He might, though that would also cost russia dearly because all countries like germany that are dependent on russian gas will a) be royally pissed and b) make sure they lower their dependence on russian gas in the future. And russias economy is really dependent on their natural recourcess export
> And russias economy is really dependent on their natural recourcess export
Russia has been described as “a gas station run by a mafia masquerading as a country that happens to have nuclear weapons”, which isn’t far from the truth.
The US is also really dependent on the flow of dollars going through SWIFT. Kicking countries out means alternatives have to come online. If those get too popular it poses a huge threat to the entire US dollar reserve currency system.
It's not kicking countries out, it's just kicking Russia out. It will be a blow for all the Western countries and banks conducting business with Russia, but a necessary one.
It's not just dollars that are flowing via SWIFT. SWIFT is what blockchain wants to be, it's a way for banks to send and receive funds of many currencies.
SWIFT is a messaging system.
The actual transfer of funds is performed with correspondent banks, but they won't perform the transfer if the government says that they cannot have accounts opened by banks from other nations, then that's up to that government, not SWIFT.
SWIFT is being used as "shorthand" to mean that Russian banks will be cut off from the world financial environment. They will have to evade those sanctions via, for example, trading with multiple hops through China, if China allows them to.
I do wonder just how much German sentiment has shifted.
From the leaked clips of a high ranking German officer saying "Putin just wants respect" before the war. Now seeing a large shift amongst those I follow on twitter in German who were previous anti-action.
Assuming SWIFT access is cut, and then the Natural Gas supplies are turned off is there another escalation back? Assuming the US/EU can rally their resources how do they mount a quick recovery from the loss of natural gas which will certainly be devastating. Even if the Nuclear plants in process of decommissioning are reversed(if possible) I'm not sure how the EU gets through the next six months without a ton of pain.
> Assuming SWIFT access is cut, and then the Natural Gas supplies are turned off is there another escalation back?
Sure. We could sanction their oil and gas industry. Like we've done to Iran. There's also a whole world of plausibly deniable black ops stuff we could do to mess with their infrastructure.
I think a lot of people, without meaning to be disrespectful of Ukrainian identity and sovereignty, looked at the conflict in the Donbas and Crimea and thought:
"well, this isn't really acceptable in terms of respecting settled borders but the reality is that at least a very substantial percentage of the local population does want to be part of Russia so it isn't the worst thing in the world and probably Putin will move troops into areas he de facto controls or slightly expand borders there".
That doesn't make those things ok but it does put in a long list of other conflicts where the on-the-ground reality is complicated.
Many of us also have mixed feelings of at least partial support about other re-arrangements of sovereignty whether that is ethnic separatism within a country with a quasi-federalist state like Spain (i.e. Basque or Catalan) or other cases like South Sudan or even Kosovo where NATO actively carved out an ethnic statelet by helping an organisation that for all its roots of legitimate popular support was at least... organised-crime adjacent.
The speech that Putin gave though was not about border adjustment but about a denial of any kind of Ukrainian nation identity or nationhood. He wasn't saying, "the Russia / Ukraine border should be 10 or 20 km West of where it is" which might be unacceptable to a hardline territorial integrist or to Ukraine but is within the normal bounds of nation state conflict, he was saying "there is no Ukraine at all, it's not a real nation, they have no right to any kind of state" and that crosses many, many lines that are not crossed by taking territory here or there.
Not trying to make taking "taking a province or two" look like acceptable behaviour but I think that it's important to put previous and current EU/NATO positions in the context of the full horror of what he is now proposing to do which is to permanently destroy a nation state. Even the Ukrainian government didn't really believe this was how it was going to go.
The winter here in the Netherlands is also really mild. I'm in a 4th floor apartment with the main room facing the sun with all windows. if I clothed a bit warmer than normal I could go without gas until winder ends.
Of course not everyone lives in a small apartment facing the sun but still.
I echo this sentiment, and I am from Poland, with much colder winters. We could stop using it for heating, spend the year preparing for winter, spend a lot on insulation and then electricity, and dress warmer -- but we'd reduce the dependence on Russia. Totally worth the trouble and hardships, and long overdue.
I think for many Putin actually invading Ukraine was simply unthinkable.
Sure, some saber rattling and destabilization, but outright war?
US intelligence was not always credible, so when they presented facts that conveniently benefited American interests (shale gas export), people were sceptic.
That allowed Putin to prepare an invasion in plain sight.
Perhaps everyone thought Russia was Saber rattling in January when they gave a 1 week deadline to NATO saying they would invade if they didn't receive it.
That said, following Russia demand, the US president went national TV and announced that Russia will likely invade Ukraine and the US will not go in.
