My Russian friend 🇷🇺

So I have a Russian neighbour who lives and works in Sweden and she's been here for more than 10 years.  I met up with her recently after she returned from Russia and she this is what she told me.

Once the invasion by Russia was announced she made her way back to St Petersburg where her parents lived in order to take her money out of the bank.  Flights to Russia have been cancelled so she had to take a flight to Helsinki and then a train to St Petersburg (3 hours).  But she had 5 hours to kill before the train at 6am and could not book a hotel as all of them were closed.  So she stayed in a 24 hour convenience store with another Polish lady who caught the same train as her.  She could have stayed at her brother's house but didn't want to bother him as he lives in Helsinki.  Anyway they had to keep ordering stuff in the shop every hour just so they could stay indoors.  Apparently the security guard hired in the store had to keep chasing out the drunks and other unsavoury people who showed up because it was very cold outside.

In Russia it's no longer possible to withdraw USD or EUR, you could only withdraw roubles.  So she tried to open up another account at a different bank and that took only 5 hours (in Sweden it will take days) to get an ATM card delivered via courier.  She then went back to her original bank but her request was still refused so she could not transfer her money out despite having two bank accounts now.  On the way back to Finland everyone in the train was declaring they had 10K Euros except her since she was too late she could not take anything out.

However apparently the banks are selling their gold now at a discount, so I suggest that she go back to buy gold with her roubles and then bring the gold back to Sweden and sell it her for kroner.  Even though personally I would rather hold onto gold.  She also said it's possible to buy Chinese yen.  She's a bit concerned that the borders could close soon but I don't think Finland would close its borders with Russia at least, at least not at the moment.

It's times like these when financial knowledge will literally save your ass from financial destruction.

So here's the Russian side of the story on why Russia invaded, as told by my friend.

Zelenskiy was going to attack Crimea with nuclear weapons and Nato has been supplying them weapons.  SAAB in Sweden has been supplying Ukraine with weapons.  War internally in Ukraine has been happening since 2014 with Dotnesk and Lugansk, areas which are closer to Russia.  Zelenskiy did not want not to be neutral so Putin when he found out what Zelenskiy was going to do decided to take action.  People in Russia are saying Putin is not going to go, that he will last even longer than after this.

She told me her friend in Ukraine whose family lived there, had their house bombed.  They took pictures and tried to apply for refugee status in Sweden but was denied because Ukraine was "not at war" then.  I'm confused why an internal war doesn't count as war.

The west side story, well that's just everywhere.  In one phrase, Putin is evil and has always been evil.

It seems to me, that Ukraine is just an unfortunate victim being kicked around at the moment by NATO and Russia.

The winner I think coming out of this, and I say "winner" in a very loose term, is China.  They will form closer ties with Russia.  Russia will just move closer with the east.  They've already spun up their own version of the SWIFT network.  Called MIR.  It's a new cold war happening right now.

Personally I think if Trump was still the president this would have never happened.  Call him for what he is but there was no war when he was president and he actually tried to negotiate peace with North Korea.