Pretty sure Russia's oligarchs have covered their bets pretty good, in many places rather than the City of London. Maybe a few have secret alliances and loyalties with the West, but Putin has been looking at that sort and discouraging them so far as he knows how. We're not going to win this by financial moves. Nobody in the whole damn world really trusts London or the US anymore. We are not their safety net or destination in a time of trouble.Okay. The money gets frozen and then at some point unfrozen and returned. In the meantime Putin can float them so that they don't feel too much personal pain.
You're wrong but even if you were correct and we hurt the Russian billionaires, so what? Do you think the Russian billionaires who will do anything to live in the west are going to rise up to throw Putin out of power? The Russian billionaires are very much keeping their heads down and hoping Putin doesn't take an interest in whatever they have. Connect the dots for us in how hurting Russian billionaires leads to Russia removing troops. Is there any depth at all to your train of thought or are you just parroting something you read?
Some say Putin may be vulnerable from within, and that is a real issue I think. Not that anyone is going to just overtly take that stand right now. They will perhaps exploit Putin's weakness if he does something stupid like just invade Ukraine outright. Putinj will win if he just lets refugees come in and takes care of them. He will be a humanitarian. Zelensky will win if he stops his military from pushing them out or negotiates some settlement. Biden will win if nothing happens other than those two resultgs because he will claim to have glob al leadership.
NATO will win if nothing happens, and they agree to take in no more countries unless Russia comes in too. The only point rto all that would be to make Russia more of a Western Ally than a Chinese ally. China would back off from a lot of aggressive plans if we all did that. Talk about a security or containment policy.