US Impose Sanctions, Russians laugh

another satisfied customer

hahaha, pure comedy.

WW3 Incoming. I hear Putin hates the blacks.

bye bye vacation outside of russia ...

i heard that crimea is pretty hot

no Kazantip this year...

Russia is so pissed NOT

Bullshit. He has a black belt in Judo.

I hear the next black belt he wants to get is made out of Obama's back skin

All kidding aside, this is getting a little uneasy

Only for the people from the list (there are 130 names right now). Actually they won't be really hurt with that because the usual places of their vacations (such as Seychelles and Maldives) are visa-free anyways.

Russian people said THANK YOU to Mr. Obama for helping them fighting corruption!
Why would any honest Russian politics keep their money somewhere outside of country? Where this money came from? lol

Putin should have done it the American way :

- Claim Crimea has WMD
- State that the people want to be freed ( fuck a referendum ... )
- Ukraine dictator runs rape room

Then he could have bombed the shit out of Crimea in the name of liberation ....

Only problem : he would have bombed his people, while the USA bombed brown people

Yes, we did. Magnitsky Act was an awesome thing too. Seriously.

question: 11 people were sanctioned, assets frozen. Do any of them have assets in the US?

State Dept: I don?t have that level of detail.

the "sanctions" so far are nothing more than warnings...

don't you guys realize that if things escalate, the "sanctions" could be applied to all Russian citizens/companies? then magically one day international wires could stop arriving, your paxum card could stop working, etc...

maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't you be completely fucked if that happens?

escalate? what country are we going to 'liberate' next?

Oh dear what a facepalm, americans need a reality check or some people are just naturally stupid?!

Russia is the world's 8th largest economy and EU's second largest retail market. Western banks have $242bn of exposure to Russia, compared with just $160bn of assets held by russians in the west.

reality check?

8th largest = 3% of world GDP = barely matter on the world scale...

so in theory west would lose 82B? that sounds like some huge number but that's fuck all...
- that's only 1/3rd of what one shitty company like walmart is worth...
- it's .3% of 30+T GDP that EU+US has...

and don't forget is ranking in sambo !

Not sure if you're a troll or just really dumb random american.

Russia is the world?s #1 oil exporting nation, topping Saudi Arabia by more than a million barrels a day. With reserves estimated at 80 billion barrels.

Many Americans are basically brainwashed into thinking they're the only thing in the world that matters. Hell, that practically even exists.

So I can no more pay my russian cam girls?

I thought the sanctions were a note to the Chinese to back the fuck up off of se asia.

If you really think "sanctions" matter to russia, then you're delusional american. Russia is too big to be put on sanctions, especially when china, next big nation is right near them and its clear they won't impose the sanctions. You really think the "world" will unite against such big nations and not import/export anything? Can't think of 1 neighboring country of either one that is at all independent enough to impose those sanctions.
Your comparisson to wallmart is quite silly and sounds like more brainwashed american thinking.

Sanctions don't matter to them because they are acting tough thinking they are invincible, but facts speak for themselves:

EU is ~22% of world GDP
US is ~22% of world GDP
China is ~11% of world GDP
- they are staying neutral, but if shit really would hit the fan, and China would be forced to pick sides, they would lean towards EU/US, China needs EU/US markets 100x more than it needs Russia's resources
- just look at who china trades with: http://en.wikipedia.org<br /> /wiki/...tners_of_China
-US+EU = 1000B vs 80B for Russia
Russia is ~3% of world GDP

Only in Russia that translates to invincible...

No one wants to ruffle feathers and create drama in the world, that's why no one is too eager to play the sanctions game, but Russia is far from invincible...

It's hardly thinking they are invincible. They are doing what any country would do. Let's not even go what US did to "protect it's interests". They are protecting it's people.

But more onto the "facts"
1. You obviously forgot the problems whole Europe was in when Ukraine/Russia had gas issues and whole Europe had problems because of it. You have no idea how much the EU is dependent on Russian gas.
2. China really does not need anyone in the world. Same as any nation that big both landwise and population wise. Pretty sure they aren't siding with the west anytime soon since they're closer to russians in a multitude of ways (both comunits, have direct borders with each other ...). You thinking they'd stick with the west is just silly.
3. $ is second currency in the russia. If they decided to dump all their $, so much economy would take a hit it's insane.
4. Last, im pretty sure EU has way more comfort to lose with sanctions on russia then vice versa.

Your capitalist mind thinks it's a numbers game from economic standpoint, which it's clear when you compared walmart to russia. One is a company that can die from multitude of reasons tomorrow, other is the biggest country in the world with millions of people, and really has no way of dying and is a self sustaining entity.

Why Western sanctions against Russia could inflame Ukraine crisis

By political science professor Robert Pape, Special to CNN

Editor's note: Robert Pape is professor of political science at the University of Chicago, and director of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Robert Pape.

(CNN) -- United States President Barack Obama has now paved the way for imposing economic sanctions against Russia. However, these would be an ineffective and naive response by the U.S. to the crisis in Ukraine.

Economic sanctions have little independent usefulness for the pursuit of non-economic goals.

This is not to say that sanctions never work, but rather that 95% of cases are unsuccessful. In many cases, sanctions will make the political situation worse.

Nationalism often makes states and societies willing to endure considerable punishment rather than abandon their national interests.

Modern states, simply put, are not that fragile -- sanctions can hurt a regime, but they cannot break it. In this way, imposing economic sanctions on a state is similar to backing an angry dog into a corner -- in most cases, the dog will become more vicious, and more defensive.

History might seem to indicate otherwise. Economic sanctions often go hand-in-hand with military intervention, which can sprout misleading conclusions.

This is true of the sanctions we imposed on Iraq in 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait: U.S. military intervention in 1991 was still necessary to force his retreat. Few would say that economic sanctions were successful in kicking him out. Indeed, sanctions continued after the Gulf War with little to no effect, until we finally removed the regime by force in 2003.

Further, sanctions typically take the form of a great power or coalition seeking to leverage a relatively weak state.

The suggestion that they might be effective against a major global power like Russia is seriously flawed. Even those who do believe sanctions might work on Iran would likely find the idea of imposing sanctions on Russia to be preposterous.

There are two reasons why. First, even if economic sanctions were an effective form of leverage, Russia can squeeze us almost effectively as we can squeeze them. Sergei Glazyev, a Kremlin economist, simply threatened to not repay debt to U.S. bankers in response to American-imposed sanctions. Between great powers, leverage is a two-way street.

Second, Putin is clearly prepared to incur economic costs to accomplish his objectives in Ukraine. Even without sanctions, the deployment of troops to Crimea has already affected the Russian economy. On March 3 the Moscow stock market fell more than 10% which, as a Reuters article pointed out, wiped nearly $60 billion off the value of Russian companies -- more than the $51 billion spent on the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Meanwhile, Putin's approval ratings remained high.

By threatening sanctions, Obama is not giving Russia President Vladimir Putin enough credit. Of course the Russian leader has considered this scenario, and it did not deter him from occupying Crimea.

Furthermore, if we impose sanctions and Russia breaks commitments with U.S. bankers in response, what would be the effect? From a strategic standpoint, none. We certainly wouldn't let Russia use economic threats to dictate our foreign policy, no matter what the economic cost; why should we expect the Russian leadership to budge?

But if sanctions are a bad idea, what is the alternative?

The key to keeping Ukraine unified is to take away support for Russian annexation. This means solidifying support for the new government in Kiev among the Russian population in the East, especially in Crimea.

Obama must encourage the new government in Ukraine to strengthen economic and political ties with the pro-Russian population. This means bringing in election monitors to encourage faith and participation in the new regime, and creating new economic programs to bolster well-being in the eastern part of the country. The U.S. should offer support to fund those efforts.

The West must remember that in 2011, 70% of Crimeans considered Ukraine their "motherland," despite most of them being Russian-speaking. In other words, until the proposed EU deal went sour, there was little sentiment in Crimea for secession or annexation. A return to these conditions in Ukraine, and not economic sanctions against Russia, is the key to stopping Putin.

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/07/bu...kraine-crisis/

I offer to watch Into The White (2012).

In Real Life, or real war, men are still men.
PutIn and Obama win war, Men fight battles.
and in some cases your enemy could be your friend if you talked
about hobbies such as fishing, sports, GIRLS.

They seem to have stopped laughing...

Russia will hurt the EU and the UK far more than what we can do them with sanctions. If they cut of the gas for parts of Europe and sell it else where and they could also stop us from importing their oil and sell it to somebody else as well which would push the prices of petrol up, which would have a knock on effect on other things here in the UK. Putin knows he can do far worse to us than we can to them

Russia can live alone. Do they need USA or any western countries?

Russian sanctions will hurt foreign companies. EU companies sold ?152bn in goods and services to Russia in 2012, up 14% from the previous year.

Nope they dont need the US or any western country They could dump all their US dollars and trade with China, Iran and Syria if they wanted to as a start.

It depends on how nasty things get - I wonder how much Russian money is actually in Russian banks?..

London I know is doing very well on the backs of Russian oligarchs.....

I cant see the UK letting it get that far out of hand cause they know they will loose out compared to Russia. It will be a load of threats and smack talk from our politicians and then 5 years down the line they will rebuild relations with Russia. The UK cannot afford to loose a trading partner like Russia.

Well, if you read Mr. Diaz topic about former USSR block countries you will see how it was "live alone" decades ago - food cards etc. I believe USSR was under embargo, no trade. But it was long time ago.

No, not at all. I mean, look at the Amish - completely isolated, yet extremely technologically advanced

I still haven't figured out why our govt. has gotten all "outraged" over this.

The people there are Russian. Period. They can call it "Ukraine" and that's like me saying I'm not an American...I live in Nevada.

Meanwhile OUR govt. has just spent the last 13 years invading and occupying sovereign nations around the world.

It reminds me of when we (the only country to EVER use atomic weapons on people) try to tell other countries that they can't have them because of "security" reasons.

Sooner or later all this "bossiness" by the U.S. govt. is going to come back and bite us hard. 9-11 was just the first such instance I'm afraid.

It is/was Ukraine - Just over half are ethnic Russians, but they lived in Ukraine - I might be missing your point I think...

"SANCTIONS: US Reduces Russia's Library Privileges"

In a sharp move designed to punish Russia for its annexation of the Crimea, the United States on Wednesday downgraded Russia's library privileges from Gold to Silver. As a result, Russia will only be able to check out two books at a time, and must return them within one week. "I hope they enjoy speed-reading," said one State Department official who would not go on record.

It was not immediately apparent that any library books had ever been checked out by Russia, but "They will know, and it will hurt. It will hurt bad."

The Ukraine was part of Russia from 1795 on.

It became "independent" in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved.

This is a global World and there is no USSR anymore. Any sanctions will have a backside effect

Not true at all...

The one and only way it must be done