Unheard profitable trade
Nicholas Zharkikh
The war is raging more and more, drawing into its flow all the new countries, which – whether them like it or not – are forced to decide whose side they are on.
Our war has long been a world war, and for many reasons:
1, any war for Ukraine is a world war;
2, the war with the participation of a nuclear state, a permanent member of the UN Security Council is a world war;
3, the scope of Ukraine’s international support in our righteous war has no examples from the time of World War II (it has already come to the announcement of the land lease!).
4, the war is going on at all levels and in many dimensions.
If world leaders are in no hurry to call this war a world war, they probably have some calculations for this expression. I have no calculations and just draw conclusions from the available facts.
About 200 million people are already directly involved in the fighting, who will never live the way they did before the war. We will rebuild our country, and the Russians and Belarusians will go to the Stone Age. They don’t realize it yet, but it doesn’t affect anything.
One of the most significant dimensions of the war is the financial war. The imposition of sanctions of unprecedented proportions could in itself serve as a casus belli… if the war had not yet begun. But since it began, by virtue of the proverb "wet is not afraid of rain" – they were introduced.
Some sanctions are known to have been imposed in 2014, but they themselves were weak and simply not implemented. For all 8 years we have not heard anything about the seizures of bank assets or the confiscation of real estate, we have not even heard of anyone being restricted in visas. If some of this were actually implemented, there would certainly be victims who would start complaining and saying, "Well, what about me?"
But no one complained, which means that the sanctions were announced, but not implemented in the eight years – in the hope that somehow everything will calm down by itself.
But it did not calm down.
And now the sanctions have finally started not just to be announced, but to be applied. And immediately there were happy reports that in one country Russia was squatted for 20 billion dollars, in another – for 100 billion, in the third – for 300 billion. And I think that’s not all.
Russia is said to receive $ 1 billion a day from oil sales. This has given us about $ 7 trillion over the last 20 years. One might think that Russia’s natural gas exports give the same amount. So, 14 trillion dollars.
Of course, this is gross income. It must be deducted from the actual costs of production, transportation and sale of fuel, something goes in one way or another in the state budget of Russia (theft of which – a separate sector of the economy), something is laid in the state foreign exchange reserve, something is laid in net profit of state oil and gas monopolies. But some of the non-public money is still in the wallets of Russia’s top government officials, and that amount could be in the trillions of dollars.
Of these non-public sums, of course, Russia has already spent a lot on financing terrorism around the world, on financing non-terrorist subversive activities ($ 5 billion was written off for one Medvedchuk, and it is still unknown whether at least a hundred rubles went to Mr. Victor, or all stolen along the way), to bribe politicians in democracies and international organizations (even the Pope was bought by Muscovites, apparently, it was not very expensive), to buy newspapers in the same countries, and yet, I think a lot there was still money left.
It is a noble task to dig them out. Many countries have already joined this hunt, in this unprecedentedly profitable trade deal.
Indeed, "ordinary Russians" have lived in barracks and slums for decades, enthusiastically ravaging the depths of their land in order to drive all this good to the West as fully as possible. Western countries settle with Russia for goods delivered in freely convertible dollars, which … drive on Russian accounts in the same Western countries.
And now these accounts are being arrested, and then there will be confiscation. We received the goods, paid the money to the seller, and now the money paid back to the West. The seller now has neither the goods nor the money, and the buyer has not only received the goods, but also got his money back. Returned in part, but it is better to get a part than to get nothing.
Has trade ever been so profitable somewhere in world history?
And now, when the governments and influential circles of many countries around the world have tasted the "crazy money" that pours down on them from the sky, the question arises – how to appropriate that money? How to legalize their confiscation?
But only to force Russia to surrender! The party that lost the war pays for everything. The winners will dictate the conditions: here you are, dear Russians, a contribution, and this is reparation, and this is compensation, and this is what we will take without carry.
All this commerce is built on the blood of our soldiers who are at war with Russia alone. Without the shedding of our blood, none of this could have happened.
But I think this commerce is beneficial for Ukraine, because it attracts all those interested in such an operation to our side. The amounts already seized are ten times higher than the amounts received by Ukraine as assistance (in all forms).
I am not an idealist and I do not think that the informal anti-Russian coalition of democracies supports Ukraine only because our cause is righteous, or only because Russia is a threat. All this has been at least since 2014, but only now has it become extraordinary profitably to support Ukraine to get rid of part of the skin of the Russian bear. Yes, he hasn’t been killed yet, but that’s what he’s doing. Viribus unitis!
Everything will be – Ukraine! We will win!
April 17, 2022 in Kyiv.