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Comment by ed_elliott_asc | Hacker News Reader

What I don’t understand is, if there are sanctions, why wasn’t everything stopped when they started? Why did it take over a week after the sanctions started?

(I know that oil and gas aren’t sanctioned)

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Sanctions can be implemented with a "wind down" period for companies to gradually come into compliance with the sanctions. In the UK, for example, there is a wind down period expiring at 23:59 tonight for sanctions relating to "sovereign debt, loans and money market instruments".[1] The situation in the OP is not necessarily related to any sanctions though, it may be a voluntary act on the part of Wise.

[1] https://sanctionsnews.bakermckenzie.com/uk-introduces-new-fi...

It also takes time to figure out if, and in what way, a given company is affected by sanctions. Sometimes its straight forward, most of the time it is not.

thinking of it, it is hard to beleive we live in a democracy that impose all commercial entities to comply with proclaimed sanctions that didn't go through a vote.

I suppose it wouldn't make a difference given the popular opinion, but a vote would at least allow for argumentative debates since the impact on businesses and consumer is massive.

To the best of my knowledge, these aren't sanctions, just companies acting unilaterally to support Ukraine.

So many stories of it having an impact on those on our side, that just happen to have a Russian or Belarusian passport.

Even people that have already fled after previous crackdowns. They don't just get magical new passports.

> To the best of my knowledge, these aren't sanctions, just companies acting unilaterally to support Ukraine

Some of the sanctions ( like kicking out of SWIFT most Russian banks) make doing business in Russia extremely complicated, so even if there aren't direct sanctions forcing a pullout, they can indirectly have that effect.

Agreed, but the SWIFT problems shouldn't impact EU business accounts (which is what I suspect this is, based of the twitter profiles location in Tallinn).

me too, i have my "bad" passport somewhere in the closet, but i don't live in Russia over half of my life and don't plan to return any time soon

luckily, identity verification can be done with EU-residence permit and hopefully companies don't start discriminating Russians abroad

Not absolutely everything is sanctioned. Lots of companies are "self-sanctioning".

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