Comments by "peabase" (@peabase) on "Russian troops build up near Ukraine border | DW News" video.

What makes you think Russia hasn't tried counter-sanctioning the West already? At one point they decided more counter-sanctions would only end up hurting themselves further and refrained from retaliating. Fact is, Russia is an economic 97-pound weakling. And China is comfortable sitting on the fence.
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@scottrobinson9752 You're not making your case. Russia and China are relatively more dependent on exports, so they're more exposed in a trade war, too. It doesn't even take sanctions to put the hurt on both. The Saudis are already making Russia suffer by keeping the price of oil uncomfortably low. China is slowly but surely losing manufacturing contracts to its Asian competitors, not only because "Made in China" is becoming a liability, but also, because they've got less and less low-wage workers to exploit.
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@scottrobinson9752 Russia is hardly the sole source of fossil fuels and raw materials in the world. You brought up lumber. Russia exports lumber all right, but combined European lumber exports alone easily exceed theirs. So Russia sells raw materials, but buyers of theirs, Western manufacturers, often sell them back as finished products at a tidy profit. My Finnish-born mother, who taught macroeconomics, used to tell her students how the Soviet Union functioned as a colony of puny Finland in this respect. The most extreme example was the Pravda, printed on Finnish paper made from Soviet trees. Present-day Russia is even less self-reliant. You're silly if you value raw materials higher than finished products. Chinese manufacturers do a lot of final assembly for Western companies. Trade balances lie, because the value of the finished products is calculated, but in terms of value, the Chinese add relatively little. Even that little added value is slipping to other low-wage countries.
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Maybe you should concern yourself with the question why Ukraine wants to join NATO. And why Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia have already joined NATO. No one twisted their arm. They were adamant about joining on their own accord.
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Russia does care and very much so. Only this February, Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, threatened the EU with cutting relations if the latter imposed more economically painful sanctions over Navalny's jailing. Try to keep up with the news.
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You're at odds with reality -- and with the Russian authorities. By their own admission, the Russian economy has been losing 0.5 to 1.5% GDP at it's only getting worse. On top of that, Russia is incurring losses from lower oil and gas prices.
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*Newest.
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