seems like legitimizing the outright theft of foreign assets is going to give billionaires around the world some second thoughts about the security of their dollars held in u.s. banks
No, the point is that this move undermines western financial system because billionaires all over the world will realize that if they or the government of their country runs afoul of the west, then their assets will be stolen. Meanwhile, freezing and seizing the assets of Russian billionaires amounts to the west doing capital controls for Russia. This would've been a very unpopular move if the Russian government imposed such controls, but the west decided to helpfully do that themselves. This forced Russian oligarchs to invest domestically resulting in Russian economy growing faster than the west now.
No defending Russian capitalists here, I want them all to be stripped of their wealth and the whole Russian state dismantled and replaced by a democratic socialist one. Those rich Russians should be eaten.
But the fact that the Russian state currently is letting their money get stolen (which they knew would happen when they started this war, and those capitalists knew would happen when Russia started this war, which is why they were begging to avoid it) shows that they aren't oligarchs.
Only the countries stealing this money has oligarchs. And this is also evident by the fact that the money is getting stolen, since it's hurting western governmental institutions. The world's trust in the western system is being traded for more money to the capitalists.
"Unlock" aka just steal like we did Afghanistan's emergency fund. Well, if the US government wants to speedrun de-dollarization by demonstrating to the world why you shouldn't bank with them, I'm not gonna interrupt them while they do it.
I'm so glad they finally did it because we'll finally be able to put the narrative that Ukraine is losing because additional 61 billions wasn't allocated to bed.
It will also destroy the last credibility US financial system have, piss off Russian capitalists and make them invest in the west even less. Win/win/win.
Worse part is that will give maidan regime some more time to push even more Ukrainians into the grinder.
Russia's GDP is dwarfed by the West. If Russian investors weren't put off by having assets frozen when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, they're unlikely to care about some more weapons. After all, the Russian people have seen many years of conflict. The rich are going to care about their hoards, not about the "special military operation."
Two years, hundreds of thousands of casualties, tens of thousands of equipment losses and burning through Russia’s future generation and financial reserve
Imagine still guzzling propaganda uncritically after two whole years. If any of this was true, Russia would've collapsed long ago as the west was hoping.
A day over a hundred years in the past that has no modern relevance. This is just the pigeonhole principle in action. If we avoided doing anything on a day where a villainous person did something vaguely of note, there would be no days left to do anything.
Well EU is not far behind. But yes, if you damage country by attacking it and literally erasing towns in it, and capturing territory (the one you guaranteed to preserve and even defend by previous agreements), expect to pay.
Wait, are you telling me US will be paying reparations to all the countries it bombed to the ground? Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, Afghanistan, Iraq, just to name a few?
It's true, I still remember when the rest of the world put those heavy sanctions on us for our barbaric and genocidal invasion of Iraq. It was tough, but that was the day I learned that international law is definitely a real thing.
"The Russians were surprised when, right after the war started, the Europeans took the exact same measures as the United States, freezing all of the reserves that were there, and the Japanese did the same, which is why most of Russia’s reserves today are frozen in Western banks"