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Originally Posted by RainMaker
Also if you want my answer on how to actually stop Russia, it would be an economic siege. Placing sanctions that actually have some teeth. Cutting the country off from the rest of the world. That leads to internal turmoil and likely the best opportunity to rid the world of Putin and put in a leader that is friendly to the West.
But we won't do that because it'll hurt real estate prices in Miami or whatever. And Europe won't do it because they built their energy policy around Russia.
It's why these scare tactics over Russia are laughable. If we truly thought they were a threat to our safety, we'd engage them directly. We'd actually place real sanctions on them. The fact that we don't shows we don't view them as much of a threat, just an opportunity to line the pockets of some defense companies.
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We've sanctioned them pretty heavily and it's having a significant impact. It's just not being felt economically in the short term because they've spent years isolating themselves from the global market. They've had nearly a million people flee the country, and many were educated. On top of that they've boosted the economy by spending on the war machine. Their defense spending is projected to be 40% of their budget in 2024 and that's not something that's sustainable.
The military spending and the fact that India is buying up all of their gas and justifying it by saying it keeps world energy prices stable are the only things propping their economy up. They're essentially going back to the old Soviet Union approach to the economy and that ended in disaster. Household consumption is down 2%, they're sitting at 15% interest rates, and foreign investment is down massively.
So yeah, if you just look at the superficial number it looks like the sanctions aren't doing anything, but they've abandoned all long-term economical investment to try to get them through this war with Ukraine and they've lost a significant number of their educated population in doing so.