Russian firms rush to open Chinese bank accounts
So you can&#x27;t put boots on the ground because that starts World War Three. That leaves you with sanctions. The problem with sanctions is they&#x27;re a form of colletive punishment and they disproportionately affect poor people. As evidence of this, Russian banks are running out of foreign currency reserves and bank accounts and Putin has signed executive orders to force all payments to be converted into rubles (80% of them at least) and rubles have a massive inflation problem so people who have deliberately held USD are going to get hosed.<p>But what else do you do? Particularly against a powerful country that can produce its own food and energy. The effects are going to be predictably limited.<p>Any sanctions are going to be a profit incentive for someone else to circumvent them. We&#x27;ve seen this time and time again with oil embargoes in the Middle East, layers of Hong Kong companies to bypass North Korea sanctions [1] and so on. It&#x27;s clear at this point that China has decided to stay neutral, so much so that a story came out yesterday where the Chinese asked the Russians to delay the invasion until after the Olympics [2].<p>Other countries will serve their primary interests and weaken any sanctions, such as the UK bowing to banks to quietly give a 30 day exclusion to Russian banks [3].<p>So the rich and powerful will be squeezed temporarily but will manage to bypass a lot of restrictions through intermediaries that may well include China and other regimes, all while things are probably going to get real bad for normal Russians who don&#x27;t agree with the invasion and can&#x27;t do anything about it either.<p>I would at least consider it a positive if the developed world started clamping down on oligarchs hiding money in luxury real estate.<p>All of this is known and predictably ineffective, which is why it was so important to at least try and avoid this situation diplomatically. It&#x27;s now so much more difficult now that Putin has royally screwed up and completely miscalculated with an unthinkable, unjustifiable and unwinnable invasion. But this will end diplomatically regardless at some point because the alternative is nuclear war. It&#x27;s just that Ukraine is going to get wrecked in the meantime.<p>The US would never accept a hostile military in its backyard. It almost provoked nuclear war in Cuba 60 years ago in exactly that situation. This idea that Russia should just accept a hostile military alliance (from their perspective) on their doorstep is completely inconsistent and insane.<p>And before anyone brings up self-determination, let me ask where that principle is when it comes to Palestine.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;how-hong-kong-makes-evading-north-korea-sanctions-easier-1521228390" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;how-hong-kong-makes-evading-nor...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;03&#x2F;02&#x2F;us&#x2F;politics&#x2F;russia-ukraine-china.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;03&#x2F;02&#x2F;us&#x2F;politics&#x2F;russia-ukrain...</a><p>[3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;inews.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;government-accused-of-absurd-sanctions-loophole-after-giving-russian-bank-customers-30-days-to-wind-down-assets-1490017" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;inews.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;government-accused-of-absurd-sancti...</a>