The war in Ukraine is not yet a week old. By some accounts the invasion has already taken longer than Russia expected. And been bloodier. Other commentators see a grim escalation ahead.
Most of the developed world – though notably not yet China – has moved to ostracize Russia morally, physically, and financially.
There’s been a step-up in military supplies to Ukraine.
But it’s the economic sanctions that are most extraordinary.
The unfortunate Russian people seem to get caught up in all the big developments in warfare.
Russia lost the first modern industrial war, against the Japanese in 1904-05. The revolution of 1917 included arguably the first war for global public opinion. Russian casualties were astronomical in the first two ‘total’ World Wars. (The Soviet Union’s pivotal role in defeating Hitler cost the bloc at least 27 million lives.)
Russia was a linchpin belligerent in the Cold War, obviously.
And as others have explained, Putin has been waging a new kind of information war against the West, with strikes aimed at everything from the US presidential elections to the Brexit referendum.
Battlefield status report
Now Russia finds itself on the other side of a ‘hot’ economic war. The barrage of sanctions and prohibitions applied in the past week is unprecedented. They’ve culminated in cutting several Russian banks from the Swift system that facilitates international payments.
The aim seems to be to turn Russia into a North Korea or an Iran, should it refuse to ceasefire. An unbelievable potential fate for (what was) the eleventh largest economy in the world.
Pity the everyday Russians. Their country might have become a kleptocracy where opposition leaders were jailed, poisoned, or shot. But at least they could shop and go on holiday.
Not for much longer.
This being a financial blog, let’s consider some dramatic scenes from this economic war.
Collapse of the Russian ruble
Putin’s regime derived popular legitimacy for tackling the economic chaos of the 1990s that culminated in Russia’s currency collapsing in 1998.
The following graph must therefore make grim and portentous viewing in the Kremlin:
Source: CNN
Bank runs in Moscow and elsewhere
With their currency in free-fall and their banks under immense duress, Russians have been trying to get their money out of their accounts and into something that might hold its value. This has the makings of a bank run.
5am and the run on ATMs begins in Russia https://t.co/uYqADASMrI
— Olga Lautman 🇺🇦 (@OlgaNYC1211) February 27, 2022
No wonder. Older Russians well remember going hungry in previous bouts of chaos.
Such scenes indicate the sanctions having their intended affect. But could financial chaos for everyday people harden support for Putin, just as the Blitz bolstered Britain’s resolve in World War 2?
Interest rate jumps to 20%
The Russian central bank isn’t looking for any strategic bright side. To support the ruble and to try to keep money in accounts – and the country – its key interest rate has been more than doubled to 20%, from 9.5%.
And we were cheering UK savings accounts paying out better than 1% again.
Domestic firms have also been ordered to sell 80% of their dollar assets held overseas in an attempt to circumvent US, EU, and other country’s new restrictions on Russian central bank action.
Collapsing asset values
The result of this economic shock and awe has already been devastating for Russian assets.
To give just one example, here’s what’s happened to Sberbank of Russia, sometimes cited as Eastern Europe’s largest financial institution:
Invading Ukraine has initiated Russia’s own bespoke version of the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. No wonder the likes of hedge fund veteran Bill Ackman says Russian banks cannot be trusted to hold at this point.
A few Russian assets have been popular with UK private investors over the years. One is Raven Russia, an operator of Russian warehouses. Raven’s preference shares were seen by some as attractive for their high dividend yield.
Holders of Raven Russia have sat through plenty of dramas in the past. As this latest invasion unfolded, some bulletin board posters saw another opportunity to load up.
Unfortunately for them, it looks like this game of Russian roulette may have finally played out:
Even those of us who don’t believe we have direct exposure to Russia will be hit by the fallout from Russia’s turmoil.
For example, BP and Shell – major components of the UK stock market – are going to have to take writedowns to get out of Russia.
It’s also possible restricting Russian money could hit the high-end London property market. That might hurt listed developers like Berkeley Group, although it’s thought Russians are responsible for only a small share of sales.1
Luckily for passive investors, exposure to Russia in emerging market funds has already dwindled to about 4%, according to data provider Lipper.
Bitcoin panic buying
Russian citizens face financial ruin, at least relative to their global peers. Perhaps that’s why the price of Bitcoin just leapt more than 10% in 24 hours:
Cryptocurrencies are notoriously and unpredictably jumpy. But this move is mostly being pinned on younger Russians trying to turn their money into something that can’t be frozen by the State or devalued by sanctions – and that perhaps can be taken out of the country.
It may also be due to people buying and donating cryptocurrency to the Ukranian army.
Ukraine has also asked for crypto exchanges to freeze Russians’ accounts. The big exchanges are reluctant, for commercial and legal reasons – and also because it goes against the grain of crypto.
The ‘flippening’ of the Russian ruble
It’s hardly apples-to-oranges, but for the record Bitcoin’s price surge and the collapse in the Russian ruble makes the market cap of Bitcoin ($815bn as I write) greater than the Russian currency’s money supply of 63 trillion rubles (just over $630bn right now).
Crypto-pundits call this a ‘flippening’. The upstart Bitcoin has ‘flipped’ Russia’s national currency. (The ruble has actually been flipped before, back at Bitcoin’s previous all-time high.)
This doesn’t mean really anything. There are US tech companies with a bigger market cap than Bitcoin, let alone the Russian money supply.
But it does illustrate again the sudden stress in the Russian financial system.
Hyper-inflation looms
At this point the Russian state may already be running out of long-term options. True, Russia is still able to export energy. Paradoxically this is sold for hard currencies like the US Dollar and Euro – even as the West also shuts off Swift to try to crush Russia’s finances.
Energy is by far the most important Russian export. Europe, the US, and the UK buy around $270bn in Russian goods and services in a typical year. Energy predominates.
For as long as Russian fossil fuel can be swapped for hard currency, Russia might limp on. I’m no macro-economic expert but one wonders for how long though, before Russia’s central bank must start printing money to pay the State’s obligations?
Russians have endured several periods of high inflation over the past 40 years. If foreign reserves dwindle and access to fresh euros, dollars and other hard assets worsens further, hyper-inflation may loom.
For a country so reliant on imports for much of the stuff of modern life, this could be catastrophic.
China may well be the lifeline here. That sets up the unedifying prospect of a bipolar world and a new Cold War.
Economic warfare hits home
I don’t say this to offend anyone, but I can’t help feeling a little sorry for ordinary Russians going about their business in the face of all this mayhem.
Obviously it completely pales besides the fate of Ukrainians seeing their apartment blocks reduced to rubble, their friends and family killed, and autocratic repression on the horizon.
But when I think back to the financial crisis of 15 years ago, I do not underestimate the fear of seeing your life-savings going down the pan.
Even in the West, the average person has very little say over major events. For instance many of us bewailed how Brexit crushed the pound and curbed our options to live and work abroad – despite us being personally against the whole folly. We marched and moaned, but ultimately we had to lump it.
Well, the West’s economic warfare waged against Russia make such privations look like a cut in a kid’s pocket money.
And this is on a people who truly have very little voice – where opposition is chopped down to size whenever it rises much above the level of a babushka bewailing the price of bread.
Again, compared to what Ukraine is enduring that’s trivial. We can debate Western policy missteps at the margin, but ultimately the Russian state has brought this misery on its people.
Still as someone who has spent my adult life pursuing financial freedom, I can’t imagine the gut punch of seeing your country’s economy implode.
Let’s hope for all our sake this war ends soon.
p.s. The image above is by 19th Century Russian realist Konstantin Savitsky.
- The use of offshore holding companies and the like makes it hard to be sure. [↩]
The quoted 27 million lives lost in WW2 were total *Soviet* losses, not broken down by component republics. By various sources, up to 10 million of those should be attributed to the Ukrainian SSR – modern days Ukraine.
@Leszek — Good point, I’ve altered the copy above accordingly. Thanks for the catch.
(Separately, WW2 casualty figures are massively debated so I suggest readers don’t get into a big debate about them here and we stick to the current conflict, particularly the financial and economic aspects that are most on-topic for this website. Thanks!)
The human cost is/will be staggering. Pales everything else into significance. Hard to know what to do, say or feel (other than donating to humanitarian causes). I feel incredibly lucky and privileged, especially having visited Lviv and Przemysl in Poland a few years ago as a tourist, discussing the Russian-Ukraine situation with people during our trip there, was quite shocking speaking to everyday people saying they would take up arms in the event of a Russian invasion……I thought it was rhetoric…… 🙁
The economic sanctions from the West need to be as full and strong as possible, hopefully the grim reality will dawn on Putin before it’s too late (perhaps it already is?), perhaps in the form of uprisings by the population or businesses, but certainly possible to feel for the everyday Russians for what is to come, in addition to the horrors facing the Ukrainians, all because of a deluded and sociopathic megalomaniac. Sad times.
The thing is the economic sanctions on Russia aren’t extraordinary at all.
Economic sanctions after the first Ukranian war in 2014 were a major cause of the last Russian financial crisis in 2014-16
https://simplelivingsomerset.wordpress.com/2014/05/27/hello-mr-putin-fancy-meeting-you-here/
The Russians took 17 years to crush chechenynyan independence and have done more than a decade so far in syria so its far too early to tell what might happen
I agree with both the author and JDW that it is certainly possible to have sympathy with ordinary Russians, so long as one remembers that Ukrainians’ situation is very much worse.
It is true that the Russian on the street has virtually no political power, and if they protest they would probably (in usual times) share the fate of the Belorussians who protested against Lukashenko’s regime after the 2020 election.
But Putin’s kleptocratic regime may now be cracking under the impact of the latest sanctions. Putinism relies on three pillars: 1) the loyal security establishment (“siloviki”) who control the military, intelligence and internal security forces and who originally put Putin into power; 2) the oligarchs (both pre-existing ones and new ones created from among Putin’s friends through embezzlement of taxpayer’s money) whose money is informally “taxed” to provide Putin and the siloviki with the luxury they expect, and for influence operations; 3) sufficient acquiesence from the general population to be able to be vaguely plausible when winning elections and referenda (with a certain amount of help from rigging them).
A number of brave Russians have already openly protested against the war and in many cases been arrested. More unusual is that at least two of the major oligarchs have publicly criticised the war (note 1), along with a number of prominent Russians in journalism and entertainment (note 2). The difference between now and 2014, when pro-Putin forces rounded up signatures on open letters praising the annexation of Crimea from all kinds of prominent Russians, is notable.
If a sufficiently large proportion of the oligarchs “go on strike” the siloviki may start worrying about their slush funds and reconsider if Putin is the right man to run Russia. Alternatively if public opposition becomes too strong they may try to find a replacement for that reason.
For both Ukraine and Russia’s sakes I hope that Putin is swiftly removed, because from his delusional behaviour it does not look like he is willing to change course on his invasion.
Note 1: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/27/two-top-russian-billionaires-speak-out-against-invasion-of-ukraine
Note 2: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/25/prominent-russians-join-protests-against-ukraine-war-amid-1800-arrests-putin
Personally I saw this as a buying opportunity (not for Russian assets, obviously). I think with non-financial shocks, most of the risk premium tends to be priced in pretty early on in the process.
There’s something else though:
“The Soviet Union’s pivotal role in defeating Hitler cost the bloc at least 27 million lives.”
Look, before you start crediting the Soviet Union with Hitler’s defeat and lamenting their losses, I suggest you might want to Google Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. CliffsNotes version: that was when Hitler and Stalin drew a line across Europe dividing it into West (Hitler’s) and East (Stalin’s). East Europe as a geopolitical construct came into existence purely as a result of that damned pact hatched and implemented by two monsters. Stalin invaded Poland from the east 2 weeks after Hitler invaded it from the west. Contrary to popular belief, Germany did not start WW2 all by itself. Germany and Russia started the war together, as motherfucking allies.
Yes, sure, Hitler screwed over Stalin later on, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s like a spider stinging another spider, if I’m allowed to quote a line from Seventeen Moments of Spring.
Also, some of the abovementioned 27 million were victims of genocide that Russians committed in their occupied territory (aka East Europe) during and immediately after the war.
As for those poor ordinary Russians that everyone seems to be so sorry for… please allow me to draw your attention to the fact that Putin is very popular in Russia. Grass roots popular. You might think the below is a joke, but sadly, it’s not. https://youtu.be/zk_VszbZa_s
Do not underestimate the depth of what can only be described as Russian white supremacy, which the popularity of Putin and his ideas draw from. Not so long ago he gave his daughter $1.7 billion to search for the “Russian” gene, and the majority of the populace did not think it was a sick joke. Yes, we’re talking nazi-grade eugenics “research” co-funded by the Russian state in partnership with its energy sector in 2020. Announced by a country’s president. And the majority of your ordinary Russians thought it was a spiffing great idea.
Naturally, that whole research project was nothing but an act of theft – Putin gave his daughter an early inheritance of 1.7bn – but the fact that he disguised it as a eugenics project to make it palatable to the public is significant. It’s like if Johnson disguised his office wine & cheese party as a Culloden themed orgy to avoid public censure, and British public we’re like, “no, we don’t support office parties during lockdowns, but I guess if it really was an orgy where you whack a Scot on the head before sticking it up them, then yeah, I guess that would be fine”.
Putin’s sort of populism cannot exist in a vacuum, those seeds need fertile ground, and the ground in Russia, my friend, is I’m afraid very fertile, and has been so for a very long time, and it’s not the West’s fault.
Not looking for an argument here, so let’s just file this under R for “Random and Perhaps a Bit Biased Info on Russia” 😉
@hosimpson
….no one knows what Russians actually think as there is no free press of any consequence in Russia and the activities of any NGOs still operating are ruthlessly controlled
@Niklas Smith — LONG time no see. It must be a decade? Where have you been? Please tell me we don’t have to go to these dark places to bring you back to Monevator as a reader. 🙂 Your comment is well up to its traditional standard.
@hosimpson — I will tread carefully; as we both know Internet discussions abound with tripwires and even reasoned discussions produce more heat than light. But for the sake of clarifying my position with you and more widely… yes, while no means an expert (or even a very knowledgeable layman) I more than averagely acquainted with knowledge of the 1939 pact, the genesis of World War 2, how it ended, all the horror, and the long and miserable aftermath. It is not a controversial view among academics that the Soviet forces were pivotal in the outcome of the European land war, but I won’t debate it further here and would agree there’s plenty of nuance.
More generally, my fairly banal point would be that the average Russian (/Soviet) citizen was hardly responsible for Stalin or his pact with Hitler either.
For one thing, they lived in a despotic murderous state. For another thing, a generation ago huge swathes of them were literally peasants who believed the Tsar loved them and had possibly been sent from above to care for them. Finally what intelligentsia there was had actually helped overthrow that particular autocrat in the 1917 revolutions and believed the propaganda and then saw another lot of tyrants move in.
My point? I’m deeply antipathetic towards grand political projects and revolutions of any kind, and my sympathies tend to be with ‘the little guy’. This extends to the grand narratives of Brexiteers to Trump to – obviously – Putin, and even to the extremes of the ‘ever closer’ European project. I’m with Rawles and Nozick (yes I appreciate the conflict) not Hegel and Marx. Kinda Hobbesian. Functionally stoic.
My world might be better if politicians first took a similar oath to the medical profession’s “first do no harm”. My idea of a perfect politician would probably be a capable technocrat like John Major.
I have zero sympathy for the Russian state. And I am certain there are plenty of Russians with awful views.
I recall news reports of gay and black England fans being urged to avoid traveling to Ukraine in 2012 due to the far-right presence in that country, too. And anyone can Google the Azov Battalion if they like their current affairs complicated. There’s a news report right now on the BBC website of black students being told by Ukrainian officials to walk to the border while white people get on trains.
I’m not linking to that here because that’s not the point. Do these countries have problems? Of course. Does America? Do we? Yes we do. Are some problems worse in some countries than others? Absolutely. Do I think we’ve got it more right, even after the setbacks of recent years, than either of them? Yes I do. Did I enjoy (for want of a better word) reading Dostoevsky as a student and am I a Rachmaninoff fan? Yes.
Humanity is complicated. People are thrown into a shit show not of their making from birth and it mostly continues that way for the rest of their life, with a few self-directed tilts on the tiller. That becomes especially apparent at times of war. I think it helps to remember our common fate more not less in such times.
This is to excuse nothing. Russia should withdraw from Ukraine immediately. We should stop buying their energy, yesterday. People with influence in Russia should change the status quo there to something more global-friendly right now. I don’t want to die on a hill of defending the lack of agency of the average Russian in the street only for a nuke to fall on my head shortly afterwards. 😉
Our own prime minister is easily the leader I’ve trusted least in my lifetime. Especially given how he rose to power, I could quite imagine some unlikely but plausible scenario emanating from him and his Brexit-y cabal. If it did, I’d be condemned like other Britons in the aftermath. But at least ‘we’ voted for him and I’ve been free to moan about him for the past six years.
So I’ll keep my measured sympathy and empathy. I agree it’s hard to do, and it will likely get harder in the days ahead. 🙁
But the alternative is much worse, in my view.
Eloquent article by Martin Wolf on the FT. Affirms these sanctions are exceptional and meaningful, that this conflict can hardly be understated, the key role of China to come, and even that nod to humanity. Basically my article but much grander… 😉
[Search result] https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&q=site%3Aft.com+Putin+has+reignited+the+conflict+between+tyranny+and+liberal+democracy
Its an interesting point that allows differentiation between a people and the leaders they produce It is more probable that a peoples culture determines the quality of its leaders
To get the root of problems ,understand them so as to deal with them might not be so easy if this concept is misunderstood
xxd09
It’s all enough to make you think a bit more seriously about getting some gold coinage and stashing under the floorboards, isn’t it?
A choice quote from a recent Matt Levine article: “One great theme of the post-2008 financial world is that money is a social construct, a way to keep track of what society thinks you deserve in terms of goods and services.”
Russia’s Money Is Gone – https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-02-28/russia-s-money-is-gone
russian here
1) thank you for the post since it looks as you tried to make it as neutral as possible
2) i left russia 18 years ago; used to live in 3 different english-speaking countries so far. my parents and in-laws are still in russia. my father was born in Ukraine
3) i really hate putin and all his people including numnuts who cannot put 2+2 together and who support him and his war. i really feel for my parents who had their money lost when soviet union collapsed and one more time recently now. BUT there is no other choice unfortunately because Vova may use nuclear weapons.
4) it will be a long bloody conflict but truth will prevail and Vova will end up his last days somewhere in Venezuela if not hanged up by russians.
Only an idiot would compare the invasion of Ukraine with Brexit. Even typing that is toe curlingly embarrassing.
@Vic — I will leave readers to decide for themselves about the quality of your comment, but let’s remember what I wrote — and this in the context of explaining that the average Russian has no voice, NOT in comparing the invasion to Brexit:
i.e. Even to the extent that we could talk about populations having to put up with stupid folly, our one was comparatively trivial.
Let me explain how it works.
An elephant is a mammal. A mouse is a mammal. An elephant is tens of thousands of times bigger than a mouse. But they are both mammals.
One is not an idiot for comparing a mouse to an elephant, especially if the whole point is to demonstrate one is much, much bigger that the other.
As for Brexit, I (and many others) pointed out back in 2016 that the EU (and Nato of course) was one of the bastions preventing war in Europe for 60+ years, that *at the least* Putin would be happy with the EU-exit and most likely meddled to play some role (apparently very small) in helping it happen, and that there were more important things to worry about than a return to nationalistic daydreams propagated on the back of demonstrable (alas by experts) lies. Such as? I don’t know, nationalistic tyrants on Europe’s border meddling in our politics and far worse abroad.
I was told (as were many others) that I was scaremongering, wars in Europe were over, et cetera.
Well here we are.
Before your toes curl again I’m obviously NOT saying Brexit caused Putin to invade Ukraine. Most readers will understand that but I best spell it out for a few.
With that said, only an — individual who has difficulty with complicated ideas — wouldn’t at least entertain the possibility that the divisive fantastical joke politics had become in the UK and the US over the past five years hadn’t gone in the “why not give it a go?” column for the Russian dictator when weighing up his options.
There still appears to be no educated enquiry why so called “joke” politics appealed to what was the majority of the people
The unwillingness to make any such effort is sad
Everyone remaining in their respective trenches will not cure the impasse
Some reasoned polite debate is required with due respect for others different opinions
Then perhaps we can find a way forward
xxd09
@Malcolm — I have made repeated efforts to understand why. As has been infinitely documented, there were many – often contradictory – reasons. So we have to deal with that.
Just because someone had a reason to vote for Brexit, that doesn’t mean Brexit was the solution. (As we’ve already discovered and will continue to discover).
“Life isn’t going well for average to lower wage people” — Brexit will make the UK richer! — no it has made us poorer.
“UK is too beholden to EU trade” — We should be bold global traders, unshackled from the EU deal — trade is down and our trade deals are worse.
“We spend money on EU projects we could spend on the NHS!” — let’s leave the EU and have more money — we have less money (hundreds of billions less at this point) and a lower GDP, and so NHS spending is lower than it otherwise would be.
“Too many foreigners!” — let’s leave the free movement area! — okay this (which was always valid on its own terms) has happened re: EU migrants, but so far they’ve been offset more or less by ex-EU migrants.
“We want full sovereignty!” — let’s leave the EU and we can make our own laws! — as best I can tell we have a Crown stamp on a pint glass and that’s about it.
Brexit is a bad non-solution to contradictory and complicated problems that hasn’t helped anyone except a small clique of politicians who appear to have been bailed out by Covid and now this war from facing the consequences of their distortions.
Appreciate your detailed reply
I think though there are more existential reasons
Was it a gut feeling from the general population that we were being run by a unelected elite ie the EEC Commission
This was obviously suiting the better off but life was getting too hard for the rest of the people
Then the usual/sole strike weapon for reacting/dealing with this situation had been removed
The Commission was apparently unelected and therefore could not be removed/changed by the usual democratic processes
Of course these perceptions might well have been wrong but the majority were convinced otherwise
It also is apparent that feelings/perceptions can trump /are secondary to economic realities
Brexit was successful,Scottish Independence was not and Trump managed only one term in office-all 3 we’re serious indicators of population dissatisfaction
Reading the peoples thoughts is a great skill and a basic requirement of our leaders
Too many of our leaders still get it wrong and will continue to be wrong footed by the democratic process-tho only way we the people can hold our perceived-rightly or wrongly-over entitled elites to account
xxd09
@Malcolm — Yes, you’re right that a generalized dissatisfaction at the ‘establishment’ and the ‘elites’ was in the mix, too, and that the Leave campaign successfully mapped that fear onto the EU operations (which as we all understand we voted towards the running of in European Elections. We did not vote for every bureaucrat in the same way we don’t vote for civil servants…)
But again, to follow my rhetoric above:
“We’ve had enough of the establishment elites who are out of touch with ordinary people!” — vote Brexit and get away from the EU — and we’ve ended up run by a scion of Eton and assorted other rich/public school types (e.g. Sunak, possibly the richest man to be in high office in living memory?) who are so out of touch and dismissive of ordinary people that not only do they* lie repeatedly to them, they actually partied more than a dozen times during a pandemic lockdown!
You can’t make it up.
I agree with your assessment that for some there was an existential angst. People are perfectly entitled to be unhappy with their or their peers lot in life, and to vote for change.
My point is Brexit was for most Leave voters NOT a vote for what they wanted. (Exception: hardcore Europhobes, nationalists, racists, and those interested in maximum technical sovereignty at the cost of a loss of effective power).
I could count on one hand the number of smart Leave voters who’ve ever engaged here in an articulate fashion about why they voted the way they did AND how Brexit had anything to do with it. Pretty much all of them did it for legal/sovereignty issues.
The rest is a crock. (And I speak as someone who has several times voted against my own self-interest for more left-leaning policies because I am well aware this country has issues.)
*I mean the Brexiteer Tory MPs. I don’t think Sunak is a liar. And for the record I have no problem with him being rich and in government. If anything it speaks highly of the man on some level, there are easier ways to obtain money and power when you have his resources. But he’s clearly ‘elite’ whatever that means.
Agree with all your points
I suppose the major point I was wanting to make is that it appeared that the majority wanted to be “ruled” by their own idiots over whom they had some tenuous or real control via parliamentary elections rather than some faraway bureaucrats whom seemed impervious to auditing of any sort never mind parliamentary control by their constituents/people
You pay a price for that!
xxd09
Normally I agree with articles on this site. However, the comparison with brexit I struggle with. It was a vote, people voted. We can argue all day about would the outcome be different if the campaigning was ‘cleaner’ and everything fact checked etc, further, you can argue about ‘did people know what they were voting for?’. The reality is however, we got what the people voted for; the brexit side won. The vote, respecting the outcome, and attempting to implement the outcome is the main difference here which makes brexit far from the situation today.
The brexit mess that ensued ultimately boils down to the cake debacle; people wanted some of the benefits of brexit when the reality was always going to be you were in or out, and all versions of out were going to cause issues and problems needing years, possibly decades, to resolve.
Russia is not a democracy in the way most people view a legitimate democracy. Putting all the somewhat legitimate UK grumbles about our leaders and democracy aside, Brexit was a vote, and the result os at least trying to be respected, the fact that process is an ongoing mess in many areas is a different matter. Indeed, you could go as far as saying if we were not a democracy we would likely run the risk of new votes/leaders simply trying to roll back the vote at the whim of whoever is at top of government.
Comparing an outcome of a vote in a democracy that led to an outcome that a huge proportion of the population did not agree with (and yes, other who did agree with might have been misled to some extent) is not the same as a decision that likely came from a small circle of people at the top of the country that requires the whole international community to jump into action to try to maintain stability.
@random coder — Thanks for your comment.
I basically agree with you. That was my point. It was if anything a ‘mea culpa’ reality check. 🙂
Though I feel no culpa for being against Brexit before and after so maybe not.
However it’s absolutely the case it was a vote! 🙂 That’s why I said “We marched and moaned, but ultimately we had to lump it.”
People offended by/debating this point of mine I believe must be objecting to my even bringing Brexit up. (As indeed the first commenter explicitly did).
Because otherwise my whole point is that (a) we are a democracy, they aren’t and (b) I have to stand by what that democracy decides, because I believe in democracy (and (c) that is why I have some sympathy for ordinary Russians who do not have any say).
i.e. I am saying what is being restated here in the comments by my critics.
It doesn’t seem complicated to me, but obviously it’s a very touchy subject and no doubt my own biases are showing too.
Appreciate the reasoned response. Brexit is always going to be touchy and usually your position is reasonably balanced… for someone who clearly has a view, but that is fine!
Think we can agree, tanking your own economy through democratic process that doesn’t at least directly put human life at risk is a different matter than tanking your own economy via a non democratic process that puts missiles in the sky.
I don’t think you meant to suggest they were the same, but agree financially, the outcomes, at least initially, point in the same direction (down – economically).
I am pretty sure everyone who is in a position to save for retirement values human life – I would give every penny I have to keep my family safe and would think it was money well spent. I am sure most contributers to this site think the same.
Later.
@ Malcolm – “Was it a gut feeling from the general population that we were being run by a unelected elite ie the EEC Commission”
As I recall, European membership wasn’t an issue that polled highly on the list of voter concerns before the referendum. Obviously, you had the rise of UKIP, and a long-running anti-EU campaign waged by major newspapers – but these were factors that forced the referendum onto Cameron’s agenda rather than the country’s.
Cameron favours staying in and apparently many voters used the referendum to protest against his government – because, as you say, people’s lives were getting worse.
Meanwhile, the Out campaign spins a fairytale about the crock of gold we’ll discover if only we’re courageous enough to break free of the European ties that hold us back. Throw in a refugee crisis on the borders of Europe and recent memories of the sovereign debt debacle and, well, maybe we’re better off without that dead weight after all…
Desperate people gambling on a horse called Promise. It’s an old story. Almost as old as a new elite who take power by feeding fibs to the masses.
Finally, it was a close run thing: 52% to 48%. But in the aftermath, only the result matters. Never mind that the vote didn’t / doesn’t represent nearly half of the country. I wonder what it would be now.
Finally, finally – would love to debate this with a Brexiter who is happy to counter with sound arguments. As TI mentions, I’ve rarely found anyone willing to do this.
The best case I’ve heard came in an interview with Dominic Cummings. He did have a vision for how it might work at least. And given that we’re out, and not going back, it really is in the interests of everyone that Brexit works.
Hey all, on @TI’s point about being similar to Brexit only from the narrow perspective of being against something your country does, I feel like that was correct in terms of feeling disdain and embarrassment because of my own view of it, it was starkly different of course too as I was simply on the losing side of the vote, no problem there. The right to make the decision based on a public vote is democracy after all (even though I personally always thought a big decision like that should have a higher percentage in favour to occur – a separate point no doubt).
I do recall the feeling of deep upset when I realised we voted to leave on that morning when I pulled my notifications down on my phone. I was genuinely depressed about it. I can’t even begin to imagine what an average Russian who is against this who has access to a more unfiltered view of events would think, just plain awful. The effects of this for them is of course 1000 times more visible almost immediately as well. I am however at the same time completely behind the sanctions but I do also fear for what happens the more we corner and beat down a vicious animal into a corner that has nuclear weapons for teeth!
It should go without saying of course that I far more deeply acutely feel for the plight of the Ukrainian people. This is just terrible. I also thought these scenes were something of the past!
Chris @TheFIJourney
21 months in, and with probably over half a million military casualties now (120k + Russian KIA & 180k + WIA, 70k+ Ukrainian KIA & 100k + WIA); & with quite possibly over 100k civilian fatalities, this gives an overview of what the forking pathways of the near future might look like for this conflict:
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/some-thoughts-on-where-the-war-in?
For some perspective on what a protracted, continent scale, industrialised, all-out (conventional) war looks like, I’d recommend Chris Bellamy’s book on the June 1941 to May 1945 Soviet-German conflict/the Eastern Front “Absolute War”, published in 2009. It’s a door stopper at 880 pages, but is the best one volume history of the subject that I’ve yet come across. It’s on Amazon now second hand from just over a fiver with delivery.