Russia has just had its foreign reserves frozen. Those are debts too, which the West has repudiated. Why shouldn't Russia do the same in reverse?
Countries export solely to gain imports if they have any sense. If there are no imports to be had - due to sanctions - then there is no need to export. Far better, from Russia's point of view, that the oil is left in the ground, and the workers redeployed elsewhere. To the war effort for example.
Btw even the USSR which was generally much more autarkic couldn’t survive without foreign currency for energy exports. What makes you think modern Russia could? Also it was illegal for workers to leave Russia back then, unlike now (so assuming there are countries willing to accept them they might be more likely to choose that over ‘being redirected to work in the war industry’.
If 'tax the rich' works and reduces the power of the rich, then hasn't the West just taxed the rich of Russia and reduced their power to remove Putin?
Democrats can't have it both ways. They propose a billionaire tax in the USA to reduce the power of the rich to interfere with people in charge, then actually implement a billionaire tax in Russia and expect it to increase their ability to interfere with people in charge. It's an illogical position to hold.
"Btw even the USSR which was generally much more autarkic couldn’t survive without foreign currency for energy exports. What makes you think modern Russia could?"
If there are sanctions in place, what are they going to spend the 'foreign currency' on?
You can't eat dollars.
"so assuming there are countries willing to accept them they might be more likely to choose that"
The 'leave for other countries' is a globalist position. Most ordinary people are rooted in social support constructs on the ground. They don't leave, and prefer their own country.
In fact the attitude to those who leave from those who remain is likely to be good riddance to bad rubbish.
> West just taxed the rich of Russia and reduced their power to remove Putin?
Arguably no. They’ve lost access to some of their wealth in the west but their actual power relvant (in the form of companies they own in Russia is still in Russia). So the expectation is that loosing access to the west would incentivize them to use any power they still have to get rid of Putin. Considering how intertwined their sources of wealth and power are with current regime I’m not sure how likely is that. But basically the west wants to make it so that keeping Putin in power would seem more expensive than replacing him with something/someone else.
> You can't eat dollars.
Individuals still want to buy foreign good (while they might be harder to access or more expensive it’s still possible to acquire them).
Also most people would probably prefer to store their savings in USD/CHF/EUR rather than Ruble since it’s value is going to collapse the moment Russia lifts capital controls. This arguably only increases the demand for foreign currencies.
Main categories of goods imported by Russia in 2021 were: ‘Machinery & Equipment’ and ‘Medicine’ and it’s not like Russia can just stop importing these of they want to keep their pump jacks and hospital running.
I guess the answer to that would be "and Germany can keep their cash and maybe have to burn it to heat homes or generate electricity"?
The war we're seeing (the economic war) is a point of mini-singularity, where a lot of we know to be true about the world is invalid. Such as an assumption that a state having debts will actually pay them.
