading. Arguments about NATO membership or repressed Russian speaking minorities and anything else (you get different justifications for the war depending on where you are in the world...) are fig leafs to exploit people's existing opinions of particular parties (in your case, about the US throwing its weight around). The reality is far simpler: Putin wants the Ukraine personally. His own private reasons are irrelevant. He wants it. And he has the will and capability to take it. And so he is doing so. I'm going to pick one one part of your statement in particular: > US and the EU should've realized the only way to defuse this situation was to negotiate Putin wants Ukraine. Negotiation of any kind was never going to prevent this invasion, unless the concession surrendering without a fight and having Putin install a government of its choice.
- olliej 5y agoI’m sure this will have a significant impact on the person who choose to start a war for the hell of it. A person who routinely murders or detains people who oppose him, even those in other countries.
- pshirshov 5y agoWell, I wanted to see this for years. Not like I'm satisfied though, what's happening there is an unimaginable crime.
- Natsu 5y agoWhat surprised me the most was that Biden's response was basically that he'd talk about it in the morning with world leaders [1] and not something like let's enact tonight plans we made during the time we were warning that this was going to happen. [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/02/23/statement-by-president-biden-on-russias-unprovoked-and-unjustified-attack-on-ukraine/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
- rodneyzeng 5y agoWall Street had some interests against this plan, but it seems they have agreed about it.
- jkmcf 5y agoIn the last 30 years I can’t recall a single time sanctions have worked.
- basementcat 5y agoMight be just outside your threshold but the divestment campaign against South Africa is credited with helping to end the system of Apartheid. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinvestment_from_South_Africa https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinvestment_from_South_Afr...
- elp 5y agoThe disinvestment campaign did very little except transfer ownership of some of the largest companies in the country to South Africans and I would assume the bulk of that would have ended up in the hands of the politically connected. Sanctions also didn't do much. There was a thriving market for goods from overseas. Even now more than 30 years later there's a tradition of giving your relatives a list of things to buy when they travel internationally. Sanctions probably indirectly hurt poor South Africans but never anyone politically connected. What really hurt and forced the Apartheid government to start seeing sense was the IMF ending all loans. http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-4C3-84-african_activist_archive-a0b2g5-a_12419.pdf http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-4C3-84-africa... I think the Swift banking system ban proposal for Russia would be more likely to work.
- gutitout 5y agoBan SWIFT get CISP. I wonder how printing USD will look then.
- jaredklewis 5y agoWhether they “work” depends on the goal I suppose. If the goal is to get misbehaving countries or leaders to change their behavior, I’m not aware of any examples, not matter how far back we look in history, where they worked. Plenty of examples where sanctions are imposed and the behavior gets worse. If the goal is to weaken a country (which could be a good thing, if that country is belligerent), I think there are plenty examples of that working. It can have the unfortunate side effect of also impoverishing the ordinary citizens of the sanctioned nation.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- john_moscow 5y agoAs someone who's been tracking Russian politics due to being born there some time ago, the recent wave of sanctions are starting to have a rather undesired effect. Roughly since 2008 (Georgian war), Russia has been actively cutting many economic ties that could have been used as a point of leverage. They have a knock-off debit card system [0], dedicated Internet censorship agency [1], and have been expelling Western civic organizations and trying to ban various European goods (e.g. french cheese). This absolutely does reduce the life quality of an average Russian, but it is done in a slow controlled way, and spun the right way with massive propaganda, so people don't call out bullshit. And the West has less and less leverage over Russia with each step like this. There is an unexploited Achilles heel though - Russian elites commonly send their spouses and children to live in the West, because it provides a safe haven against the internal Russian power struggle. Forcing those to return back to Russia would very quickly change incentives on many levels, but I cannot envision the West doing it. Not when it has become the safe harbor for dirty money made in poorer countries. Otherwise a random bullshit job in the First World wouldn't pay >100x the rate of the guy how assembles iPhones somewhere in the "growing economies". [0] https://mironline.ru/ https://mironline.ru/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Service_for_Supervision_of_Communications,_Information_Technology_and_Mass_Media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Service_for_Supervisio...
- stjohnswarts 5y agoI don't think anyone who actually thinks past headlines doesn't realize that this will hurt the Russian populace more than it will Putin, but they're really one of the pressure points to getting him to stop his war crimes against Ukraine. I think it's a multifront effort without actually firing bullets and the best tool that we have.
- 323 5y ago> but I cannot envision the West doing it Give it a few weeks. Remember how Nord Stream 2 was untouchable just a month ago. If you consider the 7 stages of grief, the West is in 1-Shock or 2-Denial stage. 3-Anger is just starting.
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- BenoitP 5y agoHow about Gerhard Schröder? I'm not very up to date about his role at the boards of Rosneft and Gazprom, but I'm pretty sure he must have had an influence somewhere in the current situation (although indirectly, and he probably was played)
- gutitout 5y agoAmazing point. What was his role in shutting down nuclear? (If any)