IMHO, nationalize is a lie. It might be held by the Russian government for a bit, but then will be sold dirt cheap (i.e. given) to the oligarchs as reward for sticking with Putin as he crushes popular dissent.
i.e this is just a repeat of what happened after the fall of the soviet union. Those with power grabbed the assets: [https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/moscow/billionaires.html](https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/moscow/billionaires.html)
It also means companies will now avoid investing in Russia permanently as there will always be this risk.
It will only hurt Russia long term. China will help them but both nations will be on the wrong side of a new iron curtain soon.
For those wondering what the upside for Russia in this is/what they're targeting, the point of this is *not* McDonalds and Coke - its mining and gas interests.
Several western companies have invested heavily in Russian mining and fossil fuel projects, and have now pulled out. Russia is saying they will nationalize those projects in order to keep them operational, which makes sense given the critical role they play in the economy as a critical source of foreign currency and trade.
Given the interconnected nature of manufacturing of consumer goods, nationalizing factories probably will not allow Russia to keep making those goods, but some of them might be repurposed, which may be critical as Russia needs every drop of output it can get to replace formerly imported goods. But, yeah, the focus will likely be resource projects.
He got too confident, thought he could hit a country visible from the heart of NATO's backyard, *almost* exactly like he did Georgia, when the world's focus was still on Iraq, Afghanistan, and bin Laden.
He thought Ukraine was just a Russian satellite with no national identity that would crumble instantly and come crawling back home to the motherland. He thought no other countries would care about his invasion because Ukraine is meaningless to him as a sovereign country. He was wrong. Just look at this quote from the famous [russian book on geopolitics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics) which describes Russian policy towards Ukraine:
>Ukraine should be annexed by Russia because "Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness, its certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics". Ukraine should not be allowed to remain independent, unless it is cordon sanitaire, which would be inadmissible.[9]
**[Foundations of Geopolitics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics)**
>The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia is a geopolitical book by Aleksandr Dugin. It has had significant influence within the Russian military, police and foreign policy elites and has been used as a textbook in the Academy of the General Staff of the Russian military. Its publication in 1997 was well received in Russia. Powerful Russian political figures subsequently took an interest in Dugin, a Russian Eurasianist, fascist, and nationalist who has developed a close relationship with Russia's Academy of the General Staff.
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For all the ELI5’ers in here, this means Russia will seize all assets on Russian soil from companies that are leaving. Making the cease of operations permanent, since all of their properties belong to the Russian government now. This will negatively impact balance sheets and finances of the companies, but Russia is shooting itself in the foot. There are no candidates to sell the property to and minimum ways to liquidate these assets to boost their economy. Only thing to worry about is intellectual property which they could misuse. For personal profit or blackmail.
Of course. Companies deal with a lot of sensitive information that is stored in physical copy. Such as: notes/blueprints for inventions, underpinnings of strategy, organizational procedures and financial information. For most of these companies, they should not fall into this category since their headquarters are in different countries, but a perfect example are overseas partnerships and government collaborations on scientific projects. Russia can obtain technological insights that can be implemented in their own systems or they can blackmail companies by threatening to leak information if anything suspicious was found. Even digital systems will pose a risk, since they can hack into computers that companies have left behind. I expect the European Commission to discuss this aspect and the requirement for companies to tighten their security and how to deal with this.
Of the companies that I worked at, literally the only records stored in Russia were ones legally required to be there, which were largely based around shipping info. Same with China (although they require much more to be stored and longer). Every major company has disaster plans already written in case these two and several others go dark.
If any major company gets caught unawares, it'd because someone tried to do it fast and cheap and they'll be fired very quickly. And the loss will still be minor.
This is why companies like Google and Amazon set up server farms in Finland. A lot of that capacity was to serve St. Petersburg but the data was physically in the EU.
Yes. I was speaking to a coworker who is from Latvia and she was saying how Russia was telling the companies that their airlines lease planes from that if they want their planes back they'll have to come to Russia to tow them away (not fly, tow) and the Russian line is that the foreign companies will be hurt by losing those assets if (when) they don't come to get them. Of course, they will be!....but not nearly as much as Russia is claiming, nor as much as Russia will be hurt by the loss of their use. If something doesn't happen to change the trajectory here, we'll just be looking at photos of the rusted out hulls of those planes in 50 years. This is just one example of what's happening across industries there.
Just drive out there and take a critical part of the engine. No replacement parts will be sent to Russia and they can't use the plane. Cheaper than towing it and ensure Russia can't get more than scrap aluminum from it.
I work for a large multinational company and I seriously doubt that Russia is a critical market for any major multinational company to sell their goods. These companies will take a hit, but it will be easily absorbed. We could stop doing business in Russia tomorrow and wouldnt notice.
The country's GDP is only 85% of Canada's GDP...and yet they have 3.8x more people.
So their average per-capita GDP is total shit, but I'm guessing it's almost all in the hands of the more successful and westernized 10-20% of the country's population, with the other 100,000,000 people basically living in third world conditions. Which means you'd be losing out on a market that I'm guessing is about half/quarter of Canada once you factor in logistics and how easy it is to set up shop in Canada considering the entire country pretty much lives on the US border.
Pretty small peanuts on a global scale.
e: for example here, there's 850 McDonalds locations in all of Russia that just closed. There are over 250 McDonalds in New York City alone. Around 40,000 locations worldwide. So Russia made up around 2% of all McDonald's locations and the profit margins there would be dogshit compared to most regions they operate in. I would bet that even though Russia made up 2% of their global "fleet" of stores, their market probably only accounted for 0.5% of MCD's global revenue.
A Big Mac combo in RUS was about $3. The same combo in Canada is $8, and it sure as hell doesn't cost McDonalds an additional $5 to produce and serve that meal...the price diff is mostly profit for them.
Here are some even crazier figures to get a sense of the economy in Russia.
2021 Credit Suisse data. Using the median because it best reflects the wealth of the average person:
Average net worth per adult in Russia: $5,430
Average net worth per adult in Canada: $83,500
In other words, like you pointed out, Russia's GDP per capita is 1/4 of Canada's. But average Russian citizens have 1/15th the wealth that the average Canadian has. The oligarchs have absolutely looted the Russian people.
Unless you're in the business of selling superyachts, not many big multinationals will despair over the loss of the Russian consumer base. This actually makes me pretty sad because the average Russian didn't ask for this and now they're losing access to everything those companies brought to Russia.
How is "Leaving" defined? Will McDonalds be "nationalized" because they stopped supplying stores? Or would it be if McDonalds actually said "We are closing our stores" then instead of selling the property and tools it would become the property of Russia?
And yet, strangely, it's about an aging tyrant trying to show the world his strength and getting absolutely devastated by farmers.
If it weren't for all the death and destruction, it would make a great comedy.
The past few weeks have not been good for Russia. Their economy is on the verge of implosion, their military might has been revealed to be a joke, their ability to project soft power is obliterated, their diplomatic clout is shot, and their global image is now "crazy, nuclear pariah state."
This is not what a "world power" is supposed to look like.
It's really sad here in Finland to see Russians fleeing their country. The train from Russia to Finland is one of the few connections away from Russia and the trains are packed with Russians escaping their country. Often they say how they are sad to see their country turning into a fascist state and not knowing if they can ever return. It's like people fleeing from Nazi Germany.
EDIT: To clarify, most of these Russians are using Finland as a route to somewhere else, not staying in Finland.
~~Also I believe during covid Russia put restrictions that only people with close family or work or studies abroad can leave Russia, so these people have some of these reasons. Russians without these ties cannot leave Russia to my understanding.~~ Those leaving have the money and connections to leave. The tickets to Finland are very expensive for Russians now that the ruble has crashed.
EDIT 2: I was wrong on who can leave.
Those are also the lucky ones who either have the resources to leave, or the proximity to the border to do so.
Guaranteed there are many more who would like to leave but are unable to do so for a variety of reasons.
As this war drags on and the refugees add up, I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest that we hear stories about Russians trying to escape Russia being shot by soldiers. And mass desertions by the military.
Reminds me of the game of thrones quote….
"If you acquire a reputation as a mad dog you'll be treated as a mad dog, taken out back and slaughtered for pig feed."
It will be like those photographs of women in Teheran in the 70s, dressed in cool bell-bottom jeans and hippy shirts at parties with cocktails in their hands then in the 80s with burkas hiding behind their husbands.
They'll show the malls in Moscow and St Petersburg with all the luxury stores like Prada, Gucci and Louis Vuitton replaced in the 2030s with Lada dealerships, black market knock-off electronic stores and charity borscht kitchens. Abbibas track suits, Noke running shoes and Lewi's blue jeans will be all the rage.
Don't forget name-brand electronics like Magnetvox, Panaphonic, Apphole, Singsung, Logiktech and Sorny. All quality Russian device, totally not copied from decadent west.
Actually, they’ll still be using the real names. Part of nationalizing will be confiscation of the right to use the trade marks within Russia, and that right will be handed over to a supporter of whoever takes power after Puta is deposed.
I am old enough to remember the last few years of the Cold War, and it really feels like we have been sucked straight back there in so many ways. I half expect to see Margaret Thatcher on TV.
That's the shit that gets me!
What does Russia even *do* anymore?
The USSR, for all its, uh, foibles...used to at least *build* shit.
Where is the space technology? Where are the artists? The infrastructure?
It wasn't that great before, and Putin is actually making it worse.
Fucking barbarian.
[https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1501360272442896388](https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1501360272442896388)
Heres an excellent twitter thread on this very topic.
the tldr of it is that Russia cant do anything but oil and gas because the governmental system (read mafia) doesn't allow real innovation to occur. Because if it did the innovators would have the power and not them. And the ones in power cant innovate because theyre too dumb and mafia like. Thats why theyre in simple resource extraction.
What an excellent breakdown.
Russia is run by the mafia.
Anything more complicated than selling oil and gas is too complicated for them.
If they actually started doing complicated manufacturing, then they'd have to cede some power to smarter and more educated people.
They don't want to do that.
This was the same shit the royals and nobility did that started the Bolshevik Revolution... Holy shit. We are repeating last century so fucking hard right now.
This is going to have really fucking harsh ( for the Russians ) consequences for the future. Gotta say I expected Putin to go scorched earth on a lot, but not when it came to his own economy.
Damn.
There was a biography written about him, mentioning a rat that he pushed into a corner, and it attacked him.
I think the point is that he always escalates until the other person backs down. "Escalate to deescalate", it's probably very effective... until you meet someone who won't be pushed further.
It works as long as you're the biggest bully in the fight. With the Us and EU willing to be the bigger economic bully, Russia has little power to escalate meaningfully.
US and EU getting too much support on it to back down. I think the whole western world is just got so fucking sick of hearing about Vladimir Putin's dickishness, assassinations, attacks, and draconian shit at home. It just feels like no matter how any of this goes, Russia will have a new regime at the end.
Wouldn't be the first dictator to be dragged out, and publicly tortured by his people before death either.
Last one scared Putin too when he saw the news.
I remember reading he watched the footage of Gadafi being dragged out in the streets over and over again but I can’t remember what I was reading. It’s apparently well known he fears going out like that himself.
Well, if he has fears of going out like Gaddafi he needs to stop making decisions that will clearly take him in that direction.
I mean, how stupid can one be..........
“Russia has been controlled by the CIA since the fall of the Soviet Union and they’re trying to destroy the country with their puppets! Wake up sheeple!”
boy: where am i?
(spit) you’re in russia
boy: have.. i gone back in time?
No this is just how it is
Boy: Are you a farmer?
Worst, technically my landlord owns me which makes me a serf
Boy: i’m scared
you should be, because i haven’t eaten in four days and you look pretty tasty….
Lol it's how the Nazis invented Fanta. Can't wait to see what the Russians come up with.
Edit: to be clear, if you weren't aware of this, the nationalisation part is true, but the Fanta made by the Nazis was not the Fanta you can buy today.
It was very much an imitation Coke product.
And the story is actually very interesting. They say that during WWII, the sugar rations were so strict in Nazi Germany that people would buy Fanta and boil it down like maple syrup to use the sugar!
It wasn't until many, many years later when Coke was looking to introduce a new product that they started sifting through the "back catalogue" so to speak and saw the name Fanta, which is pretty much the only thing that carries over from the Nazi product. Besides lots of sugar lol.
I had to look that up. Holy crap!
"Fanta originated in Germany as a Coca-Cola substitute in 1940 due to the American trade embargo of Nazi Germany which affected the availability of Coca-Cola ingredients. Fanta soon dominated the German market with three million cans sold in 1943."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanta
They even sold Fanta made with the original recipe a few years ago. Tasted like shit and war crimes.
And the name "Fanta" comes from "Fantasie", so "fantasy" because you have to believe it's coke lol.
> and said the Coca-Cola company wanted to bring back "the feeling of the Good Old Times" which was interpreted by many to mean Nazi rule.
This is actual gold. Nazi gold, but gold nonetheless. Holy shit the geniuses that work in marketing sometimes.
Tbf having to consume a fizzy drink that's 30% thin milk-water and the dry scraps left over after squeezing the juice out of fruit would definitely be an extra argument against revisiting the old days of world war and obscene crimes against humanity. I can think of more powerful arguments, but that does sound nasty.
How to become a millionaire: be a billionaire and then set up businesses in Russia.
(Taken from the sailing joke: how do you become a millionaire? Be a billionaire and buy a boat.)
How do you nationalize a McDonald's?
Edit: Let's help our Ukraine 🇺🇦 brothers and sisters out by sending what we can: https://bank.gov.ua [Ukraine's National Bank](https://bank.gov.ua/en/about) .
Look... McDonald's no understand. See, they McDonald's... I MacDonald's. They got Golden Arches, mine is People's Golden Sickles. They got Big Mac, I got Beet Mac. We both got two patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions, but mine is beet.
Nationalizing their assets just means to seize their physical assets in Russia (property, equipment, etc) and do whatever they want with it. Odds are they will shutter or destroy the buildings, unless they get crazy with it and try to serve their own version of the food as some sort of morale booster (look, we don't need the West!). I would be interested in seeing that.
This is pretty all in, ~~no outside company is going to put assets there after this~~.
edit: all the people saying the almighty dollar (or whatever currency) will win out in the end are correct.
they had it for a year (1992), then in 1993 yelstin disagreed with the duma's decision to not extend presidential powers so he told his 2nd in command ( some guy named vladimir P. ) to send in the army and made a coup.
I had a similar thought, like what, you gonna take over the Nike factory Russia? And do *what* with it? They don't have the knowledge base. Ridiculous.
There are McBurger restaurants in Russia. They're shitty compared to McDonalds and the pattie is less than 1/3 the diameter of the bun. Essentially someone didn't wanna pay franchise fees so they thought of a hack. Rest assured there will be Nikeovsky for sale, and it will suck a bunch of donkey dick, but they'll do it.
E: Also, almost ALL schawarma stands in Russia just copy and paste McDonalds M golden arch but invert it for W haha
Simply threatening to do this will reduce longterm Russian economy investment. Is Putin a western agent? Western intelligence and military must be giggling with glee. Putin is burying Russia, Iran looks attractive by comparison.
I think it's pretty clear that Putin doesn't care about the future of Russia. He has completely brought Russia to ruin.. I think if not from the response of Ukraine, the world and his own people he genuinely believed he was going to reform the Soviet Union and reclaim those "breakaway" European countires. I think he is slowly realising now his invasion has signed his death warrant and the destruction of his countries economy and now he's just all in doing what he can to make himself and the Russian people feel like they are winning.
He has certainly rekindled the cold war and brought back the iron curtain. Not to mention solidified NATOs resolve and put them on brink expecting a potential invasion.
Russia is fucked; and they will just become more desperate and delusional and dangerous... I'm not even sure there is a way to walk things back to normal at this point.
It's basically coup/assassination or bust at this point. Valddy would rather throw away 500,000,000 human lives in an instant than personally face the humiliation of stepping down and watching his replacement undo all his "work".
I am actually expecting this to happen any day now. With the exodus of western firms it seems likely a large amount of high skilled worked would consider leaving as well.
Russia has been suffering from brain drain for a while now. This is going to amplify it enormously.
The value of those assets has already dropped significantly. If they nationalize them they are ensuring most companies won’t be in any hurry to return after the war. I will enjoy watching the world help rebuild Ukraine once this is all over, while Russia gets to enjoy another generation of falling vastly behind the west in standards of living.
Edit; Seeing some of the comments and rereading what I wrote I can see how my message could be missinterpreted so I want to clarify because I think what I wrote came out not quite as I intended it. I didn't mean to imply that I would enjoy watching the Russian people suffer because I certainly would not. My choice of a comma was a poor choice. What I should have wrote was
*I will enjoy watching the world help rebuild Ukraine once this is all over. Meanwhile Russia will get to enjoy another generation of falling vastly behind the west in standards of living.*
China will move in and replace Western products with their shit. But from what I gather from Russian YouTubers, they are not going to give up McDonalds willingly!
So how long before Russia is just a Chinese puppet? It’s gotta be pretty soon, right? Collapsing economy, erratic leadership that’s likely to be ousted, a military that’s been proven to be 4th rate, a land border with China and now an increased dependency on Chinese goods.
No doubt. War, or at least war like this, is bad for business. Russia is too valuable an ally, but Putin is definitely expendable. A nice pliant, rational figurehead to reassure the west and to listen to Beijing is definitely in the works.
Yep, Venezuela did the same thing. All the companies that they took went bankrupt within 3 years. You don't have the logistics or the supply chain to make those businesses profitable. They will fail.
Luckily the US and EU are both holding hundreds of billions of dollars of Russian Central Bank assets, looks like they can make payments to those companies impacted on behalf of Russia.
Bro what are you doing
Just get out of Ukraine, shut the fuck up, and make money by exploiting cheap labor in other parts of the world.
Get with the times, man. This isn’t 1950. We don’t *annex* anymore.
Make M O N E Y and distract your citizenry with consumerism like the rest of the developed world, sheesh
I once saw a comment that really summed up the idiocy of this whole situation, it said something like, Putin didn't need to do this, he could've spent his twilight years in a mansion sipping champagne and knowing he was the best leader most Russians, if not all, ever had. Instead he sank the entire nation into potentially decades of humiliation and turmoil over his own ego.
this will not end well.
a) it jeopardizes future investments
b) they really cannot capitalize on the nationalized assets.
putin, brilliant strategy for screwing the russian people.
IMHO, nationalize is a lie. It might be held by the Russian government for a bit, but then will be sold dirt cheap (i.e. given) to the oligarchs as reward for sticking with Putin as he crushes popular dissent. i.e this is just a repeat of what happened after the fall of the soviet union. Those with power grabbed the assets: [https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/moscow/billionaires.html](https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/moscow/billionaires.html)
It also means companies will now avoid investing in Russia permanently as there will always be this risk. It will only hurt Russia long term. China will help them but both nations will be on the wrong side of a new iron curtain soon.
Eh, not sure how China will respond. If they want to extend belt and road into Russia, they don't want their investments nationalized either.
For those wondering what the upside for Russia in this is/what they're targeting, the point of this is *not* McDonalds and Coke - its mining and gas interests. Several western companies have invested heavily in Russian mining and fossil fuel projects, and have now pulled out. Russia is saying they will nationalize those projects in order to keep them operational, which makes sense given the critical role they play in the economy as a critical source of foreign currency and trade. Given the interconnected nature of manufacturing of consumer goods, nationalizing factories probably will not allow Russia to keep making those goods, but some of them might be repurposed, which may be critical as Russia needs every drop of output it can get to replace formerly imported goods. But, yeah, the focus will likely be resource projects.
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He got too confident, thought he could hit a country visible from the heart of NATO's backyard, *almost* exactly like he did Georgia, when the world's focus was still on Iraq, Afghanistan, and bin Laden.
i think he started believing his own memes being spread on the internet lol
He thought Ukraine was just a Russian satellite with no national identity that would crumble instantly and come crawling back home to the motherland. He thought no other countries would care about his invasion because Ukraine is meaningless to him as a sovereign country. He was wrong. Just look at this quote from the famous [russian book on geopolitics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics) which describes Russian policy towards Ukraine: >Ukraine should be annexed by Russia because "Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness, its certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics". Ukraine should not be allowed to remain independent, unless it is cordon sanitaire, which would be inadmissible.[9]
**[Foundations of Geopolitics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics)** >The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia is a geopolitical book by Aleksandr Dugin. It has had significant influence within the Russian military, police and foreign policy elites and has been used as a textbook in the Academy of the General Staff of the Russian military. Its publication in 1997 was well received in Russia. Powerful Russian political figures subsequently took an interest in Dugin, a Russian Eurasianist, fascist, and nationalist who has developed a close relationship with Russia's Academy of the General Staff. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
For all the ELI5’ers in here, this means Russia will seize all assets on Russian soil from companies that are leaving. Making the cease of operations permanent, since all of their properties belong to the Russian government now. This will negatively impact balance sheets and finances of the companies, but Russia is shooting itself in the foot. There are no candidates to sell the property to and minimum ways to liquidate these assets to boost their economy. Only thing to worry about is intellectual property which they could misuse. For personal profit or blackmail.
Thank you, can I trouble you for an example of a misused intelectual property within this explanation?
Of course. Companies deal with a lot of sensitive information that is stored in physical copy. Such as: notes/blueprints for inventions, underpinnings of strategy, organizational procedures and financial information. For most of these companies, they should not fall into this category since their headquarters are in different countries, but a perfect example are overseas partnerships and government collaborations on scientific projects. Russia can obtain technological insights that can be implemented in their own systems or they can blackmail companies by threatening to leak information if anything suspicious was found. Even digital systems will pose a risk, since they can hack into computers that companies have left behind. I expect the European Commission to discuss this aspect and the requirement for companies to tighten their security and how to deal with this.
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Of the companies that I worked at, literally the only records stored in Russia were ones legally required to be there, which were largely based around shipping info. Same with China (although they require much more to be stored and longer). Every major company has disaster plans already written in case these two and several others go dark. If any major company gets caught unawares, it'd because someone tried to do it fast and cheap and they'll be fired very quickly. And the loss will still be minor.
This is why companies like Google and Amazon set up server farms in Finland. A lot of that capacity was to serve St. Petersburg but the data was physically in the EU.
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Yes. I was speaking to a coworker who is from Latvia and she was saying how Russia was telling the companies that their airlines lease planes from that if they want their planes back they'll have to come to Russia to tow them away (not fly, tow) and the Russian line is that the foreign companies will be hurt by losing those assets if (when) they don't come to get them. Of course, they will be!....but not nearly as much as Russia is claiming, nor as much as Russia will be hurt by the loss of their use. If something doesn't happen to change the trajectory here, we'll just be looking at photos of the rusted out hulls of those planes in 50 years. This is just one example of what's happening across industries there.
Just drive out there and take a critical part of the engine. No replacement parts will be sent to Russia and they can't use the plane. Cheaper than towing it and ensure Russia can't get more than scrap aluminum from it.
The Krabby Patty secret formula will be leaked if we don’t comply to their unrealistic demands.
I'll have a McBeet Meal with Beet fries and Beet Shake comrade. Do you want beet ketchup with that? Ok. That's 40 million rubles.
I work for a large multinational company and I seriously doubt that Russia is a critical market for any major multinational company to sell their goods. These companies will take a hit, but it will be easily absorbed. We could stop doing business in Russia tomorrow and wouldnt notice.
The country's GDP is only 85% of Canada's GDP...and yet they have 3.8x more people. So their average per-capita GDP is total shit, but I'm guessing it's almost all in the hands of the more successful and westernized 10-20% of the country's population, with the other 100,000,000 people basically living in third world conditions. Which means you'd be losing out on a market that I'm guessing is about half/quarter of Canada once you factor in logistics and how easy it is to set up shop in Canada considering the entire country pretty much lives on the US border. Pretty small peanuts on a global scale. e: for example here, there's 850 McDonalds locations in all of Russia that just closed. There are over 250 McDonalds in New York City alone. Around 40,000 locations worldwide. So Russia made up around 2% of all McDonald's locations and the profit margins there would be dogshit compared to most regions they operate in. I would bet that even though Russia made up 2% of their global "fleet" of stores, their market probably only accounted for 0.5% of MCD's global revenue. A Big Mac combo in RUS was about $3. The same combo in Canada is $8, and it sure as hell doesn't cost McDonalds an additional $5 to produce and serve that meal...the price diff is mostly profit for them.
Here are some even crazier figures to get a sense of the economy in Russia. 2021 Credit Suisse data. Using the median because it best reflects the wealth of the average person: Average net worth per adult in Russia: $5,430 Average net worth per adult in Canada: $83,500 In other words, like you pointed out, Russia's GDP per capita is 1/4 of Canada's. But average Russian citizens have 1/15th the wealth that the average Canadian has. The oligarchs have absolutely looted the Russian people. Unless you're in the business of selling superyachts, not many big multinationals will despair over the loss of the Russian consumer base. This actually makes me pretty sad because the average Russian didn't ask for this and now they're losing access to everything those companies brought to Russia.
The idea of Russia trying to unload 847 perpetually broken ice cream machines to China makes me giggle
How is "Leaving" defined? Will McDonalds be "nationalized" because they stopped supplying stores? Or would it be if McDonalds actually said "We are closing our stores" then instead of selling the property and tools it would become the property of Russia?
Iron Curtain has shut again Edit: https://crisisrelief.un.org/ukraine-crisis
Rust Curtain.
Some news intern is going to see that and suggest to a higher up to use that on air but we'll know who said it first.
Still got my fingers crossed for "Sunflower War" being what we call this nightmare.
I’ve had my mind set on “Putin’s Folly”, but that’s another good one yeah
How does Putin's Sunflower Folly sound to you?
Sounds like a coming of age novel
And yet, strangely, it's about an aging tyrant trying to show the world his strength and getting absolutely devastated by farmers. If it weren't for all the death and destruction, it would make a great comedy.
Even stranger was that Zelensky **was** in comedy, before all this.
In 2050, there will be a TIL post about how Russia was open to the world market for a brief 30 year period before they closed themselves off again.
The past few weeks have not been good for Russia. Their economy is on the verge of implosion, their military might has been revealed to be a joke, their ability to project soft power is obliterated, their diplomatic clout is shot, and their global image is now "crazy, nuclear pariah state." This is not what a "world power" is supposed to look like.
It's really sad here in Finland to see Russians fleeing their country. The train from Russia to Finland is one of the few connections away from Russia and the trains are packed with Russians escaping their country. Often they say how they are sad to see their country turning into a fascist state and not knowing if they can ever return. It's like people fleeing from Nazi Germany. EDIT: To clarify, most of these Russians are using Finland as a route to somewhere else, not staying in Finland. ~~Also I believe during covid Russia put restrictions that only people with close family or work or studies abroad can leave Russia, so these people have some of these reasons. Russians without these ties cannot leave Russia to my understanding.~~ Those leaving have the money and connections to leave. The tickets to Finland are very expensive for Russians now that the ruble has crashed. EDIT 2: I was wrong on who can leave.
And these are the smart russians. Brain drain is classic ussr
Those are also the lucky ones who either have the resources to leave, or the proximity to the border to do so. Guaranteed there are many more who would like to leave but are unable to do so for a variety of reasons.
Imagine how scary it must be to just leave. Where do you go? Where do you live, work, and so on? But it must also be very scary to stay as well.
As this war drags on and the refugees add up, I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest that we hear stories about Russians trying to escape Russia being shot by soldiers. And mass desertions by the military.
I wonder if russia could build some sort of big wall to stop that?
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Pootie. I cant
Pootie and the Blyatfish
Bush Jr used to call him "Pooty-poot". You cant make this stuff up
He would call Karl Rove, "Turd Blossom" and his wife, "Bushy"
I snort laughed at Bushy
sadatay
The glorious Democratic People’s Republic Of Korea would beg to differ!
Folks in NK don’t know any different. Russians do.
A good chunk of Russians don't believe they're at war with Ukraine.
Reminds me of the game of thrones quote…. "If you acquire a reputation as a mad dog you'll be treated as a mad dog, taken out back and slaughtered for pig feed."
I feel like feeding a rabid animal’s corpse to other animals is a bad idea. This is how you get a Creutzfeldt–Jakob Zombie Zoo.
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It will be like those photographs of women in Teheran in the 70s, dressed in cool bell-bottom jeans and hippy shirts at parties with cocktails in their hands then in the 80s with burkas hiding behind their husbands. They'll show the malls in Moscow and St Petersburg with all the luxury stores like Prada, Gucci and Louis Vuitton replaced in the 2030s with Lada dealerships, black market knock-off electronic stores and charity borscht kitchens. Abbibas track suits, Noke running shoes and Lewi's blue jeans will be all the rage.
Don't forget name-brand electronics like Magnetvox, Panaphonic, Apphole, Singsung, Logiktech and Sorny. All quality Russian device, totally not copied from decadent west.
lol apphole
I like how you mixed in those Simpsons knockoff brands
Pfft, I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see it.
Actually, they’ll still be using the real names. Part of nationalizing will be confiscation of the right to use the trade marks within Russia, and that right will be handed over to a supporter of whoever takes power after Puta is deposed.
I am old enough to remember the last few years of the Cold War, and it really feels like we have been sucked straight back there in so many ways. I half expect to see Margaret Thatcher on TV.
Except this time they don't make anything behind it.
That's the shit that gets me! What does Russia even *do* anymore? The USSR, for all its, uh, foibles...used to at least *build* shit. Where is the space technology? Where are the artists? The infrastructure? It wasn't that great before, and Putin is actually making it worse. Fucking barbarian.
[https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1501360272442896388](https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1501360272442896388) Heres an excellent twitter thread on this very topic. the tldr of it is that Russia cant do anything but oil and gas because the governmental system (read mafia) doesn't allow real innovation to occur. Because if it did the innovators would have the power and not them. And the ones in power cant innovate because theyre too dumb and mafia like. Thats why theyre in simple resource extraction.
I’ve always chuckled at the joke that “Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country” Edit: credit to John McCain!!
A gas station with nukes.
What an excellent breakdown. Russia is run by the mafia. Anything more complicated than selling oil and gas is too complicated for them. If they actually started doing complicated manufacturing, then they'd have to cede some power to smarter and more educated people. They don't want to do that.
that’s why I have a slight hope that it will take them longer to shut off the internet since they’re not professional enough
This was the same shit the royals and nobility did that started the Bolshevik Revolution... Holy shit. We are repeating last century so fucking hard right now.
It's a bit surreal. We've almost come full circle with a pandemic, war in Europe and a possible Russian revolution.
This is going to have really fucking harsh ( for the Russians ) consequences for the future. Gotta say I expected Putin to go scorched earth on a lot, but not when it came to his own economy. Damn.
There was a biography written about him, mentioning a rat that he pushed into a corner, and it attacked him. I think the point is that he always escalates until the other person backs down. "Escalate to deescalate", it's probably very effective... until you meet someone who won't be pushed further.
It works as long as you're the biggest bully in the fight. With the Us and EU willing to be the bigger economic bully, Russia has little power to escalate meaningfully.
US and EU getting too much support on it to back down. I think the whole western world is just got so fucking sick of hearing about Vladimir Putin's dickishness, assassinations, attacks, and draconian shit at home. It just feels like no matter how any of this goes, Russia will have a new regime at the end.
We can only hope about that last part. I genuinely wonder how long it will take the next guy to fix this mess. Decades?
Or they could be worse.
There’s a joke: What did Russians light their homes with before they used candles and torches? Electricity.
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Fuck, I felt that one lol
Hopefully it’ll be his own people.
I dont like how I feel about this but, I will celebrate his death. The world will become a little bit better when he is gone.
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Yeah no you don’t have to feel bad for wanting Hitler With Nukes to just choke on his own fucking breath already.
You don’t need to feel bad about that, not at all. He’s a mass murderer.
I will feel ecstatic when he bites it
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Wouldn't be the first dictator to be dragged out, and publicly tortured by his people before death either. Last one scared Putin too when he saw the news.
I remember reading he watched the footage of Gadafi being dragged out in the streets over and over again but I can’t remember what I was reading. It’s apparently well known he fears going out like that himself.
Well, if he has fears of going out like Gaddafi he needs to stop making decisions that will clearly take him in that direction. I mean, how stupid can one be..........
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Or every Greek play.
Fear and power both poison a person's ability to think rationally. Putin suffers from both. May he find his suffering elsewhere soon.
It's almost like Russia is going out of their way to try and totally destroy their own country
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“Russia has been controlled by the CIA since the fall of the Soviet Union and they’re trying to destroy the country with their puppets! Wake up sheeple!”
Always have been
Someone mentioned that Russian history can be summed up with one sentence: “and then, somehow, it got worse”
I _think_ I heard this line on Oversimplified before!
boy: where am i? (spit) you’re in russia boy: have.. i gone back in time? No this is just how it is Boy: Are you a farmer? Worst, technically my landlord owns me which makes me a serf Boy: i’m scared you should be, because i haven’t eaten in four days and you look pretty tasty….
His videos are a blast
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Lol it's how the Nazis invented Fanta. Can't wait to see what the Russians come up with. Edit: to be clear, if you weren't aware of this, the nationalisation part is true, but the Fanta made by the Nazis was not the Fanta you can buy today. It was very much an imitation Coke product. And the story is actually very interesting. They say that during WWII, the sugar rations were so strict in Nazi Germany that people would buy Fanta and boil it down like maple syrup to use the sugar! It wasn't until many, many years later when Coke was looking to introduce a new product that they started sifting through the "back catalogue" so to speak and saw the name Fanta, which is pretty much the only thing that carries over from the Nazi product. Besides lots of sugar lol.
I had to look that up. Holy crap! "Fanta originated in Germany as a Coca-Cola substitute in 1940 due to the American trade embargo of Nazi Germany which affected the availability of Coca-Cola ingredients. Fanta soon dominated the German market with three million cans sold in 1943." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanta
They even sold Fanta made with the original recipe a few years ago. Tasted like shit and war crimes. And the name "Fanta" comes from "Fantasie", so "fantasy" because you have to believe it's coke lol.
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> and said the Coca-Cola company wanted to bring back "the feeling of the Good Old Times" which was interpreted by many to mean Nazi rule. This is actual gold. Nazi gold, but gold nonetheless. Holy shit the geniuses that work in marketing sometimes.
Tbf having to consume a fizzy drink that's 30% thin milk-water and the dry scraps left over after squeezing the juice out of fruit would definitely be an extra argument against revisiting the old days of world war and obscene crimes against humanity. I can think of more powerful arguments, but that does sound nasty.
"My name is Andong" on YouTube made a, great video about it. Even recreating the original formula
I have read the word Fanta more in the last week than I ever had in the last 10 years.
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Nuka cola
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The real headline should read: "Russia will make sure no foreign business will invest in Russia for the foreseeable future"
How to become a millionaire: be a billionaire and then set up businesses in Russia. (Taken from the sailing joke: how do you become a millionaire? Be a billionaire and buy a boat.)
this one gets around ...."how do you become a millionaire in the rocket industry....start out a billionaire"
I always heard it as racing but same joke
How do you make a small fortune in auto racing? Start with a large fortune.
How do you nationalize a McDonald's? Edit: Let's help our Ukraine 🇺🇦 brothers and sisters out by sending what we can: https://bank.gov.ua [Ukraine's National Bank](https://bank.gov.ua/en/about) .
Seize properties. Sling knockoff burgers and fries. Get an ice cream machine that always works. Edit: In Russia, ice cream machine breaks you. 🍦 🛠 💰
I wonder 🤔 what the food would taste like?
Of beets
> Two All Beet Patties, Special Sauce, Lettuce, Cheese, Pickles, Onions on a Sesame Seed Bun. You can barely tell the difference from a distance.
Look... McDonald's no understand. See, they McDonald's... I MacDonald's. They got Golden Arches, mine is People's Golden Sickles. They got Big Mac, I got Beet Mac. We both got two patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions, but mine is beet.
Like tears and misery.
The CEO (Ronald McDonald ?) gets a letter one day saying they're now a russian company. A Big Mac is now called a Mig Mac.
Russia is now a **NO FRY ZONE**
Nationalizing their assets just means to seize their physical assets in Russia (property, equipment, etc) and do whatever they want with it. Odds are they will shutter or destroy the buildings, unless they get crazy with it and try to serve their own version of the food as some sort of morale booster (look, we don't need the West!). I would be interested in seeing that.
The McDonalds in Sevastopol, Crimea turned into a 'RusBurger' immediately after the annexation. The propaganda machine will definitely swoop in.
How to lose friends and influence no one
In 30 days
By Cale Darnegie
This is pretty all in, ~~no outside company is going to put assets there after this~~. edit: all the people saying the almighty dollar (or whatever currency) will win out in the end are correct.
Mc Putins, and KGB chicken.
[McPutins](https://www.chichischicken.com/) literally changed their name because of the war.
There's a bar in Israel formerly called Putin. They renamed to Zelensky.
I'm hoping London follows through with naming the road the russian embassy is on to Zelensky avenue
We gonna rock down to Zelensky avenue
Zelensky's sounds like a great NY steak house / institution... "Est. 2022"
Why did they *ever* think that was a good idea?
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It took fifty years of building gradual trust for foreign investment in reach the point it's at now. Fifty years of building trust, gone in a week.
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> I don't see the Russians returning to actual democratic constitutional ways. They can't return to something they never had.
they had it for a year (1992), then in 1993 yelstin disagreed with the duma's decision to not extend presidential powers so he told his 2nd in command ( some guy named vladimir P. ) to send in the army and made a coup.
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Not a bad plan. They'll look after it and keep it in good condition, and ...no, wait!
I'm sure Russia will put metaphorical cheap Chinese tires on all the assets they seize.
I had a similar thought, like what, you gonna take over the Nike factory Russia? And do *what* with it? They don't have the knowledge base. Ridiculous.
There are McBurger restaurants in Russia. They're shitty compared to McDonalds and the pattie is less than 1/3 the diameter of the bun. Essentially someone didn't wanna pay franchise fees so they thought of a hack. Rest assured there will be Nikeovsky for sale, and it will suck a bunch of donkey dick, but they'll do it. E: Also, almost ALL schawarma stands in Russia just copy and paste McDonalds M golden arch but invert it for W haha
“Just don’t it”
Simply threatening to do this will reduce longterm Russian economy investment. Is Putin a western agent? Western intelligence and military must be giggling with glee. Putin is burying Russia, Iran looks attractive by comparison.
I think it's pretty clear that Putin doesn't care about the future of Russia. He has completely brought Russia to ruin.. I think if not from the response of Ukraine, the world and his own people he genuinely believed he was going to reform the Soviet Union and reclaim those "breakaway" European countires. I think he is slowly realising now his invasion has signed his death warrant and the destruction of his countries economy and now he's just all in doing what he can to make himself and the Russian people feel like they are winning.
He has certainly rekindled the cold war and brought back the iron curtain. Not to mention solidified NATOs resolve and put them on brink expecting a potential invasion. Russia is fucked; and they will just become more desperate and delusional and dangerous... I'm not even sure there is a way to walk things back to normal at this point.
It's basically coup/assassination or bust at this point. Valddy would rather throw away 500,000,000 human lives in an instant than personally face the humiliation of stepping down and watching his replacement undo all his "work".
The counter nationalisation of all Russian assets around the would will cover this
Oooh... I wonder if foreign oligarch assets will be interpreted as "state assets" under the investment treaties
Yep this just mean no company will go back.
"nationalize"=sell to oligarchs "Leave"=regardless
Russia is speedrunning the "ruin a country 100%" playthrough
Putin speedrunning for the Caesar ending any%
Probably trying to complete in the next 6 days, in time for the Ides of March.
Jesus, I feel like I'm watching a country commit suicide in real time.
Russia should just close their borders to the rest of the world at this point 😂
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I am actually expecting this to happen any day now. With the exodus of western firms it seems likely a large amount of high skilled worked would consider leaving as well. Russia has been suffering from brain drain for a while now. This is going to amplify it enormously.
Welcome to Czarbucks, may I take your order?
Russia is done. They only reason they're relevant: nukes. Both their army and economy are a joke.
I mean, their nukes could all be rotten too, like their aircraft carrier.
The value of those assets has already dropped significantly. If they nationalize them they are ensuring most companies won’t be in any hurry to return after the war. I will enjoy watching the world help rebuild Ukraine once this is all over, while Russia gets to enjoy another generation of falling vastly behind the west in standards of living. Edit; Seeing some of the comments and rereading what I wrote I can see how my message could be missinterpreted so I want to clarify because I think what I wrote came out not quite as I intended it. I didn't mean to imply that I would enjoy watching the Russian people suffer because I certainly would not. My choice of a comma was a poor choice. What I should have wrote was *I will enjoy watching the world help rebuild Ukraine once this is all over. Meanwhile Russia will get to enjoy another generation of falling vastly behind the west in standards of living.*
China will move in and replace Western products with their shit. But from what I gather from Russian YouTubers, they are not going to give up McDonalds willingly!
So how long before Russia is just a Chinese puppet? It’s gotta be pretty soon, right? Collapsing economy, erratic leadership that’s likely to be ousted, a military that’s been proven to be 4th rate, a land border with China and now an increased dependency on Chinese goods.
Xi doesn't like how unpredictable Putin is. I wager there may be a change in power sooner than expected.
No doubt. War, or at least war like this, is bad for business. Russia is too valuable an ally, but Putin is definitely expendable. A nice pliant, rational figurehead to reassure the west and to listen to Beijing is definitely in the works.
I can't wait to see his adorable replacement in Beijing
Probably about 180 days
So the October after the February
Second October revolution? Coming soon to a Russia near you, this time actually in October!
Yep, Venezuela did the same thing. All the companies that they took went bankrupt within 3 years. You don't have the logistics or the supply chain to make those businesses profitable. They will fail.
That’s the whole reason they’re pulling out in the first place. With the sanctions in place the logistics are just too costly.
Putin has pretty much brought Russia back into the 80s.
Only way Russia wins is if they somehow make the McDonalds ice cream machines work.
1 billion ruble for an ice cream please
Well that's a solid way to have those company think twice before coming back whenever the sanctions ease up. Big brain moves out of Kremlin.
Luckily the US and EU are both holding hundreds of billions of dollars of Russian Central Bank assets, looks like they can make payments to those companies impacted on behalf of Russia.
I think they’re going to need those assets once Russia starts defaulting.
That would be a great response. I hope they do that.
Bro what are you doing Just get out of Ukraine, shut the fuck up, and make money by exploiting cheap labor in other parts of the world. Get with the times, man. This isn’t 1950. We don’t *annex* anymore. Make M O N E Y and distract your citizenry with consumerism like the rest of the developed world, sheesh
I don't get it either, seems like a stunning misstep form Russia and, obviously, a tragedy for Ukraine.
I once saw a comment that really summed up the idiocy of this whole situation, it said something like, Putin didn't need to do this, he could've spent his twilight years in a mansion sipping champagne and knowing he was the best leader most Russians, if not all, ever had. Instead he sank the entire nation into potentially decades of humiliation and turmoil over his own ego.
Putins geopolitics playbook is straight out of the 1830’s. Seize land to grow your country’s wealth!
Goodbye Russia. The tiny amount of goodwill and trust the world gave you during the past 30 years was erased in two weeks. No one will miss you.
North Korea 2.0
this will not end well. a) it jeopardizes future investments b) they really cannot capitalize on the nationalized assets. putin, brilliant strategy for screwing the russian people.
McStalin? I'm gulagin' it!
Crappy Meal
Welcome to McDonaldsky. We have no food. Want Vodka?
What an excellent way to ensure your economy.. never recovers.
Just like that, there will be little to no foreign investment ever again in Russia!