Russia - threadbanned users in OP

These are short-term "tricks" really. In the medium and long-term the rouble is under significant pressure.

The Vatican bought peanuts worth. The G7 countries have rejected paying in roubles, so there's a game of chicken going on. Russia gets about 400mm eur per day from gas sales to the EU, as much as it's going to hurt EU countries (especially Germany) and create an energy crisis, it's going to hurt Russia much more. Personally I suspect they'll come to some deal in the short-term.

Do you think EU should capitulate to Putin breaking the contracts and pay in roubles?

Oh, but the Russian civilians are responsible for the war. They are the ones who have enabled this situation with their support for Putin. I just hope western governments have woken up to the reality of the way Russia is. We need to have a long term plan to make sure they would find it difficult to do this again. Losing a lot of equipment and troops will certainly help in this direction, but it needs to be followed up with longer term strategy from western governments:

• Move away from buying Gas and Oil from Russia.
• Facilitate the demographic decline by encouraging highly educated young people to migrate to the EU.
• Discourage FDI (either officially or unofficially) to slow/disrupt Russian economic growth.
• Make it difficult for them to re-arm by restricting access to certain technologies, computer chips and other things.
• Create an EU defensive military that would work with NATO (but not in overseas missions).
• Help rebuild a democratic Ukraine which would also be a source of stable energy supplies.

We certainly can't change the fact that we have a malignant neighbour, but we can make it difficult for it to cause problems in the future.

Yeah, but what's he going to say? "We got no food. We got no ammo. OUR GENERALS' HEADS ARE FALLIN' OFF!"?

If Western countries were to pay for Russian oil and gas in Roubles, then somewhere they must first pay € or $ for these Roubles. The sellers of said Roubles are likely to be Russian financial or trading entities of some sort (no sane Western institution would hold significant stocks of Roubles).

So directly or indirectly Russian entities acquire € or $ for oil/gas. There might be a very short time lag when Western importers hold depreciating Roubles. I assume that oil and gas are prices in $; it would be insane for the Russians to denominate their exports in terms of their own rubbish currency.

So maybe there is no harm in giving in to Vlad on this one, as the whole thing is either window-dressing, macho-nonsense, or sheer financial illiteracy.

Okay but do you think the EU should capitulate to Putin's demand and pay in roubles?

"They can survive without euros, but we will really struggle without their resources."

Modern Russia can't really persist without export revenue. Half a billion dollars a day is significant revenue, not to be sniffed at, certainly not by a country locked in a very expensive war and an even more expensive economic crisis.

This explains the lunacy of it. It is not too difficult to understand.

I'd rather they not kill civillians in Crimea and just hold a referendum and say 'hey guys, we are going to be joining the EU and Ukraine is going to become a a democratic and significant world power unhindered by bad behavour and constant western sanctions. Do you guys want to be part of that or would you like your children's life opportunities to be ever restricted and to stay under Putins thumb?

If the alternative is no gas (EU serious recession) then yes, they should pay in roubles.

Its significant revenue but already most of their usual imports from EU are banned so you'd wonder what use the use for euros is at all - at least if EU countries have to buy roubles to pay for gas, it raises value of the rouble giving russia more purchasing power from other markets (China, India etc).

If Russian gas is shut off to Europe we slide into economic recession - german gas reserves are so low that they have already acknowledged demand shedding will be necessary to stretch the reserves enough.

If entire EU denies Russian gas imports, the equivalent in LNG imports is around 130 LNG ships per month. Thats most of the worldwide fleet of LNG class ships.

They wouldn't be allowed a say in Crimea like Putin will allow it . remember last time 8 years ago 110% of the population voted to rejoin Russia , despite less than half the actual population casting a vote.

Turn Crimea into a artillery range and hit it every day of the year ,

What's the point in saying it's ok for Russia to bomb ukraine back to the stone age but the Ukrainians shouldn't return the favor

He's a fringe loonbag, and your veil is constantly slipping.

Oh well the G7 stated they aren't going to break the contracts and pay in roubles, if they stick to that and Putin doesn't blink, economic recession and energy crisis it is then.

fun times ahead so

article is behind a paywall - is the 5k figure civilians only or include Ukrainian national guard?

Are the people in Crimea , Ukrainian citizens or Russian citizens in the eyes of Ukraine?

so you want Ukraine to flatten Crimea and the people it considers it’s own citizens?

you think that Ukraine should flatten Crimea so the citizens of Crimea see Russia can’t protect them and will change their tune and push to be with Ukraine ? The country that will have supposedly flattened them?

you need to go to sleep, sounds like you have been up all night on the vodka

Ethically, it's not cool to kill innocent civilians of any nation, first of all, which would almost certainly happen in an indiscriminate bombing/shelling campaign such as Russia have conducted against Mariupol. Secondly, doing so would muddy the moral waters of the conflict and promote cynicism in the West toward the conflict, potentially depriving the Ukrainians of much needed support. Finally, if you thought the Russians have been brutal in their campaign so far, it would seem a bit quaint compared to what they would do if they had this moral justification of protecting their own citizens from bombardment.