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Russia bans coupon payments to foreigners holding ruble bonds
- axiosgunnar 5y agoFrom the POV of outside of Russia… this is Russia defaulting on its sovereign debts, no?
- belter 5y agoYes, but it's for the moment called a technical default.
- axiosgunnar 5y agoThanks
- neilwilson 5y agoFrom the POV of people in Russia suspending access to international reserves is the West defaulting on its sovereign debt. Those were liabilities owned and owed to the Russians. The West expects to get away with it, why not Russia? And of course with all this defaulting on liabilities going on, those other countries in debt to the West are looking on to see what happens. The answer will be less than most fear. As is usual in these situations the fear is a greater behaviour control than the reality.
- axiosgunnar 5y ago> The West expects to get away with it, why not Russia? One of these two so casually mentioned in the same sentence is literally bombing civilians. If bombing civilians will not stop you from defending a murderous regime with whataboutisms, what will?
- swampthinker 5y agoSo do Americans, that argument doesn’t hold water.
- axiosgunnar 5y agoWhat if I’m not American, why bring them up? The government of Rwanda also killed civilians. Does that excuse the Russians?
- mkoryak 5y agoI have family in Russia who currently works for an American agricultural equipment company. These moves do not bode well for them and it's a shame. I would be upset indeed if I lost my job not because of anything I did but because of an unpopular war on the other side of the country started by a dictator
- FrozenSynapse 5y agoto me it seems that it's not such an unpopular war in Russia, mostly because of propaganda on TV, but still, not enough people are against Putin.
- twoxproblematic 5y agoWar is looking pretty popular here too, because of propaganda on TV.
- nextaccountic 5y agoWhat about Internet sources? Are Russian people living in a bubble?
- helge9210 5y agoOnly 5% of population speak at least one foreign language. You can call it a bubble.
- muzika 5y agoYes seems like most Russians support this “operation” to “free” Ukrainian people from their nazi government :(
- tiahura 5y agoPeople get the government they deserve. When Russians got fed up in ‘91, they knew what to do.
- rscho 5y ago> People get the government they deserve You've clearly never lived outside of a cozy democracy. Also, this is incredibly contemptuous.
- kspacewalk2 5y agoI've lived outside of a cozy democracy. When its regime tried to go full authoritarian in 2013/2014, my countrymen got their Molotov cocktails ready. "People get the government they deserve" is spot on. I'd also like to add that every single person pays the price for the actions of their government, regardless whether they choose to care who rules them or choose to disregard it (which is an equally conscious choice with equal consequences).
- rscho 5y agoMolotov cocktails? Seriously? Yeah, you go try that in the streets of Moscow and see how it goes...
- tiahura 5y agoBecause he’d be alone. If 300,000 Moscovites stood shoulder to shoulder, there would be a different outcome. They don’t, therefore they get Putin.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- helge9210 5y agoIt goes like this (based on experience in Kyiv): first Police burns, than they shoot back, than you shoot back until there is no police left. Then elections.
- nine_zeros 5y agoI just don't get it. What's stopping a hundred truckers to blockade Kremlin, with the help of opposition parties?
- jayspell 5y agoThat didn't work in Canada, a supposedly liberal democracy. Trudeau enacted emergency powers and seized peoples bank accounts, what do you imagine Putin would do?
- nine_zeros 5y agoBank accounts in Russia are already lost. And Russians can regain their accounts by ousting Putin and cronies.
- axiosgunnar 5y ago> a supposedly liberal democracy Note that while I oppose the seizing of people‘s bank accounts by Trudeau with every fibre of my body, this whataboutism is easily defused: Using these kind of soft power moves (basically doing things in the non-meat space) is precisely why Canada is still a liberal democracy. Even if you became the state‘s enemy #1, the worst that happens is… your bank account is temporarily disabled, overtly (not a clandestine operation, so you can challenge it legally, protest it, etc). This is completely different from Russia, where you just… disappear (ie you get killed).
- kazinator 5y agoThese truckers just illegally parked for several weeks, made a bit of noise, and some of them accosted passers-by. I watched some aftermath footage of the vacated streets of Ottawa, the day after they were cleared out. There was no sign of any damage. Not a broken window or anything. I didn't see garbage on the ground. The commentators of the news clips I watched, though decidedly biased against the protesters, didn't remark upon anything like that.
- helge9210 5y agoThere are no opposition parties in Russia. On the topic of the war the main sentiment is "We can do it again" (Можем повторить). When prominent leader of "opposition" Navalny was asked about returning Crimea to Ukraine after Putin, answer was "It is not a sandwich to pass it back and forth".