Comments by "Snack Plissken" (@snackplissken8192) on "DW News" channel.

  1. He made a very interesting point on the value of the ruble and the Russian stock market, since both have limited exposure to the international markets they reflect more the government controlled sentiment within the country more than the views of the international trading community. He makes a good point that Russia has to import a lot of technology for manufacturing (i.e. semiconductors) which Russia (unlike China) has no domestic capacity to produce. I had been hearing that with high oil and natural gas prices, and neutral countries laundering Russian petrochemicals, that sanctions had not significantly hurt Russian government revenues. But they make the point that transporting gas outside of pipelines requires liquification capacity in the export country and gasification capacity in the import country which take time and capital to set up. Oil, on the other hand, can still be transported in tankers and those can be shifted to different destinations but he points out that Russian oil tankers only take 1-5 days to get oil to Europe but take several weeks to reach Asia which significantly decreases the profit margins for Moscow. Another interesting point was that while Russia is being cut off from Euros and US dollars due to both export restrictions from the west, and also from it's own policy of cutting off energy exports to Europe while selling more oil to China; it's imports from China have also been dwindling. If the Russian economy were doing as well as Putin claims you would expect Russia to spend all those extra incoming Yuan to buy Chinese imports to make up for the economic inputs they cannot get from Europe. In order to build up domestic production to make up for lost imports the would need both large quantities of capital and an influx of skilled workers rather than the brain drain that has been reported since the start of the war. I'm not entirely sold on the idea that the western sanctions have been as effective as the guest suggests but this long form interview lays out a case for a weakening Russia that seems much more compelling and honest than the talking points that American government officials and media have put out on the subject. I guess time will tell if sanctions hurt more than just the world's consumers in the long run. Still, it was an excellent and thought provoking interview.
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