In Russia it isn't ban, but in Crimea a lot of that stuff is under sanctions ( PayPal, Moneybookers, even Blizzard ... And so on)

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It's one of those things, that I think you have to be a top level politician to understand.

You probably recall the Ukrainian Revolution that took place in February of 2014, and then the Russian annexation of Crimea that followed?

That was derrived from a controversial referendum, of which the official result was a majority support for joining Russia. The referendum was controversial because it was held after unmarked Russian forces with local militias took over the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevestopol, as well as other localities in the region.

The issue at its core is, that following this referendum, Putin signed a treaty of accession, essentially annexing Crimea. Russia thus considers Crimea to be Russian and according to the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Crimea has been fully integrated into Russia. This statement also stands to reason; rubles are the only legal tender, and a revision version of the Russian Constitution included Crimea and Sevestopol in the list of federal subjects of the Russian Federation, already two months after the Ukrainian Revolution.

On the other side of the dispute stands Ukraine, who disputes the annexation, considering it illegal. The United Nations share this view, asking states not to recognise changes to the integrity of Ukraine.

As a result, the EU collectively, USA, Canada, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and a host of other countries have imposed sanctions on Russia. Of course, this has prompted Russia to implement various sanctions such as the ban on food imports from the EU, USA, Norway, Canada and Australia.

So far, everything makes fairly decent sense, in that disconnected, big-politics kinda way. But then this is where my chain falls off;

Canada, USA, EU and some other European countries have imposed economic sanctions specifically targetting Crimea. These sanctions prohibit the sale, supply, transfer or export of goods and technology in several sectors. For example, VISA and MasterCard ceased service in Crimea for half a year.

Many of these sanctions are still in place. The companies, who ceased service in Crimea during the crisis include such companies as Apple (app store, retail), VISA, Mastercard, Google (Chrome, Play, Adsense), Dell, HP, Valve (Steam), McDonalds, Blizzard Entertainment, Paypal, eBay, Amazon.com.

The consequense remain, that a vast array of services have been unavailable in Crimea, and that many services still are, as a result of sanctions that targets Crimea specifically, rather than "just" Russia as a whole. This is the explaination, why something may not be banned in Russia, yet it's banned in Crimea.

What's even the official reasoning behind this, if it doesn't target Russia, but, rather, causes problems just for Crimeans alone? Or did they remove services just for fear of instability regarding the region?

You'd have to dig through a lot of really boring documents to attempt to find a reasonable answer to that question, I fear. They are sanctions though, so they are not implemented out of fear of instability, but rather as punishment.

The EU had this to say, when they extended the sanctions till July 2018 (my emphasis):
Link: http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/pr...nds-sanctions/

You'll probably note the complete absense of any reasoning or justification. At the bottom of the page, they placed a link reading "Is there something wrong with this page?" and I'm tempted to click it and write "IT EXPLAINS NOTHING!!!" :D

I mean, based on how EU politics work, there must have been some sort of debate and voting on this, so I'd expect there to exist some reasoning buried beneath it all.

I've heard that Crimea is a strategically and economically important location to Russia due to the naval ports and military bases located there, so I'd speculate that these sanctions weaken the region and put a larger burden on Russia to support it. Maybe they decided that extending those sanctions to the whole of Russia might not be feasible in some way or another? I have no idea why though. Perhaps some of the information is even classified.

Foreign policy is such a complicated field, and often with little to no transparency. It's interesting to think about how the whole conflict might develop, and if there will ever be a resolution to it. It seems sort of frozen right now. I haven't even checked how the military situation is in Eastern Ukraine. International/Mainstream media doesn't report on it anymore, from what I have seen, compared to when it all began.

the sanctions began with Crimea and where intensified after flight MH17 that was shot down with a buck rocket from Russia or Ukraine.

I think just having the current domain is good. The .com domain would be nice as it is more of a primary domain since it is .com, or at least it used to be that is why .com domains are usually more than the others. Considered "prime" real estate of the internet if you will.

Other than that I think with the proper setup of the site with search engines and other things like social media we can do will be just fine. :)

I imagine it's difficult to have an open and transparent debate about foreign policy without also making concessions. Countries doesn't like imposing sanctions, because they - in most cases - hurt themselves as much as the adversary, and because sanctions are famed for their inefficiency.

At the same time, it's important to understand that the goal of sanctions is to "win an argument" and get current conditions fulfilled. The goal isn't to defeat an adversary. For this reason, one must also take care not to cause instability in excess of what would be proportionate to the object of the dispute - or (because again; sanctions work both ways) yourself!


For these reasons, I imagine that the applied reasoning could be such as; if we impose these sanctions on the entirety of Russia, rather than "only" Crimea and Sevastopol, then...

• ...we'll be damaging our export market
• ...we will risk destabilisation of Russia
• ...we will risk destabilisation of the EU (for example, if Russia turns of the supply of gas to Europe, while Europe is technically selfsufficient in gas, the prices of gas would rise dramatically, affecting domestic and commercial heating, production and mobility)

Finally, sanctions will also have to produce a tolerable outcome for both sides. That is to say; while sanctions may be imposed, noone wishes for that to turn into a war. The Japaneese Attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941 is a good example on the consequences of sanctions, that were (intentionally or not) too strong to "work".

Russia was already struggling with macroeconomic challenges, particularly caused by a decline in oil prices in the later 2014. The sanctions combined with the decline in oil prices essentially sent Russia into recession with a GDP growth of -2,2% in Q1 2015. When Russia responded by banning the import of "western" food, in combination with the decline of the Rouble, the prices of food rose, and essentially the inflation was worsened.

I don't think the sanctions are at all related to military strategic value. While it's true that Russia has and have had naval bases in the region, sanctions would be largely ineffective against that.

That makes sense. I agree with you that Crimean sanctions are possibly just a way for the EU to make an explicit ideological stance on the conflict, rather than something designed to force the issue. Destabilizing Russian economy does indeed seem slightly unrealistic, although I've heard from pro-Ukrainian sources that "the Russian economy is failing" and that "the current international sanctions are extremely effective, and we need more of them". Then again, you'd expect those kinds of sources to be supportive of the EU.


It's funny that we've managed to completely derail this nice thread on the .com domain, though :p