Is Mir a credit or debit card?
I'd imagine loosing access to quick credit via a Visa/Mastercard credit card would hurt more than a debit card, especially in light of how their economy is going. You could cut off Americans debit cards and they probably wouldn't notice, cut off their credit cards and they would be fucked!
The Ukrainians would be better off shooting Russian mechanics than Russian soliders at this stage and the war would be over in a week. It an army of antique equipment with some decent new stuff sprinkled throughout but not enough to win a full scale war.
Won't happen. It has to much resources for anyone to let go.
Rereading the Visa/MC announcement it doesn't appear to exclude Russian issued cards from being used within Russia, at least on reading the Visa statement
Bit of ambiguity in their statements
Yeah any currently issued cards are fine within Russia apparently, but they aren't supporting any newly issued ones or purchases outside the country... so not the armageddon we initially thought it would be when first announced
This, I sat in amazement thinking about what’s happening and the abject cowardice by NATO and the West.
Iraq
Syria
Afghanistan
US go and gung-ho to the above but Russians kick off, a greater threat… Putin threatening Nuclear actions and nothing… Joe resembling an auld fella who wandered into the bookies to get out of the rain and have a chat…
i think Biden will genuinely go down as one of the most useless and cowardly western leaders of the modern age. It was a time for a line in the sand, bravery and fortitude but nothing…
not decisive, not convincing, not inspiring not proactive not in any way the figurehead of a deterrent….all talk and not very good at that either.
With the renewed aggression without provocation of Russia towards Europe and Europeans, the biggest rupture and threat in European security since WW2… European nations playing their part in solving conflicts at the beck and call of the US / UN…. Elsewhere… now this…
Election??
Wont be an issue - id be surprised if they bother with one
Id be more hopeful of some sort of action from within to remove him
It's not an act of war. It's a Special Financial Operation.
I hope you are right but they do have hundreds of thousands more soldiers available if necessary though.
If it came to that, and they had to amass another army group to go in - It really does beg the question would his regime begin to crumble? Remember as far as everyone in Moscow is told, everything is going well
Even if there was a 1 in a 100 chance NATO putting boots on the ground would lead to nearly eight billion deaths and countless future lives it would not be worth it.
Brave and all what Ukraine are doing they are not objective in saying NATO should support them.
I think Putin is bluffing, but can't be sure.
Brilliant
I was surprised how far Russia’s population has fallen- less than 145 million. U.K. and France have 65 million between them. Germany 85. I was reading how much it’s stagnated over the years and fallen by another 1 million post covid, I’d say this is really driving the Putin fanatics, trying to shore up the population with “ethnic Russians” that don’t even live in Russia.
145 million mostly not very well off or advanced society isn’t the basis for a military that can compete with the United States wealthy superpower or even the others when they’re clubbed together.
Er!....it doesn't actually. They,the russians, said at the outset that they had $690 billion in reserve. That figure can have 200 billion knocked off straight away because they are a proven lying shower of C***s. They can have all the resources they like but if they are having less and less places to sell them to as the sanctions are ramped up then they're not worth a damn to them.
God bless Ukraine 🇺🇦, f**k putin and all belonging to him.
Those reserves would be known
Russian press reporting that there are 300m cards in usage in Russia and 75% of them are VISA and Mastercard. Anyone who claims that tonight's move is not a significant sanction against the country is talking nonsense.
Would seem to be a house of cards. Also a bit Klingon, 'destroy an empire to win a war is no victory' type of mentality. If they do have to pump in forces from around the country, it would leave Russia very exposed on many fronts.
But as pointed out earlier on this thread for every thousand pregnancies/births 500 are aborted(open to correction suffering with brain fog)
Nowhere is Europe comes close to those figures, shocking figures if correct
They just sell the energy in dollars or gold. Sky high energy prices mean more money to Russia.. convert the dollar/gold back to Roubles or what ever currency it wants then. Who ever is in charge or that.ie the Russian government, will always be billionaires. With that money you can pay anyone to fight and die for you.
And looking next door to a country of 1.4 billion with a rapidly advancing economy and military cant help either. Russia with so much land in the east and so little population there. Vlad must be getting nervous.
When Russia collapses and are in dire need of international assistance ,the eu and the rest of the west should say we will help if you federalise Russia like they wanted to do to Ukraine ,so they can never pull this stunt again , along with handing Ukraine back all of it's pre 2014 territory
Its why every act of resistance against Russia is so important. They are raising the bill on this horrid action. Lets hope Putin, or more likely, someone close to him (who happens to be armed preferably) takes note of that adage. and its follow up
'ending a battle to save an Empire is no defeat'
The above is tracking capture and destruction of Russian Military hardware - it seems legit it also cites some hardware that was abandoned by Ukraine.
They don't really, as theres so many fronts on which Russia is exposed due to its sheer size and also the fact that these troops are also used to quell domestic protest movements. If weakness was felt in any of these areas Putin could be in serious bother. He's pretty much throwing the kitchen sink at Ukraine and losing.
On a sidenote how the hell did Luis Vuitton have over 120 stores in Russia?
That's nearly 1 store for every million people?
Is the country as poor as we are made to believe? Just doesn't add up for me folks.
It seems Mir is just a transaction processing system / debit card scheme. It oddly seems to be (and I assume isn’t now) accepted in Cyprus and also Turkey.
It like about as functional as an old Laser card here, without the Maestro linking but it has contactless functional and all of that stuff.
There’s nothing particularly amazing about it. A lot of countries have or had national debit card schemes. Many of the EU ones (including Laser Card) were wound up or co-branded when cross border Eurozone support was required.
They have more billionaires and gangsters than most other countries and corruption is a real money spinner ,sure hundreds of billions were syphoned out of Ukraine by russian owned companies
That’s a lot alright! Is there even one in Ireland? Wealth would have to be in the hands of more people for that to be viable…
Id say that covers the whole LVMH group so there’s other brands in there and possibly a lot of concession stores included in that figure
UK and France have near on 140 million population between them
A concession in brown Thomas on Grafton street,that's about it I believe
also, in that eventuality - a great deal of MONEY is owed to Kiev - Reparations!! And no nonsense on that front -
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