The Russian economy (catch all)

[Dayuhan]

See Dayuhan--this is the problem--if you had been following my comments and those of JMA then you would have seen the red lines and the suggestions.

I do read most of the posts, though given the sheer volume and occasional incoherence it's always possible to miss something. I've seen little or nothing that indicates a specific suggestion. From JMA the closest I saw was a presumably facetious recommendation that the Ukraine be provided with nuclear weapons.

I am for one really waiting for the 90 day bank lines of credit to be halted and the halting of sales of stocks for all Russian oligarch companies as well as the halting of all Sovereign fund bonds as well as Russian company bonds sales.

I've said from the start that the response should be multilateral, economic, and graduated, so we're not so far off being on the same page there. I try not to suggest specific economic sanctions, because I don't have the access to detailed data or the number crunching expertise to determine the cost/benefit relations of specific possibilities. If it were up to me I'd have had a team of experts on the Russian economy serving up lists of possibilities with projected impacts for each. I assume that this has been done.

Then the red line is seriously stated to Putin.

Which specific red line do you mean?

Only when he clearly sees the financial abyss will he pull back as he cannot regardless of how much propaganda he throws at the Russian population ---there are way to many of the middle class that sees , hears, and understands the west from their many trips/vacations and they fully understand the propaganda---Putin has totally established a dictatorship using "legal democratic" means and they are now afraid to say anything out of fear of landing in prison. Just listen to the voices of the young Russian generation that is here in Berlin in large numbers---anti Putin to a person--but then totally nationalist Russians in their love of their country. There is the disconnect.

Remember what drove them in 1994---the realization that there was another economic developmental/growth model out they and they knew they wanted a part of it. Yes the average yearly income of 7K has been risen to 14K but it has been on the credit pump from the west and there still is no real serious internal development that can sustain Russia when the raw resource turn down---then what? Remember Russia is still the same old Soviet style state capitalism just with "former communist" now "democratic" oligarchs.

Just look at the food sanctions ban--it did not really hurt the west---actually Europeans were startled by his remarks as they know it will hit the Russian consumer far harder---but Putin needs to drive his population backwards in order to survive the isolation that is now there---the problem is and he totally forgot--Russia is tied to the globalized world thus cannot drift back into economic isolation without truly damaging his own economy for the next 20 years.

Putin is struggling to get reelected nothing more nothing less and if it means crossing with little green men into the Ukraine in the end he will do it---the question is just how hard will the west push back on against a ethnic national imperialist bent on reestablishing the Russian Empire?

I find it interesting that you say "Putin has totally established a dictatorship" and a few paragraphs later "Putin is struggling to get reelected". That seems to be a bit of a disconnect; can you explain?

I agree that Putin has backed himself into a corner: his proxies are failing despite very overt support, and now all his options are bad. This is a common problem in proxy war, as the US well knows: if your proxies can't do the job you're left without good options.

The question now is how to get him to take the bad option we prefer: not invading. Economic threats are part of that. So is undercutting the pretext: the last thing we need right now is a bunch of dead ethnic Russian civilians.

He has already crossed two serious red lines and that has been signaled to him a large number of times and yet he does not respond---and all AP wants to do is what----to negotiate?

AP will have to respond to that; as I said before I don't see much point in negotiating without a solid supply of carrots and sticks at hand. The question is what the most effective carrots and sticks would be, and how and when they should be deployed.