I have exclusive rights of calling him names

That's actually not true. For Europe/NATO/the global geopolitical order, it makes one hell of a difference if Russia takes Ukraine easily in 2-4 months (scenario if there had been no Western support for Ukraine) while sustaining few losses, or if they eventually take it after 2 years of grinding which leaves their military and economy thoroughly depleted, to the point that they'll not be able to wage further wars of aggression for a long time. So even in case that Russia eventually "wins" this war by capturing all of Ukraine - which is far from a given!!! - the West still has a vested interest in making it as difficult and costly as possible.

All I was saying in my previous post is that it was asinine to engage in energy embargos which would predictably inflict greater damage on ourselves than Russia. I'm actually supportive of a narrow embargo on high-tech products, but it was always foolish to think that no longer selling McDonalds and Ikea in Russia would make any difference, or that weaponizing Western-controlled institutions like SWIFT would help bring neutral countries in Asia and Africa to our side.

1: I was talking from the prespective of ukraine. For america/nato the more russians die the better. And they shouldn't get odessa. This is all they care about, any number of dead ukranians is irrelevant.

2:All sanctions are counterproductive. Ban medical stuff to russia -> india gets market share. Ban air industry -> russia develop theirs/gets more from china etc

Ill give a fin-tech example. Not long ago all russians had visas/mastercard, after 2014 and sanctions russians made their own system and now 90%+ of russians use MIR cards which are also circulating in many more countries..

You can't sanction russia, it doesnt really work and long term only backfires.

This post was edited by ownyaah on Aug 4 2022 09:51am

Good point. I actually read a few articles in regards to this. These are actually starting to crop up and be accepted in more and more countries outside the ex-soviet bloc. Vietnam, South Korea, Turkey, etc.

Visa and Mastercard are still working in Russia. You just can't use it outside. MIR is shit. It doesn't work in Turkey and Saudi Arabia despite it was announced, not to mention the rest of the world.

The 2022 exit of Visa and MasterCard from the Russian market resulted in increased use of the Russian Mir payment system in the Russian Federation and beyond at a time when their combined penetration accounted for 70% of the Russian consumer credit card market.

As of April 1, 2022, the number of Mir-compliant cards in circulation exceeded 125 million, an increase of 10.3% from the previous quarter.

The more money they get, the more can be spent on improvement+reach

This post was edited by ownyaah on Aug 4 2022 01:02pm

It doesn't work like this, mate. You can have either MIR or Visa/Mastercard. You can issue a new card, even ten of them straight away, but issuing a MIR means you can use widely, use it, for example for Samsung Pay, or MIR Pay. NFC payments with your phone, while Visa and Mastercard can be used only as plastic.

There's such a thing as SBP by MIR. We are paying using a QR-code, just like in China. Mostly we are not using cash. Up to 80% of payments are going through credit cards or internet/NFC/QR. Visa and Mastercard are losing possibly 2nd or 3rd market in the world.

I'm looking at the present, not hindsight. Once Russia decided to invade, Ukraine really was left with no choice but to fight claw, tooth, and nail.

There was no other option