Unloading large gold reserves is quite difficult. I’m told at any point in time 5% of the world’s gold is for sale and if Russia tried to unload large amounts the price would plummet.
"There are no conditions or risks of food shortages or reductions in product availability" Russian Dep PM Abramchenko said in a statement just hours earlier.
Putin cut off internet to the west today or was it yesterday. I don't like that. I want to see their pain. Although, "cutting off internet" is about like sanctions. 24 hours later all the savvy ones have workarounds. Or many do, I should say.
Russia running out of cloud data storage following Ukraine invasion https://www.xda-developers.com/russia-cloud-data-storage-shortage/ Russia began a military invasion of the country of Ukraine on February 24, which is still ongoing and prompted started a chain of sanctions against Russia. Google, Meta (Facebook’s parent company), Apple, and many other tech companies are in the process of winding down operations in Russia, mostly due to sanctions enforced by Europe and the United States. Russia now has another problem on its hands: the country is running out of storage for cloud services. The Russian news outlet Kommersant, citing government sources, is reporting that Russia is rapidly running out of domestic data storage for servers and other critical IT equipment. Russia’s Ministry of Digital Transformation reportedly held a meeting on March 9 with representatives Sberbank, MTS, Oxygen, Rostelecom, Atom-Data, Croc, and Yandex. One source told Kommersant that the departure of foreign cloud services like Google and Amazon increased demand on local storage, and the country expects that capacity to run out within the next two months. The shortage could lead to non-essential services shutting down, such as cloud gaming, music streaming, and video sharing platforms. Russia is also reportedly having difficulty importing equipment from China, due to increased prices (the value of Russia’s currency is tanking) and disputed logistics. One source reportedly told Kommersant (translated), “Two truckloads of servers from a foreign vendor entered the country, but they refuse to give them to us, citing sanctions.” Ironically, Huawei has supposedly stopped shipments to Russia until March 26, which itself has been negatively affected by US sanctions over the past few years. Russia is exploring a few options for the data storage, including seizing computers from companies leaving the country. The simplest solution would likely be for Russia to stop its invasion of Ukraine, which the United Nations reports has killed around 700 civilians so far, including 48 children.
It is not clear at all that Russia can reverse sanctions just by going home at this point. Not clear at all. In addition, even if all sanctions were lifted Russia is still on the road to North Korea because Putin has threatened them with seizure and nationalization- the very words that no company wants to be hearing while considering doing business in a country. The notion that the Russia can invade and burn a country to the ground, displace or kill its citizens and then just go home and everything will be good again is pretty extraordinary. Some sanctions will be lifted because they hurt the west more than Russia but other than that, everyone is more less rooting for maximum pain for them. Fucking Putin, always the victim, will want reparations from the west to rebuild Ukraine and to compensate them for the damage from sanctions. He is pretty much over in to JonesTown territory now. SEIZING ASSETS Russia threatens to nationalize Microsoft and other western companies Russia may attempt to take drastic measures in response to western companies stopping operations in the country. https://www.windowscentral.com/russ...onalize-microsoft-and-other-western-companies
Russia moves to seize hundreds of planes from foreign owners https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/16/business/russia-aircraft-seizure/index.html Russia is seizing hundreds of commercial jets owned by US and European leasing companies, a further sign of the challenges the country's airline industry faces due to sanctions following its invasion of Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin signed a law Monday as part of the government's anti-sanction measures that will allow Russian airlines to register planes leased from foreign companies in Russia, where they will be issued local certificates of airworthiness, according to a statement from the Kremlin. The bill will make it possible for Russian airlines to keep their foreign leased aircraft and operate the planes on domestic routes, while making it harder for foreign companies to reclaim their jets without Russian government approval. US and European sanctions imposed on Russia require leasing companies to repossess all planes they leased to Russian airlines by the end of the month. Western aircraft makers such as Airbus (EADSF) and Boeing (BA) have already cut off Russian airlines' access to the spare parts they need to maintain and safely fly their jets. Russian airlines operate 305 Airbus jets and 332 Boeing jets, according to data provided by aviation analytics firm Cirium. Russia also has 83 regional jets made by Western manufacturers such as Bombardier, Embraer and ATR. Only 144 planes in the active fleets of Russian airlines were built in Russia. Cirium data shows that 85% of those foreign-made planes are owned by leasing companies, and puts their combined value at $12.4 billion. It was unclear how the leasing companies could have taken possession of these planes while they remain on Russian soil. Additional sanctions prohibiting Russian aircraft from flying to most other countries has restricted its airline industry essentially to domestic flights. Leasing companies have not responded to a request for comment on Russia's actions, and it is unclear if they'll even want those planes back. The planes will not have access to replacement parts and won't have valid airworthiness certificates that would be accepted by western airlines. "These jets won't be supported with parts and maintenance any longer," said Richard Aboulafia, managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory. "It's a real issue if they lose their certificates of airworthiness, which can happen if proper records aren't kept, or especially if they're cannibalized for parts." Losing access to 85% of its foreign-built planes would be a crippling blow to the country's economy. Russia is the world's largest nation by landmass, more than twice the size of the continental United States. It needs a viable airline industry to keep its economy working, said Charles Lichfield, the deputy director of the GeoEconomics Center at the Atlantic Council, an international think tank. "It is an important part of Russia's economy," he said. "They want some basic domestic industry to remain in place. Russians don't fly as much as Americans do. They don't fly to Siberia for vacation." Its airline industry is a crucial link for businesses, not only for international flights but also for domestic service for its energy sector, due to the need to transport engineers, other workers and equipment to and from its far flung oil fields. "Aviation is an incredible enabler of economic growth, both domestically and internationally," said Robert Mann, an airline consultant and analyst. "Without it, you take it back to an almost agrarian economy, trying to operate with a railroad network." Russia doesn't need all the planes it is seizing, as the blow to its economy from the sanctions will greatly reduce the need for air travel, said Betsy Snyder, credit analyst covering aircraft leasing companies at Standard & Poor's. "The Russian economy is tanking," she said. "No one will be going in and out of Russia, the Russian citizens are losing their money so they don't have the money to travel going forward. It could be that [airlines] will be a much smaller business." That raises the possibility that many of the planes being seized would be cannibalized for parts. "If you don't have parts manufacturing authority, then you shouldn't be making it yourself," Mann said. "You don't know what standards were used. Have you gotten the internal characteristic right? When you put it into a turbine section of an engine, will it perform like it was designed?" Mann said that when a part reaches the end of its designed usefulness, known as "green time," an airline must choose between flying with parts that should have been replaced for safety reasons or robbing parts from other planes. "You can go through that process as long as you have planes that have green time," he said. " As you run out of airplanes, your network gets smaller and you can fly fewer hours every day, until you don't have an airline." So even keeping the planes won't necessarily keep the Russian airline industry operating."Within a year Russia will cease to have any kind of viable airline industry," Aboulafia said, adding that the its airline industry could soon find itself somewhere between the heavily sanctioned industries in Iran and North Korea. Can a country as large as Russia live without a modern, viable airline industry? "That's a thesis that has never been put to the test," Aboulafia said. "But it's about to be."
Russia says it made a payment to avoid default https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/16/investing/russian-debt-payments/index.html New York (CNN Business) Russia says it has ordered the $117 million in interest payments it owes Wednesday to be sent to investors, attempting to avoid its first international default in more than a century. But it's not out of the woods yet. That's because the funds the country used to make the debt payments came from Russia's frozen foreign assets, sanctioned because of its attack on Ukraine — so it remains unclear whether investors will receive their money. Anton Siluanov, Russia's finance minister, told state media Russia Today that the country had made good on its obligations to creditors. But the "possibility or impossibility of fulfilling our obligations in foreign currency does not depend on us," Siluanov said, according to RT, warning that the payment might not go through if the United States disallows it. "We have the money, we made the payment, now the ball is in America's court," he said. A spokesman for the Treasury said the United States would allow the payments to go through. The two coupons Russia must pay on the maturing dollar-denominated eurobonds serve as the first test of Russia's ability to pay its debts while the world heaves massive sanctions on its economy. If the US blocked the payment, Russia said it would try to pay in rubles rather than dollars. But that action could constitute a default, Fitch Ratings said Tuesday. It highlights the crunch Russia is in: The nation has the money to pay its debts. It just can't access about half of those funds after the West placed unprecedented sanctions on its foreign reserves, totaling about $315 billion, according to Siluanov. If the Russian government defaults, investors' losses could start to mount. Western investors are less exposed to Russia than they used to be. Sanctions following the annexation of Crimea in 2014 already encouraged them to reduce their exposure. But international banks are owed about $121 billion by Russian entities, according to the Bank for International Settlements. JPMorgan estimates that Russia had about $40 billion of foreign currency debt at the end of last year, with about half of that held by foreign investors. So a default would be bad news for Russia, which will have to meet its obligations in its practically worthless currency, lacking access to foreign financing. But the global markets probably won't get hurt too badly. More payments are coming due soon. A much larger $2 billion payment scheduled for early April could create even bigger headaches for Moscow.
Just shows that Russian government is getting desperate and close to the height of stupidity. Both Boeing and Airbus have imposed strict sanctions against Russia. No sales, maintenance of spare parts. The certificates of air worthiness for those planes have been withdrawn. So - they steal the planes. OK. * They cannot land them almost anywhere outside of Russia both because of the air worthiness certificates and because they will be seized as soon as they land. * Let's say they use them only for internal travel. How long can the planes stay in the air without spare parts and maintenance?
Qualcomm has joined the sanctions - will stop all sales and support in Russia. Xerox - same. Netherlands paint manufacturer Akzo Nobel is closing its four factories in Russia.