Russia warns Europe: if you take our assets, we have a response that will hurt
An ally of President Vladimir Putin warned Europe on Tuesday that Russia has already drafted legislation to retaliate if nearly $300 billion of Russian assets were seized by the West and used to help Ukraine.
After President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine in 2022, the United States and its allies prohibited transactions with Russia's central bank and finance ministry, blocking around $300 billion of sovereign Russian assets in the West.
Top officials in the United States want to seize the assets to help support Ukraine, though some bankers and European officials are worried that simply taking the assets would create a dangerous precedent.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation on Saturday including a bill with a provision that would allow the confiscation of Russian sovereign assets, though the lion's share of the assets are in Europe.
If they want to hurt us over it, it means it will hurt them if we do it.
Just make a law that it's a 100% tax on assets identified as falling under sanctions related to a aggressive invading nation. Precedent limited.
Imagine if we set a dangerous precedent of seizing rich people's assets if they are involved in anything nerfarious! Society would surely collapse!
People get drafted, innocents gets killed, citizens get taxed, all considered a given when war comes knocking. But God forbid some rich oligarchs lose some percentage of their wealth over it.
Don't threaten me with a good time!
It might, lol
Also what kind of precedent is this: "If we ever were in a war of aggression, we don't want our assets to be seized (even for the resulting damage)."
Name proposals: War of Agression Tax, Imperialism Tax, WAR (Withhold Agressors Reparation) Tax
I like your WAR acronym
Huh. That's what it's good for.
Absolutely nothing!
heads over to Piped
What are they gonna do ? Finance far-right parties in all of Europe to sow discord ? Oh wait.
Yeah the money was due to be seized a long time ago with all their interférences
As a European I say: Let's go bitch!
We've been way too dependant on Russia. It's time we acknowledge the actual cost for cheap gas and oil from Russia.
What's Puti gonna do? Invade another country?
Yeah, I'm confused how they think they can retaliate.
Cyber warfare is a definite possibility. Although it seems short sighted to waste 0 days on that.
Why would you draft legislation to do a cyber attack? Seems more like a military thing.
Cyberwarfare, political interference, nuclear weapons, sabotage of infrastructure, assassinations...
The question isn't really "can Russia", but "will Russia". Because Russia doing any of those is probably going to produce a response in turn.
They're already doing the first two, last three seem like they'd get way more escalation than they bargained for. They don't have intermediate escalation options that they haven't used already.
Not really a binary, though; they can dial things up or down.
Isn’t a much of Europe still running off of a lot of Russian gas? They could just turn that spigot off.
The EU has cut its imports of Russian gas down from nearly half of the total supply to about 15% since the war started, so that's not nearly the threat it once was
While it’s great the EU has made such a reduction, it’s still a meaningful threat, even if it’s not the serious one it once was. And I also realize that we’re moving into summer which also blunts it a bit more.
I’m just considering what Russia could be referring to, what their options are. I think it’s most likely that any retaliation would come in the form of several smaller actions rather than a single larger one in order to exact the “hurt”, so to speak.
Losing that income would hurt the Kremlin a lot.
I think "start a war and lose all your fucking money to pay for it" is a good precedent and everyone should immediately employ it.
I agree completely and would like that to apply to all countries, even mine. Let there be real consequences for the ultra-rich for a country starting wars, and maybe you'll see the politics change. Maybe not, but I'd like to hope so.
Have all the oligarchs dump their western real estate and crash the housing market?
Please...
2.0
Final_final_final.docx
Russia, go fuck yourself!
Not all of Russia, just the Kremlin and oligarchs. Many Russians are decent people, often deceived by their sociopath rulers and constant propaganda.
Really hate to burst your bubble here, but the Russians who are against their leaders are in the minority and a lot of Russians were and still are fine with the way their country has been reigned in the last decades and today. The myth that this is just Putin's war is just that, a myth...
Russia's final warning!
Ha ha ha, he ain't got shit. Russia is impotent.
Like establishing an economic collaborative consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa that are all in talks to increase trade with each other, and ditch the dollar as their trade currency?
Like attempting to undermine the petrodollar as the world reserve currency for purchasing oil?
I don’t know what counters the west has in their bag, but it’s a little silly to make threats as if BRICS hasn’t been completely transparent about their plans the whole time.
It’s kind of an empty threat if you’ve been openly working on it for decades while the (more powerful) nations you plan to ratfuck have had time to prepare. I also don’t know how China would manage with a loss or rapid decrease in trade. They seem a bit too pragmatic than to follow Russia into a hole.
I’m sure they’d have to target all western accounts at once. Targeting one type will lead to the rest quickly hemorrhaging their money out of country.
And I don’t think they’d wind up attracting new western investment for decades if they pulled a move like that.
We don't fucking care.
FAFO.
Putin hurt itself in confusion
The US will never seize Russian assets because they are all on loan to the Republican Party.
Let’s stretch them thin!
You wouldn't know it, it goes to another school.
I love how a year into this shit they're trying to convince everyone they haven't even really been trying but now they're going to actually try. I wonder what the parents of all their dead soldiers think when they read stuff like that.
🇺🇦
Oh no, if we take russian assets they may reach Paris in 3576 AD
I'm not sure exactly what Russia would do to bring hurt, but what I am sure of is that people will think twice about having dollar-denominated assets or euro-denominated assets because they could be frozen and confiscated at any time for any reason, so they will be more likely to hold gold and other real money. This would be a very, very bad move in the long term. Maybe not short term.