A couple of days ago there were pictures of Russian tanks rolling into Ukraine. If you saw them, you may have noticed that they were covered with boxes about the size of shoe boxes. I believe that that’s explosive reactive armor.
I have some experience with that.
Well this is where you need to decide whether you value your freedom and autonomy or your life. As an American, hopefully they value their freedom and make the Russians pay explicitly through military spending and implicitly as a world pariah. Personally I value my life, it can’t be that bad to be Russian if the comparison was Ukraine. The gdp per capita is like 3k. Rough before anyhow!
This post didn’t age well 
I’m surprised and impressed by the Ukrainians and especially their leaders; very few would’ve stayed and risked their lives.
Yes, there goes the myth of the worlds second best military and all.
can you imagine how bad the 3rd and 4th best are lol
You can buy missiles and guns but you cant buy motivation and discipline.
Apparently, if you’re a Ukranian, and you capture a Russian tank, and you decide to keep it, you don’t have to declare it for income taxes.
How significant is Russia being kicked out of SWIFT in practice?
It seems that the Russian central bank is raising rates as if there’s no tomorrow in order to try and stop the ruble from becoming rubble.
Russia’s finance minister estimated previously that it’d cause a 5% drop in GDP. Also, 80% of the transactions done with foreign exchanges per day with Russia are in US dollars, which have all been put to an end. Plus banks that have been kicked out of Swift are not desirable places to hold money, which should cause people who have money there to pull out. Apparently there have been ongoing bank runs.
Together with the different sanctions, hundreds of billions of dollars of asset freezes, and things like shell/BP canceling joint ventures, the nordstream 2 pipeline being canceled, germany announcing they’d switch to renewables by 2035 (from 2050 previously), air travel to/from russia being cut off by almost all europe, and all the other things, it’s probably a lot more than a 5% effect. Maybe the more telling thing is how the ruble went down 30%. Longer term effects could include things like a brain drain and people not investing in Russia.