The ultimate sanction against Russia

[Uberhaus]

Can we play legos, capitalist pig?

Nyet, Russkiy fashist sukin sin. >:D

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62139668

Lego, the Danish toymaking giant, has said it will stop operating in Russia indefinitely due to "continued extensive disruption".

The firm stopped delivering products to Russia in March following the invasion of Ukraine, but its shops remained open as most rival retailers pulled out.

Lego said it would now end its partnership with Inventive Retail Group which runs 81 shops on Lego's behalf.

[W8taminute]

What's interesting to me is that Russia does not seem to be affected by sanctions from what I'm reading. 

In fact they've created BRICS and in a meeting today in Tehran, Russia and Turkey have agreed to stop using the US dollar in energy transactions.

[JasonPratt]

Whereas, I've been reading that they're being affected by the sanctions, but that this is largely indistinguishable from 'living in Russia' for most people there.

Russian companies, once the pandemic hit, decided to bump up their financial reserves to 6 instead of 3 months. August will be 6 months since the start of the invasion, though the half-anniversary of various sanctions will naturally spread out for some time afterward. It'll be interesting to see how things are going for the nation by then.

[al_infierno]

Whereas, I've been reading that they're being affected by the sanctions, but that this is largely indistinguishable from 'living in Russia' for most people there.

+1, I understand the biggest changes to daily life is the lack of access to many American products.  For example they replaced McDonalds with their own Blyat Burger or whatever, and there's been news reports of the food being moldy and ridden with bugs.  But like you said, this is probably indistinguishable from "living in Russia" except for the fact that the food is coming from a massive fast food chain.

[Gusington]

The blyat burgers are really rotten and infested?

[al_infierno]

Read and enjoy the mental aftertaste.

https://www.newsweek.com/mcdonalds-russia-vkusno-mold-bugs-burger-1721715

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Don't care.  I now desperately want a Blyat Burger.  They're Suka!

[Gusington]

I like how the people alluded to in that article are 'outraged' by the quality of the food but the incineration of their next door neighbors is fine.

[al_infierno]

Just another day in the Soviet Union Russia.

[GDS_Starfury]

fuck that country!

[FarAway Sooner]

Yeah.  I think coverage of the sanctions on Russia is hard, because there are two almost completely separate questions, and neither one is offering us a clear view.

• What are the impacts of sanctions on the Russian economy, and how is that affecting consumers in the street?
• What are the implications of those economic hardships for achieving regime change in Russia?

The first question is obscured by a lack of clear numbers from Russia for months and months now (although the longer Ukraine thread on this forum does feature an interesting, recent article that tries to connect some of those dots).  The second question is even harder because predicting Russian domestic politics was next to freaking impossible, even when we did have a vaguely free press there.

Ultimately, we'll have better answers to the first question.  I don't know that we'll have any answers to the second question until after the fact.