Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt
Do they ban PayPal in Russia?
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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.