Quote Originally Posted by Rusal View Post
These policy-makers you speak of never existed. As early as February 26th garden-variety economists working independently uploaded videos on YT speaking of Russia's break away from the dollar for exchange as a maybe unavoidable companion to the invasion; more obscure analysts on Twitter never understood the sanctions as ground-breaking; the rise of new superpowers in the globe is stated, accepted and celebrated as a natural decant in American think-tanks and has been so for at least 10 years. The aforementioned are closer to the real teams that work for policy-makers. Don't think the suited analysts and the fronts for political parties they sit to talk about the sanctions om CNN are the real deal nor that the drums these networks are told to roll are an actual picture of the situation. Something closer to repartition and severance is going on, and it hardly can be the best of Putin's outcomes as the full integration of European technology + Russia's natural resources would make that region of the world the most important superpower. That's all been torpedoed now and it's going according to plan because the severance from Russia has not stopped. Sometimes true slips, like up to a few months ago Russian officials still let out that what they wanted was an integrated territory from Lisbon to Vladivostok. The Arestovich video is another good example: everyone in the group of people that matters saw the war coming years ago but at the same time sources more partial to the Russian government have been circulating the idea that they OMG never expected that Russian economy would be so staunch. Please…in Latin America we're always on the verge of collapse but we twist and turn and survive, and so do governments…and Americans have extensive experience dealing with Latin A.
Are you sure? I remember Biden talking about "turning the Rouble to rubble". Daleep Singh, one of Biden's top advisers, talked about piercing Putin's "fortress economy". My impression was that the White House really was expecting sanctions to halt Russia's economy.