Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10

Some good news today - the interest on frozen North Nigerian assets will be used to arm and reconstruct Ukraine.

Well done to the EU for this sensible step

....because they couldn't know it would be "only" 200K???

Truman threatened to "rain ruin" on them....they had to believe it would be a "rain" of nukes!

The whole of Japan could have been made uninhabitable for generations...an absolute nightmare of till now unknown dimensions!

[quote=Korvinus]The internationally recognized borders were set up in 1991 when Ukraine went independent and were recognized by everyone, including Russia. They are still the internationally recognized borders today.

That is a real nice pipe dream. At that time Ukraine still had many co-operative operations with Russia. Russia never agreed to lose control of Sevastopol. Things declined when Ukraine decided to cash in on decades of development Russia invested on the port and Black Sea headquarters.

However my question to you is WHOSE Army is removing Russia from the territory it now holds. And adds to every passing day. Against a backdrop where Ukraine can not even do something as basic as define terms of service for future conscripts. No one wants to kill themselves for NATO's wet dream of regime change in Russia. And Russia still has a very loyal following in BRIC countries. Did you see the USA got kicked out of 2 African countries that are Russian pals now???

At some point we need to abandon silly high mindedness and deal with reality.

Hmm... it does look kinda like stealing though.

Maybe the right kind, Robin-Hood-style - taking away from the rich and giving to the poor, but stealing nonetheless.

If the US had more bombs, most likely they would be used on the Japs because in those days they were fanatical azholes. Germans were normal.

Always pleasant to watch thieves celebrate their loot.

As for all thieves, this money will become a bone in your throat.

This is money stolen from the North Nigerian people by its leaders.

Why was it squirreled away in the EU in the first place ? You think they were going to spend it on their citizens or on yachts, football clubs and handbags ?

North Nigeria can carry on with their own type of thieving - toilets, televisions and kids toys

Interesting question!

The surprising answer seems to be they thought it would be safe...in Euro!

"....Officials from EU countries and the European Central Bank have expressed concerns that seizing assets outright might set an unhelpful precedent or harm the euro's reputation as a safe currency...."

euronews.com/my-europe/2024/05/08/brussels-agrees-to-send-3-bn-from-frozen-russian-assets-to-aid-ukraine

You are an idiot.

These are the sovereign reserves of the Central Bank of Russia.

You are literally stealing from the people of Russia, and its future generations.

This was Russia's rainy day fund, for that time when the oil runs out.

Our oligarchs have mostly been successful at suing you and removing themselves from sanctions lists.

Why didn't they just keep it in their own country, the one they own and manage ?

Or with friendly countries like China or Iran or South Africa ?

They want the protection of the liberal democracy that they mock and despise.

It's already a rainy day in Ukraine, so that money must be spent to pay to clean up the mess you made there

So the moron finally crossed your red line...probably not for the first time. Now you know why I left Poland.

There's only one country in the world that can afford to not maintain any kind of savings in currencies of foreign countries. That is the United States.

Every other country, has found it necessary to maintain a basket of various foreign currencies - to facilitate trade, and to hedge against any kind of volatility.

If you hold US Dollars - you are keeping them in America, even if your bank is in Kyrgyzstan.

If you hold Euros, the EU controls your funds - even if they are deposited in a bank in Rio De Janeiro.

And so on, and so forth.

Even if we wanted to - we could not store hundreds of billions worth of dollars in Russia - it's literally impossible. It's just a data entry in a spreadsheet which can be frozen in New York.

So what you want us to do, I suppose, is hold hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Rubles in our own bank accounts? What's the f*cking point of that, when we print the goddamn rubles?

The only alternatives we had was to buy gold (which we did, in cosmic proportions), and to buy Yuans (we also did this).

You could have bought Rand, Rials, North Korean whatever, Iranian and Ugandan. Then you wouldn't have this problem.

Serbia's free trade agreement with China would do more for Poland then NATO and EU. Sure, if Poland survives NATO and EU.

@cms neuf

With a Rand you can buy coal, diamonds, and metal ore. Something, which is not exactly lacking in Russia.

With Rials you can buy oil. Again, not a good fit.

We pay the North Koreans in oil, and they're happy.

Jokes aside, there isn't enough things to buy in those parts of the world, for the amount of money that Russia was earning in excess every year.

For a good part of two decades Russia had tens of billions, and sometimes north of a $100B of excess cash coming into the country. To avoid overstrengthening the Ruble, the government tried always to remove this mass of foreign cash from the Russian market and invest it into interest yielding Western securities.

If we gave this money to the Russian people instead, by for example selling all these dollars for rubles - then we would have a Saudi Arabian style currency now that would be incredibly overvalued.

For Russia, it's actually beneficial to have a weak Ruble in the range of 60-100 rubles per US dollar. If we always sold dollars to the population, the ruble might be in the range of 40-50 right now, which would in short order bust our budget.

Russia could not make ends meet, with a Ruble at 40-50.

Why? Because we earn mostly in dollars and euros, but we owe our population in rubles (pensions, salaries, military, etc). And on the other hand, our population pays us in rubles and not dollars or euros (taxes).

So instead, over the last few years, we instead sell rubles and remove dollars from the market.

Rands are fully convertible - you can hold them in RSA and then buy dollars and Euros whenever you want (I know they have exchange restrictions but you are their friends).

You could hold your money in any of 150 currencies but you want to hold it in the currency of a few free, democratic countries who you threaten to nuke and hate because they let gay men roam the streets at will.

I know the EU and US are guilty of hypocrisy but nothing quite as brazen as thi.

A good joke. The Ruble is also "fully convertible" since the mid 2010s.


Again, a problem of size. There's not enough things we could potentially buy from those 150 countries. Right now we have some ungodly amount of Rupees stuck in India, and we can't figure out what we can buy from India worth that amount, that could be useful to us. This is India! One of the largest economies in the world.

With China things are probably best, but also not exactly ideal. However, it should get better with time.

The only alternative to the Dollar, Euro, Yen, CHF, Sterling is the Yuan... and in a much more flawed way - gold.

You stealing our money will go a long ways towards creating viable alternatives, however. Of this I'm sure.

Buy back all the T-72s, T-90s, BMPs, S-400, Su-30 or whatever else you sold them. Should be quite useful, shouldn't it?

Bobko I'm going to watch the football now so will bid you good night and answer your nonsense tomorrow!

We asked them already. In fact, one of the first people we approached.

They told us, "if you want to delay delivery of certain promised systems, we can live with this." However, they're too paranoid of Pakistan and China to disarm themselves for our sake.

It's a double edged sword for us as well. China was our largest customer for military kit up until approx 2000-2005. Then they just started copying all our systems, and stopped buying from us. India, on the other hand, has been a loyal customer for decades, and since the early 2000s has been our reliable number one customer.

We would hate to lose the Indians to the Americans or French because we showed ourselves as unreliable suppliers.


Enjoy!

Another thing which is helping Russia, is cryptocurrency.

Personally I hate the idea, but I know Velund is a big fan.

This war in Ukraine, really gave a massive boost to crypto. Rather than just prostitutes, drug dealers, libertarians, and software engineers - it's now an asset class being embraced by normal people.

Tell them that if they sell you the weapons, you will guarantee their borders. No... wait a minute... ;)


Yes, that would be a problem in the long run. :-/ Therefore maybe -- just maybe -- ending this nonsensical, brotherly war in the middle of Europe would be a viable solution then? This would leave you sh*tloads of money to spend on soft-power, economic diplomacy and raising the standard of living within Russia. In the long run - if you kept your conservative, anti-woke course - that would give you way more real influence and power that all this "raaawrr - we will nuke you!" nonsense.

It depends, if they wouldn't give us anything that would be stealing, and if they do that would be compensation for Soviet crimes and late payments.

---

In 1997 Ukraine was recognized by Russia as the sovereign state, with Crimea within its borders. Current Russian warmongering is simple banditry.
Sevastopol lease is a completely different matter, but I'd love to hear how a lease of a military base in Sevastopol legitimized Russian claim to Crimea.

Oblasts of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Crimea, Sevastopol, Lugansk and Doneck are sovereign Ukraine's territory, under temporary occupation.

To again get shitloads of money we need sanctions to be removed as part of the settlement.

I'm not sure this will happen, even if we negotiate tomorrow.

The feeling in Russia is that the sanctions are like the Jackson-Vanik sanctions America applied in the 1970s but only repealed in the mid 2000s.

The sanctions are here to stay for a long time, and we have to forge a new way forward.

If the West was more clever, they would keep some things in their back pocket that they could dangle in front of us as a carrot. Instead, they have fully disarmed themselves of all attractive arguments/instruments.

This tells people like Mr. Putin, that there is more to lose by quitting now, then persisting and eventually overcoming.

We wait for a Brave New World, and have given up on the idea of the past idyll ever being restored.

That wouldn't stand in any court, I'm afraid.

How about not stealing the money? That really makes the EU look bad - who will want to trust us with their money, if they see that we can take it just like that?


... and there's that.


Yeah... you know what your friends, the Chinese, say about living in interesting times... *sighs*

I know my friend from Poland says, "If you have a soft heart, you must have a hard anus."

OF course it would, We have plenty of brave Judges like Tuleya or SZmydt. If you talk the international courts they can shine our shoes for all I care!

---


Who is stealing? Could you read my post again? Who trusts the EU - are you in the mood for jokes today?
--

... and with this bit of Slavic folk wisdom this thread might as well be closed. ;)


The gambling judge? That's the hook the Potato Fuhrer's KGB caught him on. Why do you even mention him? He's a lost cause.

But I have to give it to Belorussian KGB - they f*cked us like young pelicans on this. :-/

First. Is not steal. Is forcing RU to pay reparations.
Frozen Russian assets need to go to Ukraine, that's obvious. It will only cover a fraction of destruction caused by the invasion, but can massively aid the war effort.