Sanctions are a dirty western political trick just so the politicians here can say "we did something".
Sanctions are useless!
Do you know who they affect? Regular people ONLY. Who have no say in politics anymore over there (elections are rigged).
Facts:
1. Top Russian government officials transferred their assets to Europe / USA over the years. They have their families and kids living abroad and going to European/American universities.
2. They have assets offshore not affected by russian currency fluctuations. Most have dual citizenships.
If you want to hit them hard: arrest their wealth offshore; kick out their families from usa/europe.
Why is that not happening? Why are we still allowing illegal wealth transfer through use of offshores?
Why is prime-minister of Russia allowed to own a $20mil apartment in London?
You want to arrest all assets of powerful Russians offshore? I hope you are ready to face pissed off Shell or Mitsubishi CEOs, after their assets in Russia are arrested too.
In addition, you would be playing how Russian government want you: they told their oligarchs last year, that the time to repatriate everything is now (2015). You would be awarding those who listened to that advice and penalize those who didn't. What could possibly go wrong? ;)
of course its not that simple. simply because this is how corruption operates in the west as well. they use similar channels and ways to hide/legitimize questionable profits.
The point is to ruin Russia to the point they become North Korea and cannot afford the upkeep for it's military.
Regular people? Boo-fucking-hoo. Maybe if they get off their asses and stop the Putin's insanity...but who are we kidding?
People there dream of good old soviet imperium
Ruining russian military? You mean rusting tanks from the 60's or expired rockets from cold war era? The military can not compete with the west anymore.
People there stopped dreaming in the 90's when the ugly side of "new Russia" showed its face. As i said election process is rigged, many folks there want change. please, do not believe 75%+ public support ratings spewed out by state propaganda machines. they are simply untrue.
Lots of folks are ashamed of conflict with Ukraine but unfortunately there is no political and social platform that allows to do anything about this. Anything thats against the state agenda gets nipped in the bud.
I've actually been to Russia, through Petersburg, all the way to Solovetsky island, spent around a month there. I'd say that sure, people are nice on a personal level, but some topics were off limits because it would end badly.
While i know that the russian military has issues with equipment that is literally falling apart, let's not kid ourselves the west doesn't have similar issues.
ICBM's don't need any contemporary electronics to be perfectly deadly.
And let's not forget that Russia right now is actively developing modern weapon systems perfectly capable of taking on anything the west has to offer, some of them are slated to be markedly better (For e.g. PAK FA, if they actually manage to produce it in meaningful numbers, makes the F-coat-hanger-abortion-35 completely irrelevant) And air power is disproportionally effective in conventional war.
So, my point is - if Russia literally goes bankrupt, it can no longer afford precision tools, asic chips, expertise, modern milling machines, exotic materials, etc.
This is not cold war, where you could literally hand solder computers. (Yes, I know no one put's 22nm chips in 5th gen planes, but the point still stands)
>Ruining russian military? You mean rusting tanks from the 60's or expired rockets from cold war era? The military can not compete with the west anymore.
It's still strong enough to grab Crimea, support the rebels in Eastern Ukraine, and intervene very effectively to rescue the regime in Syria. I for one would be very glad if its military finally collapsed.
On a deeper level, the Russian people have never figured out how to organize themselves into a modern, democratic nation, and they love authoritarian rulers like Putin. I mean, look what happened when they had some freedom under Yeltsin, they blew it completely.
Igor Shuvalov, officially worth half a billion dollars. Has properties all over europe, his wife flies their dogs (corgis) all over europe for dog shows ... on a private bombardier business jet... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3695649/Vladimir-Put...
nice to be a pro-P. politician in Russia... sanctions somehow skipped out on this poor bloke...
..so it is likely to be a nothing.