Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
Sorry I don't understand. What's the exact relevance of the Russian oligarchs keeping their money in Western banks?
In this thread, as well as at this website as a whole, we talk about USA, Russia, France, Germany etc as if they were real players of the world policy. "USA did that". "Russia does that". "France says these things". Worse yet, we take it personally, as though they were our parents or friends. We call it "patriotism", but it is just nonsence and insanity.
Goverments are not our friends, and they do not care about us. The only thing they care about is money.

When we talk about international relationships and policy, there are no such independent beings as "Putin", "Russian government", "Russian politics" and so on. As well as there are no such things in western countries too.
Putin has no real power since he has no real control over "his" money.

The world is ruled by corporations, that control financial system, natural resources, industries and media.

Nationality (as well as patriotism, religion etc) is just one more thing that is used to control people. Europeans can hate Russians, Russians can hate Ukrainians, Serbs can hate Croats and so on, if it is economically profitable for our rulers. And those rulers are the same, no matter if you live in Russia, Ukraine or Sweden.

That is my point.