Enterpreneurs are smarter then polititians, as it turned out

Russia has its own currency that is entirely controlled by its government. It pays for the war by printing rubles. It produces its own weapons from its own natural resources and with its own workforce. It does not need to trade with anybody to do that, no more than the US needed international trade to finance its war in Iraq.

The real question is how Russia affords to have a share of its human and other resources devoted to its war effort instead of more productive endeavors.

I'm not surprised at those countries without a conscience, but I didn't expect to see Spain there.

That's not true. Russia has massive chip shortages so it can't really make drones, airplanes, tanks, etc.

Edit: Those chips would normally be imported from Taiwan.

Taiwan is definitely getting invaded, and soon…

The UK and Sweden are the true believers taking hits to their economy for the war effort while the likes of NATO allies such as Spain and Turkey completely undermine them and render it a pointless sacrifice.

Spain, Netherlands and Belgium have large port facilities for oil and gas throughput. My guess what is likely happening is that goods get transported further into the remaining EU states but are not officially registered as sourced from Russia, creating a semi-black market. That, plus filling the national gas reserves, has driven up imports.

I wouldn't look into it too much. If we get an oil pricecap and maybe also a soft winter the values of Russian imports will plummit.

It's not about whether countries have a conscience. Countries are not persons. It all depends on what type of goods the trade with certain countries is focussed on, in what way these goods are affected by the sanctions and what type of wiggle room individual companies in these countries have and what risk they are willing to take. And here the ownership structure of the companies plays a role, too.

In general one should not read too much into such a diagram. There is a real problem only if the sanctions are circumvented. And, of course, maybe it shows that we should extend the sanctions to other type of goods.

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Most countries have little to no reason to care more about Ukraine than they care about Yemen. Yemen is a longer lasting and more bloody conflict where Saudi Arabia is trying to install a puppet regime but nobody really gives a fuck and nobody is sanctioning Saudi Arabia because it is too important to sanction.

Add to that much higher prices of fuel and gas, would result in higher import numbers, but not in an actual increase of the products imported.

US - Surprised Pikachu meme

not even remotely true. their tank production completely stopped and the only line they've been able to start are ancient tanks. they can't even build ladas and resorted to restarting their moskvich production line, if that says anything. they have raw resources, but war weapons need technology that russia imports, but now, can't, due to sanctions

Link to a page behind a paywall, not cool..

Taiwan is a fortress, China tried to come up with an invasion plan back before the conflict froze but pretty much every plan was deemed too suicidal. Now China could try to overwhelm Taiwan's AA and try to siege down Taiwan using missiles but China's AA systems are about as shitty as Russia's and Taiwan's are pretty beefy compared to Ukraine's.

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Why don’t other nations call these guys out? And the worst offenders profiteering off the suffering of Ukraine should be subject to a backlash of some sort, or maybe a boycott. India, looking at you!

^ and ^^ are correct

I read a good article about all this in The Economist a few weeks ago. I don't remember all the details, but the long and short is:

• sanctions/cutoffs for oil & gas haven't hurt because of higher prices, Russia is bringing in more revenue
• but I think more countries are going to stop taking Russian oil, and their total export earnings may fall on that
• some things will take a bit longer to bite, but will bite hard; example = can't get replacement parts for airplanes, will gradually grind Aeroflot to a near halt

It's not a sacrifice to cut economic ties with Russia, it's just good business. These decreases and increases in trade, they are not the same goods. It would be a very different picture if you looked at petrochemicals and everything else separately, changes in oil and gas prices distort the picture significantly.

All the flak that US gets all the time, I am pissed how other countries are aiding this war and they aren’t held accountable for anything.

countries don't have conscience, countries have interests. as soon as you start shifting your mentality towards that, you'll get a wider mental picture of international relations

It's the Western countries depending on BRICS, not the other way around.

Exactly! Boo! Hiss!

Ladas are completely irrelevant to their war effort. OTOH, the information that Russia can't produce tanks came from Ukraine back in March. The latest information from Ukraine is:

>Uralvagonzavod, one of the largest tank producers in the world, has weathered sanctions against Russia and kept producing cheap tanks, which are now used to invade Ukraine.

Which sort of makes sense. The idea that Russia would make their tank production dependent on Taiwanese chips sounds very very unlikely.

Can't see it. Not beautiful.

Semantics. People collectively vote in leadership who either do or do not demonstrate care for their citizens and those of other countries.

A lot of this data can be regarded as unreliable as a lot of hawkish anti-Russia countries are buying Russian commodities indirectly through other countries.

well there's something missing in their part chain, as they've been sending ancient tanks in the last couple months, and even getting more from belarus

They're a country of over 100 million people and one of the largest arms producers and exporters in the world. They can make the parts they're missing. IMO this is all just wishful thinking.

and you forget their top down corruption and negligence causing a lack of maintenance. they've been falling apart (listen to the recent intercepted calls from the last two weeks, they're all complaining about it), not to mention three of their jets crashed IN RUSSIA, due to failures, likely resulting from all of the above

and i'm stating a fact, go look at all the footage from the last 2-3 months. the tanks are getting older and older. they can't even get uniforms for the conscripts but you think it's wishful thinking to believe they're starting to run out of newer tanks?

they will always have a set number minimum they'll keep on hand for the defense of their borders, so running out doesn't mean russia has zero new tanks. it means they're running out of the ones they're willing to lose