Posts by quietviper0

Nathan Thomas12 said:Man, you've cooked up a whole lot of nonsense and you're fundamentally wrong. GDP is never measured in quantity; it is exclusively measured in currency.
GDP = C + I + G + (Imports - Exports).
C is household and business consumption.
I is investment.
G is government spending.
All of that is valued in currency, not volume. Let's say you and I live in a tiny 1,000 sq. ft. shack and produce 100 liters of oil a month. Is it the same whether we sell it for $5 a liter or $500 a liter?!

The only thing that skyrocketed in Russia was export value for oil and gas, even though the actual volume of exports decreased. Price is everything—it's about the value. Because oil and gas prices went through the roof, real GDP fell 4%, which means everything else crashed by double digits. Car production alone dropped by 97%.
Just look at how much higher gas prices are now compared to before the war.

I was looking at the nominal GDP, which fell 30% when measured in rubles, because that includes the currency's value.
Nominal GDP accounts for price fluctuations and exchange rates, making it a better indicator of actual purchasing power.

So, if I’m following your logic correctly: you took a percentage of growth or decline that applies specifically to real GDP, applied it to an entirely different metric—nominal GDP—then adjusted it for a specific currency, and now you’re claiming that this specific calculation somehow gives us a completely different eleventh parameter: purchasing power? 🙏

Let me walk through your example...

If we sell 100 barrels of oil at $5 each, we’ll end up having to take out loans just to cover our extraction costs and keep our heads above water... By taking on debt, we reduce available capital, the cost of capital rises, and investments dry up everywhere...
Total output: 100 barrels of oil.

But, if we sell those 100 barrels at $50 each, we have enough for bread, we pay some customs to the state, we don't have to dip into our savings just to survive, and thanks to taxes, we’ve funded the salary of a clerk at the local DMV who also gets to buy bread...
Total output: 100 barrels of oil, two loaves of bread, and a few investments from the rest of the population...

Now, if we sell those 100 barrels at $500 each, besides the bread, we’re buying lamb, we’re buying cars, we’re investing heavily, the government collects massive tax revenue, politicians are busy arguing over budget cuts, and we’ve created ten new jobs for clerks at the DMV...
Total output: 100 barrels of oil, plenty of bread, various investments, some lamb, a new car, a built oil reservoir, and maybe 10 miles of newly paved highway...

Yes, price can influence things (though it doesn't always have to), but the impact is indirect, and price isn't factored into real GDP... And real GDP is the only thing used to compare economic health over time...
It doesn't necessarily have to drive growth because you might not need to invest or indulge in luxury... It also might not work because inflation could simply eat up all your price gains, leaving you right back where you started with just enough for bread, despite selling at 10x the price... Or perhaps the appreciation of your currency will swallow the value of your exported oil, and you'll find you can still only afford bread in your own local currency...

And no, we haven't gained any insight into purchasing power from this... That’s something the experts will measure using entirely different methods...

Anyway, you go ahead and keep playing with your numbers, I won't bother you anymore...

Nathan Thomas12 said:Look, I don't care if you're a welder, a janitor, or whatever—it's not my business. But I've got an economics degree and experience in banking, so when you claim I know nothing, at least have the decency to hit me with a real counter-argument.
Here’s the reality: Russia's GDP dropped 4% monthly when measured in USD. Let's say pre-war it was $10,000 per capita, and now it's sitting at $9,600.
Furthermore, if $1 USD used to be 80 rubles, that puts the GDP at 800,000 rubles. Now, with $1 USD equaling only 60 rubles, that $9,600 translates to just 576,000 rubles.
So, the gap between 800,000 and 576,000 is a 30% drop. Russia's GDP fell by 30% when measured in rubles—and that's even before considering how much more expensive everything has become there.
Call me names all you want, but any sane person will take my side until you can actually dismantle my numbers. Honestly, if someone proves me wrong with actual facts, I'll be the first to admit I messed up.

What actually fluctuates is real GDP, not nominal figures, and it shouldn't be calculated using some arbitrary currency you've picked out to make a point... In truth, GDP isn't really about currency at all; it represents the actual volume of goods produced and services rendered, and to compare that over time, we use constant prices.

The thing that fell for the Russians was 4%, and that is the only metric that truly rises or falls—real GDP, specifically products and services.

If they had 1,000 products and services last year, and there is a 4% drop this year, they now have 960, regardless of whatever their nominal value might be...

Let's take a hypothetical scenario from last year to illustrate this:
100 products = 100 rubles = 10 dollars

This year, applying that 4% drop, the only thing we can actually map that decrease onto is the component representing products. That percentage doesn't apply to currencies. However, if you factor in inflation/deflation (the base rate) and depreciation/appreciation (all other currencies), then you can derive the other nominal data points.

In Russia's case, if we account for 15% inflation and a 20% appreciation of the ruble, those top figures would look roughly like this:
96 products = 110 rubles = 13 dollars

Any attempt to manipulate those numbers, other than acknowledging that products and services fell by 4%, is simply incorrect... It is wrong to claim there was a 10% increase in rubles, and it is equally wrong to claim a 30% increase in dollars. Currencies are irrelevant to the core fact.
They fell by 4%. In terms of products and services.
And all these little gymnastics you're doing with exchange rates... well, it's really just economic voodoo...

It is the exact same situation in the US where we just received data showing 7.7% growth.
In terms of local currency adjusted for inflation, it was actually 15%, and in dollars, it was "only" 5% due to depreciation. Using anything other than that 7.7% figure is a mistake because the currency fluctuations are secondary.

P.S. I sincerely hope life never sends me to you for any banking or financial services...

Nathan Thomas12 said:It’s funny how the Kremlin sycophants collectively decided to ignore my post about how Russian GDP has tanked by 40% when measured in rubles due to sanctions.
Facts clearly don't matter to them—they just want to hear the same tired nonsense over and over, like a broken record. :doubleslap:

Honestly, it was rather difficult and a bit uncomfortable to witness such a total lack of fundamental economic understanding for the first time, though one can't help but hope that things won't escalate further from here...
Then a certain "calculation" was presented, and once again, I found myself hoping that we had finally reached the end of it.

Since you clearly aren't planning on backing down, I really must ask you to perhaps brush up on some basic economic principles before diving back into any deeper analysis of financial matters...

nimbleviper3 said:Is Nutella actually a luxury item? 🤔

Not at all, it’s just completely useless as an indicator for anything meaningful...

crimsoncyclist71 said:If someone in Russia was buying Nutella for price X before sanctions, and now it sells for X times 2, that is an indicator. I don't see how that isn't perfectly clear. The effect of sanctions is that these specific products have become this much more expensive.

I asked for a breakdown of low retail prices in Russia, but I got no answer because the truth is devastating. Anything currently available will shock anyone who insists that Russia is a self-sufficient country.

Here is a guy directly from Russia:

The price comparisons in this video actually make sense, which is a refreshing change from the ones we've been debating here so far...

But hey, if you really want to obsess over the specific price of Nutella, be my guest...
Just please, try not to let Nutella become your entire personality, otherwise the producers of sol de Chile might take offense and feel a little bit slighted...

rowdyraven112 said:Standardized? The first thing that made me doubt the bias was the price of salmon... since when is salmon in a "consumer basket"? Then Nutella in a basket... a little reality check wouldn't hurt... beer...

Funny how he took half a liter of Paulaner in a can for Belarus and half a liter in a glass bottle for Poland... as if people in Belarus and Russia don't have their own beer. Not to mention the price difference between a glass bottle and a can.

Anyway, a friend was in the States and told me Budweiser is one of the cheaper ones, while Mexican beers are the most expensive.

The salmon is definitely the most bizarre part, isn't it? One single item accounts for 25% of the total value of this imaginary basket, yet it’s hardly a fundamental necessity for daily life...

But there is more to it than that. During his time in Germany, he mostly stuck to buying Kaufland store brands, for instance...

And the icing on the cake is that he wasn't even physically in Russia; he just clicked through whatever webshop was available at whatever prices were listed. At least, based on what my Slavic ears could make sense of in his story, though if anyone here has a mastery of the Russian language, please feel free to correct me if I've misunderstood his account...

I was just sitting here thinking about how much things seem to be shifting lately, and it really does make you wonder where everything is heading... I mean, when you look at the way the economy is moving and how everyone seems to be reacting to the latest news out of Washington, it feels like we're constantly on the edge of something significant, doesn't it? It’s almost like watching a slow-motion movie where you know the climax is coming, but you're just waiting for the director to finally call "cut"... anyway, I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself, but there's just something about this particular moment in history that feels uniquely heavy yet strangely full of potential if we can just navigate it correctly... As if I could just leave that hanging there without adding a bit more context... because you know me, I can't help but wander down a few side streets before I get to the point... so, what was it that was being said...
This is such an incredibly insightful comparison, really, because it lays out exactly how much of an impact those sanctions and the Russian countermeasures actually have on the ground...
I mean, does it even make sense to pack your shopping cart full of things you can’t find anywhere else? If that's the case, how would someone, say, an American living in a different part of the world, even begin to gauge what the local prices are like over there... 🤦

I suppose one should probably start by figuring out exactly what a single household or an individual actually needs just to get by, and then try to weigh those essential living costs against whatever salary they’re actually bringing home... though that might be asking a bit much from the professional Twitter crowd, wouldn't you agree? They seem far more interested in chasing clicks and likes, picking up engagement on anything they post as long as it carries that certain scent of sensationalism and the illusion of being groundbreaking...

Whether we're talking about a bottle of sol de Chile wine, a cold Paulaner beer, a tub of Nutella, or even just grabbing some Barilla pasta, a bag of Lay's chips, or a bar of Milka chocolate... and honestly, even things like high-end salmon or premium laundry detergent like Tide, none of these brands should ever be used as a real yardstick for measuring someone's quality of life or their actual purchasing power... because if these specific items happen to be out of stock or marked up with ridiculous prices in certain areas, they are incredibly easy to swap out for a billion other alternatives without losing an ounce of actual well-being or comfort in your daily routine... it really just comes down to the fact that these luxury labels don't define our standard of living at all...

And there’s another absolutely fascinating layer to this whole "comparison" they're trying to make, which is that he hasn't even actually set foot in Russia, but instead has just been scrolling through various online retailers to gather his data...

Well, you actually pointed out in your previous post that the ruble is absolute garbage, and I certainly wouldn't be dreaming of converting their wages into dollars using some official government exchange rate... so I'm wondering why, in this particular comparison, you're making the price seem relevant by calculating it at 60 rubles to the dollar...

goldenowl73 said:Just some down-to-earth, everyday shopping stuff for you guys. This blogger from Russia decided to grab a full basket of the exact same products—nothing on sale, just standard shelf prices—across Belarus, Russia, Germany, and Poland to see how the costs stacked up.

In Belarus, he spent €176.19;
Over in Poland, it was only €97.83;
Germany came in at €119.98;
But man, in Russia, the total hit €199.54.

https://twitter.com/ru2ch/status/156...wOneAIXMzpSVuA

It’s actually quite fascinating to think that Western goods, which are becoming so much harder to import into Russia lately, end up being more expensive than in places where they flow in easily... who would have guessed such a thing... 🤔

Oh, and if you look at the first comment, there's already a bit of a heated debate breaking out over the price of a loaf of bread.

I wonder if this is some kind of standardized consumer basket used to compare the cost of living across different parts of the world?

Then again, you also have to consider the exchange rate issue... I mean, do they use the official exchange rate when calculating these prices while ignoring it for everything else because it feels artificial? It wouldn't be hard to run into some serious mathematical dissonance that way...

It really is a rather instructive little comparison, isn't it... 🙄

William Cooper11 said:That argument falls apart if you assume Turkey actually has an equivalent for everything on the European market. They don't.
They're even importing optics for their Bayraktar drones from Canada.

Now, looking closely at the article, it doesn't actually state that they only export their own proprietary tech. We’d really need to see if they’re also ramping up imports from the West just to flip them for a profit later on...

I’m honestly not quite sure what the goal is with listing all those requirements, considering they basically need everything from the West just to claim they’re making "their own" stuff...
I suppose nobody expects that they'll face sanctions themselves, or that those refugees mentioned will just stay tucked away in Turkey indefinitely... Or maybe people think decision-making within NATO will suddenly become a breeze if that happens...

George Robinson43 said:The distinction between nominal and real values lies entirely in inflation.
You're likely referring to GDP adjusted for purchasing power parity. In that case, Russia is going to struggle significantly under these sanctions due to an inevitable collapse in trade.

To be a bit more specific than just saying "inflation," the real value is expressed through constant prices, which essentially represents the actual physical volume of goods and services produced.
Think of it this way: if you eat a loaf of bread, it’s still just one loaf of bread... whether someone decides to price that single loaf at one dollar or ten cents doesn't change the fact that you still ate one loaf, and nothing has truly changed in terms of actual substance if that bread was worth a dollar yesterday but only ten cents today...

If you look right above the graph on the World Bank link, there is a section labeled "Details" that provides a description:

Annual percentage growth rate of GDP at market prices based on constant local currency. Aggregates are based on constant 2015 prices, expressed in U.S. dollars.

Honestly, a lot of the confusion we run into—which is actually pretty easy to fix if you just take a second to think about it—stems from people mixing up the concepts of "nominal" versus "real" values...

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator...=RU&start=2010

hollowdriver13 said:I mean, back when Russia invaded Georgia, Navalny was actually calling for all Georgians to be deported from Russia, even using some pretty nasty slurs against them.
That post is still sitting there on his now-defunct LiveJournal account if you want to see it.

https://navalny.livejournal.com/274456.html

Luckily, the internet never forgets. It’s also a perfect example of how Russian politicians follow that old saying about a wolf never changing its coat—just a little something for anyone out there thinking Navalny would have been some kind of better alternative (he’s actually held similar views regarding Crimea, viewing it as Russian territory too).

And honestly, since they keep blowing their own trumpets about being at war with the West, why can't they just travel through the West? If they aren't happy with how things are going, maybe they should focus on dealing with whoever is running their own country and how they're steering the ship.

Look, I’m certainly not against implementing something if there’s actual logic behind it, but I can't help feeling like nobody actually views this as a realistic scenario... It just seems a bit pointless to roll out a measure when you already suspect from the get-go that it won't actually achieve anything meaningful...

Furthermore, one has to wonder why we're even patting ourselves on the back for all those experts and brilliant minds who have managed to escape Putin's reach thanks to sanctions... It would probably make much more sense to address that issue immediately instead of treating it like a victory, and then maybe start figuring out ways to gently nudge them back toward home...

Nathan Thomas12 said:What about all those tough Russians over in Germany protesting against Putin?

I’m having a little trouble wrapping my head around how banning Russians from entering the Schengen Area would have anything at all to do with pro-Putin protests happening somewhere else...

Are they really so flush with cash and resources that they can just ship hordes of people across the EU for quick day trips just to stage demonstrations?

Or are those hundreds of thousands of people we keep hearing about—the ones used to argue that sanctions are working because people are fleeing Putin—actually just his loyalists after all?
Or is it that any future potential influx of those hundreds of thousands will turn into Putin's players if we don't move quickly to prohibit !!! their entry?

I guess I'm just wondering, what is the actual logic behind linking this potential ban to those protests... maybe it's just lost on me...

I was just sitting here thinking about how much things have changed lately, and I couldn't help but wonder if anyone else feels that same sense of drifting through these shifting tides... It’s funny how life works sometimes, isn't it? One moment you think you have everything mapped out, and the next, you're just navigating through a fog of uncertainty, trying to find your footing again... anyway, I suppose I'm just rambling now, but there really is something quite profound about the way we all just try to move forward, regardless of what the world throws our way... quietviper0 says:
The Czech Republic, which is currently holding the presidency of the European Council, just put out a statement suggesting that they might... There’s some talk swirling around about the possibility of the European Union deciding to prohibit all visa issuances for Russian citizens, which would be quite the significant next step in the ongoing series of sanctions being leveled against Russia... It feels like we are constantly watching these pieces move on the chessboard, waiting to see what the next big legislative push will be from the leadership in Brussels...

Another absolutely brilliant idea just popped up, really sitting right up there on the same level of genius as that wonderful proposal to prohibit Russians from paying off their debts...

I mean, there’s also the possibility that they might just hike up the visa fees and shorten the duration, which would essentially be a way to squeeze more foreign currency out of them... it makes you wonder if that's all part of the underlying strategy...
And then they just let them wander all over Europe for their summer vacations and shopping sprees, which really just means letting all that hard-earned cash leak right back out of the country again...
There is this persistent theory floating around that the whole point behind all these sanctions is actually just to get its hands on foreign currency reserves... which is such a fascinatingly complex angle to consider when you really start digging into the geopolitical motivations involved...

Or perhaps they’ll just end up easing that massive brain drain everyone keeps talking about, which is supposedly one of the main goals behind all these sanctions anyway...

Oh, you know, it really is just so much simpler to just stand up there and shout, "Prohibit !!!"... it's almost effortless when you put it that way...
Actually, I’ve been thinking about it, and it seems to me that those kinds of official proclamations usually end up garnering much more praise and adoration from the target audience than anything else...

Carl Lee27 said:Check out this incredible chart:
It shows how Russia isn't actually exporting more, or rather, how China and India aren't really making up for all those lost customers in the West. It’s pretty eye-opening when you see it laid out like this.
https://twitter.com/DiegoFassnacht/s...12214169681921

The data used in the link above comes from CREA, which does such a fantastic job tracking all of this stuff.
https://energyandcleanair.org/

There’s actually even more data available from that same CREA group over here: https://crea.shinyapps.io/russia_counter/
Looking at the graph titled "Russia's estimated revenues from fossil fuel exports," it doesn't exactly paint a bleak picture regarding their energy export revenue...

And honestly, I'm not entirely sure how many people truly grasp that figure of 80.5 billion dollars sent to Russia from the European Union during the war alone, or if they can even begin to wrap their heads around the actual context behind it...

Because the context is this: back in 2019 and 2021, the entire European Union paid Russia about 100 billion dollars for energy over the course of full years. Now, in just 5.5 months, we've already cleared 80 billion...
If you factor in the period leading up to the invasion, it becomes crystal clear that in just seven and a bit months, we've already surpassed what we used to pay them annually...
And that counter just keeps ticking upward, and it shows no sign of stopping...

It also wouldn't hurt to glance at the bottom of the page where they list all their updates—they've had to keep adding extra billions to that total multiple times—which makes you wonder if the current figure accounts for every single dollar being moved right now...

But in all seriousness, trying to perform a "deep dive" analysis on June's numbers compared to February or March probably isn't even worth much of a thought...

Nathan Thomas12 said:Obviously, the gas is being paid for in dollars, not rubles.
Basically, the whole thing goes through Gazprombank—the foreign buyer drops dollars into a specific account, then the bank handles the exchange from dollars to rubles before moving those rubles over to Gazprom's account. At the end of the day, the Russians get their hands on the dollars, which is what they actually care about. The whole "pay in rubles" stunt is just a clever way for them to squeeze out as many dollars as possible.

What does "squeeze out more Euros" actually mean here? In what way do the Russians walk away with extra Euros through this specific payment scheme? 🤔

Nancy Gomez26 said:Exactly. When the unit price is set in rubles but you're paying at the register in dollars, you aren't just dealing with the sticker price; you're dealing with whatever exchange rate they decide to apply. The price is likely pegged in contracts against other benchmarks, but the rate at which a Russian bank swaps those dollars for rubles is under Kremlin control. If this wasn't already baked into the existing contracts, it represents a fundamental shift in how business is conducted.

The unit price is actually denominated in Euros, not Rubles, along with everything else. Based on what we know, it's pretty much tied to the TTF hub everywhere...
As for the exchange rate the bank uses to convert those Euros into Rubles, nobody in Europe is looking at it, let alone worrying about it, so when you combine that with the previous post about them "taking more Euros," the actual purpose behind it all remains a bit fuzzy to me...

That directive from back in the spring didn't actually mandate paying in Rubles. What it did was introduce a bit of marketing spin while simultaneously ensuring that one specific bank stays clear of sanctions, making sure those Euros don't get stuck in Europe but instead head straight toward Washington, D.C., via this supposed currency conversion...

So, I find myself wondering why this conversion is being treated as some sort of trick, and why none of us seem concerned about what exchange rate is being used? From our perspective, it honestly doesn't matter if they turn 1 Euro into 200 Rubles, or if they turn it into 60 and pocket an extra 140, or even if they turn it into 20 and just leave it at that... We aren't buying Rubles; they are simply conducting their own business however they see fit...
In short, it doesn't affect our pockets one way or the other...
A different scenario would be if we were actually forced to buy Rubles and if prices were strictly set in Rubles. There wouldn't be any open markets or free trading to fall back on; you'd just be at the mercy of whatever the central bank decides to offer. Personally, I don't think that's an unrealistic possibility to consider as we approach winter...

swiftjackal11 said:What if the West learns its lesson from what happened with Russia and starts pulling its industry out of China?

Well, I learned my own lessons through sky-high prices and constant haggling with contractors, which eventually led me to build my house bit by bit...
The first week, I was out gathering clay to fire my own bricks and tiles, the next week I was forging steel components and hauling gravel and cement, and after that, it didn't even take me two weeks to mix up the concrete and get everything joined together...
I even picked up the kids from preschool myself, because honestly, there’s just no sense in paying someone else to do something I can handle on my own...
Of course, I managed to squeeze all of that in alongside my regular job and all those overtime hours...
Did I mention that I’m pretty much self-sufficient when it comes to food too?

That little fairy tale above is about as realistic as the idea of pulling "our" industry out of the global stage... You can't just pick up an entire factory and its equipment and move it from one side of the world to the other, nor can you easily replicate a massive, highly organized production ecosystem that’s been fine-tuned in one specific location... plus, who would actually do the work, considering the West is already struggling with labor shortages, especially when it comes to the blue-collar workers...

They have the manpower, while we have the R&D and the technical expertise, giving us a complete package of products for both our markets and theirs... If we pull "ours" away from "theirs," it’s unlikely our products will still be heading their way, and closing off markets is rarely a one-way street... We might end up building our own BMW's entirely on our own soil, but in the process, we’ll probably end up producing half as many BMW's since we've lost access to half the market...

If anyone actually sees the logic or the benefit in any of that, well, good luck to them...

Zachary Jackson4 said:I don't understand what quietviper0 thinks they have proven here.

The drop from 35 to 30 in the EU seems at first glance to be linked to the year sanctions were imposed on Russia over Crimea. However, given the subsequent rally, there may be no correlation.

I will not act as a "convenient economist" by diving into the granular details.
My only question is this: would the Russians retreat into a hole if energy prices plummeted threefold, or was it specifically due to the sanctions?

I am making no definitive claims, as that would require deeper research; therefore, I will defer to your response.

You’ve presented a chart showing Brent crude alongside Russia's nominal GDP in dollars, and you're drawing a direct correlation between them. By that same logic, our own domestic charts could look just as similar... It probably would have been more insightful if you'd pointed out that oil plays such a massive role in the Russian GDP to begin with...

Beyond that, there are countless other factors at play, and when you're looking at GDP in dollars, the exchange rate of your local currency against the dollar has a huge impact, so it isn't always the most reliable indicator of actual economic health... In fact, questioning the gap between 16 trillion and 10 trillion doesn't carry much weight, especially considering how the entire EU is struggling just to get back to its 2008 economic levels—we haven't really moved the needle in fifteen years, and back in 2015, we saw a massive plunge in GDP as well...

Purchasing power parity is generally a much more meaningful metric to track:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator...-US&start=2000

Zachary Jackson4 said:Why did Russia's GDP per capita drop from $16,000 in 2013 down to $10,000 by 2020?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...es-since-1976/

https://www.macrotrends.net/countrie...gdp-per-capita

Do you see the link?

It seems the Russians are aiming for that level. Or at least they are trying.

That's what we call "seeing only what one wants to see," which, unfortunately, is a pretty common habit among people...

Here is a chart for another nation whose currency hasn't exactly been a superstar against the US Dollar over the last fifteen years—and whose economy isn't exactly thriving either, much like the Russian situation. It's worth noting that when compared to European currencies, the Ruble has had much uglier drops and fluctuations than even the dollar itself...

https://www.macrotrends.net/countrie...gdp-per-capita

I assume you'd agree that, in this specific case, the country shown here doesn't really have much of a connection to oil, yet the graph just happens to have those same ups and downs you see in the Brent crude charts...

But if that doesn't quite satisfy your curiosity, then perhaps you might have some brilliant explanation for how this particular graph managed to swing from $35,000 down to $30,000 during 2014 and 2015...

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator...=EU&start=2000

wiredseal7 said:Why would I condemn it? Who started the whole freezing assets and sanctions game first?
Russian moves are just a response to the economic war waged against them—you know, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.

I’d criticize it if it happened before all this, but Russia isn't the aggressor here—they're playing defense.

Besides, they did it to keep the company breathing and save jobs. That's actually responsible policy—unlike the European approach, where I assume some Frenchman will end up footing the bill for Renault with a few billion euros.

It's not even comparable to Gazprom, which would be pumping gas regardless of whether they were expropriated or not.

Renault agreed to it? Well, can't blame them... no point complaining when the deal is already done.
They probably got some compensation—which is obviously being kept hush-hush because of that hysterical Zelensky administration running around lobbying and acting like clowns.

Pretty much like how the Russians agreed to buy the A330. Everyone's happy. 😁

You see someone post a link to an article they clearly haven't even bothered to read, only to get a lengthy rebuttal from someone else who also hasn't actually read the article...
Honestly, I can't help but marvel at it... 🙏

Unfortunately, I get the feeling that communication on this forum tends to function in much the same way most of the time... 🤷

Yes, they sold it, allegedly for just one ruble, and now Renault is claiming it was a responsible move to protect the workers—though, more likely, they are just eyeing a way back into the market given the possibility of buying it back later...