Sorry, I may have misread you then. I thought you were saying that asking young people to oppose Putin is like asking Americans to protest against the founding fathers.
I don’t like this kind of fear-mongering.
God made the world perfect and interconnected, and if you cut off a country that is snot even in top 10 biggest economies of the world the economy collapses. Especially that agriculture part. Come on.
I meant it is so in general for Russians. Even a lot of younger people are very involved in the cult of personality, but naturally there are many more fans of the West among younger people.
Quaro
6540
A bargain for the world really, and back of the envelope it’s only a fraction of what we floated during Covid. It’s kind of shocking how small Russia apart from gas is.
Lurb
6541
The funny thing about the Z thing is seeing all those silly fascists so happy with their crooked half swastika when for the rest of the world it pretty much means “get your free tank here”…
I don’t think it’s fearmongering, really. You can have a “small” economy but still form a large part of a particular market. Ukraine and Russia, for instance, produce most of the world’s sunflower oil between them. Which is bad news for Egypt:
There have already been stoppages at auto plants in Western Europe because of parts produced in Ukraine.
Sanctions are costly for the sanctioners (and for third countries) as well as the sanctionees. They may well be worth the cost, but you can’t pretend it doesn’t exist. That’s why there was so much talk early on in the EU about carving out exceptions for everybody’s pet industry.
That you don’t like something doesn’t make it true. If you feel he is wrong, feel free to refute him. I’d love for him to be wrong.
I do think there is definitely going to be a decoupling in the world economy over the next 10-20 years as the West decouples from Russia and China and vice versa. Neither will trust the other again.
Well, Suchkov works at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. I wouldn´t say he´s just another propaganda channel for the Kremlin but…
Just one example in his tweet history.
THREAD on #US, #Russia in #Syria:
1.This is getting serious:RUS Chief of Staff says US been preparing sabotage groups at Al Tanf to stage checmical attacks to serve as pretext to attack SYR. According to #Moscow, some of the subversive groups already transferred to #FSA positions
— Maxim A. Suchkov (@m_suchkov) March 17, 2018
Yeah, but is he wrong on this? This stuff can easily be fact checked by knowledgeable people. It’s hard to make up manufacturing data and get away with it.
I’m struggling to believe that closing off an economy the size and shape of Russia’s presents a problem an economy the size of the US and EU can’t solve. I think there is a petro cost / delivery problem, and a grain problem, and those are real, but I don’t think it goes much beyond that.
And besides, wars cost. Full stop. We’re going to have to pay whether we fight economically or physically or both. So we should. Hitler is currently invading Ukraine.
Aceris
6548
But the fact it’s Russian propaganda makes it probably false, or at the very least vastly overstated.
I would. It’s just targetted at western audiences rather than local ones.
My point is not about the facts, but the way it’s presented. The world is not governed by an administrative system. A lot of people will lose a lot of money and all that, but global food crisis just because of Ukraine and Russia sounds unbelievable.
If removing just 2 countries from the world economy does that - then what would happen to Russia after being cut off from most of the developed world?
Aceris
6551
That bit is real, it’s been getting some play in the western press. Hopefully food producers elsewhere can up production in the coming year. There might not be out-and-out crises, but certainly shortages.
Quaro
6552
If you imagine, Russia takes over the entire country tonight, I see no scenario where Ukrainian farmers are planting their fields and selling them on the market this season no matter what sanctions are in place or not. Russia’s going to have to keep 200,000 troops there just to maintain order and most of the workforce will flee or a fight.
One of the tweets:
10/ Semiconductors & computer chips are also interesting.
Today, #Russia accounts for 80 % of the market for sapphire substrates - thin plates made of artificial stone, which are used in opto- & microelectronics to build up layers of various materials, such as silicon.
— Maxim A. Suchkov (@m_suchkov) March 7, 2022
For sapphire substrates you need sapphires, you can mine them or make them:
Synthetic sapphire is also produced industrially from agglomerated aluminum oxide, sintered and fused (such as by hot isostatic pressing) in an inert atmosphere, yielding a transparent but slightly porous polycrystalline product.[54]
In 2003, the world’s production of synthetic sapphire was 250 tons (1.25 × 109 carats), mostly by the United States and Russia.[55][56] The availability of cheap synthetic sapphire unlocked many industrial uses for this unique material.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapphire#Applications
Yes, it´s just propaganda.
I mean, here’s an economic advisor to Zelensky saying there will be a global food crisis. Obviously he’s arguing that the invasion should stop rather than sanctions, but the point is that that the world’s economy and especially its food supply is highly interconnected, and often highly dependent on single countries for specific items.
Also, all of this is in a context where food and energy prices have already been rising rapidly. As the Egypt piece I linked above demonstrates, governments are going to have to figure out how to address these or they’re going to face major unrest if they haven’t already. Brent crude is at $125 today and the absolute, though not relative, movement in price is more than in the 70s crisis.
Lurb
6555
The local press here in my Spanish province had an article yesterday about how we have about 1/4 of our wheat fields unused as per EU quotas and farmers were already petitioning to lift them
spiffy
6556
Interestingly, from a diet perspective, wheat, barley, corn… that’s not great to go short on… but the world will be much better off for not consuming sunflower or rapeseed oil in the quantities it does, and the alternatives we might turn to if cost isn’t a factor, such as butter or lard, will do us fat westerners, who consume huge amount of processed foods, a lot of good. Silver linings for our gut, I guess.
And to be fair we should all eat less bread, as well. Again, us fat people, not the impoverished of the world, it will suck more for them.
