Putin just lost another one

Good news: after a massive pushback from all of you and others, Deutsche Bank has reversed its position and now says it’s pulling out of Russia. This is notable because Deutsche Bank has been caught laundering massive amounts of Russian money in recent years. Also, in what is surely just a coincidence, even as Russian oligarchs were laundering massive amounts of money through Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Bank was inexplicably loaning massive amounts of money to Donald Trump with no apparent expectation that it would be paid back.

So it’s clear how big of a blow this is for Russia. And since Deutsche Bank has previously shown it can’t be trusted, let’s all keep a close eye on it going forward. If Deutsche Bank goes back on its word, we’ll go back to calling it out and applying more pressure.

It’s the latest reminder that we can use our collective voice for positive change. When entities like Deutsche Bank tell us they’re going to do the wrong thing, our job as activists is not to sit back say “see, we knew they’d do the wrong thing no matter what.” Our job is to apply pressure and force these entities to change their mind. In other words, our job is to win – and we won this one.