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a lot of people seem ok with punishing Russian individuals for the actions of the government. maybe these people have grown in better functioning democracies (

by bsedlm 5y ago

a lot of people seem ok with punishing Russian individuals for the actions of the government. maybe these people have grown in better functioning democracies (unlike Russia or my own country) so they act as if the people were well represented by their governments; unlike reality for most countries with a serious corruption problem.

retrac 5y ago
I think it's just how we tend to think, unfortunately. We conflate individuals into uniform groups. Americans certainly do it with domestic politics. ~100 million people become "the Republicans" or "the Democrats" and are spoken of as if they have a single, united mind behind them.
- mancerayder 5y ago
  We do it everywhere: You'll hear teenagers talking about their generation in the third person: "I recognize that my generation has a lot more to deal with than previous generations". College students in a similar way. You'll hear us paint the enemy, as you described with "the Republicans" and "the Democrats" - although each will use other terms less endearing. Politicians always talk about what "American families want .." The recent culture wars as well, whether it was about Covid stuff, or the racial conversations that were prominent up until recently. Am I a "privileged X" or a "member of the community"? Either way, I will start the sentence with, "As an X, I want to say ...". Are "they" "anti-maskers"? Or are "they" "triple vaxxers"? It's almost like people have internalized sociological statistics as identity, and internalize the language used about us, but from the outside. It must be a great time to be alive if you work in a marketing department of a big tech company, given how easy it is to "target the market segment"[1] or perhaps engage in state-sponsored information warfare that pits right against left and left against right.[2] 1 - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/market-segment.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/market-segment.asp 2 - https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook-troll-farms-report-us-2020-election/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/2021/0...
ignoramous 5y ago
> ...a lot of people seem ok with punishing Russian individuals for the actions of the government. Xenophobes are well and truly out of their closets. This is why I hate wars. It incentivizes the absolute worst everywhere.
- veganhouseDJ 5y ago
  Not to mention it literally feeds directly into Putin's delusions.
ajross 5y ago
> a lot of people seem ok with punishing Russian individuals for the actions of the government. What's the option, though? Inaction? Sanctions hurt the people because hurting the support base is the only way to exert pressure on those unrepresentative governments. At the end of the day, all governments operate via the consent of the governed, even autocracies. But the expression of that consent gets really ugly the less democratic the environment. The international community can't fix Russian democracy, so all that is left for us (absent military action) is to change the reward structure for those who can.
- therusskiy 5y ago
  what's going to happen with so many countries / companies cutting Russia off is that it's going to play into Putin's narrative that Russia is surrounded by enemies. Imagine you are a neutral teenager who never cared about politics, then Playstation takes all your games, you don't have access to any of the media sources that can explain the situation (they are all banned now), you can only hear what government tells you.
  - yoavm 5y ago
    Repeating the parent comment - What's the option, though? What better things can we do to help the > 1,000,000 Ukrainian refugees, and all the other millions that are currently being bombed by Russia? Putin _is_ getting his power from the Russian people. It's unfortunate they believe his lies, but they do, and that's what makes him strong.
    - therusskiy 5y ago
      to be honest, I don't know, that is the reason I left, I have no hope and don't know how to change things. What could help is all these companies that are blocking Russians sending information to Russians about this war and about Putin's actions. If all Russians on Google, Playstation and etc saw more information it would help get through the blockade. Companies haven't been doing it because it requires more effort and risk getting blocked by Russia. By cutting these people off you are turning these people into Putin supporters. It's so much easier to just cut off Russians than actually trying to solve the problem.
Mikeb85 5y ago
Maybe because Ukrainian men don't have the choice to flee. It's not like Russians are moving away during peaceful times. It's a full on war in which one party is bombing the civilians of a democratic country, threatening NATO with nuclear war and Russians are the only ones who can actually stop it.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  I still do not see the logic of punishing people who left russia - as they obviously do not support the war. If they stay and get drafted to fight in the war for real, how does this help? And sure, they could try to organize revolts - but would you? That is extremly dangerous and a million times easier said than done. Fleeing the country is a strong peaceful revolt on the other hand. Helping those people will mean helping an opposition that one day maybe wants to go back to russia to build up alternative structures.
  - christophilus 5y ago
    You’re right. I like to think that I’d stay and fight / protest if I was single. But as a father with young kids, I’d be getting the hell out of dodge; and I’d hope to find a safe place of refuge. The rest of us need to be supportive of refugees from both countries.
  - Mikeb85 5y ago
    >Fleeing the country is a strong peaceful revolt on the other hand No, it just ensures that the only people left in Russia are the ones who support Putin. And like I said, Ukrainians have no choice. Why should Russians? As another poster said, even autocracies need a certain level of support to operate. It's not fair to punish Russians but their country is literally waging a full scale war while threatening the west with nukes. They can stop it. Or we can all wait until Kyiv looks like Grozny, millions have died and we're sacrificing the Baltic states to "prevent nuclear war"...
    - asats 5y ago
      Right, if you were in power people fleeing over the berlin wall would have been shot from both sides, not just by the soviets. Cause they should have stayed inside and overthrown the soviet government. Same goes for north koreans, shoot them and send them back, let them fight the government.
bootlooped 5y ago
I support the economic warfare against Russia, not because I'm OK with hurting average Russians citizens, but because I don't know any better alternative. Would NATO entering Ukraine and engaging Russian troops be better? I don't think doing nothing would be better. I don't think lighter sanctions would save Ukraine or sufficiently punish Putin, because it's questionable whether the current harsh sanctions will even save Ukraine or sufficiently punish Putin. This is a horrible situation all around.
Tistron 5y ago
Everywhere I've seen anyone motivate restrictions on Russian citizens it's been about pushing them to revolt against their government, not about punishing. I don't know whether it makes sense, but it does seem like one of few avenues to try to get rid of putin that has low chance of resulting in atomic war.
- Yajirobe 5y ago
  Americans about US wars: 'we cannot do anything about our government - they engage in wars and we couldn't stop them if we tried' Americans about Russian wars: 'the average Joes need to go out to the streets and bring Putin down'
  - nerkicacy 5y ago
    Americans can change government during election every few years if they don't like it. Russians can't. That's why the only way is 'the average Joes need to go out to the streets and bring Putin down'.
    - akrymski 5y ago
      Except you get 3-15 years in jail for protesting in Russia.
      - lostmsu 5y ago
        There are only so many jails, temporary detention facilities, and judges to give the verdicts.
        akrymski 5y ago
        Tell that to Stalin
        lostmsu 5y ago
        In his times there were no easy ways to organize masses of people due to lack of efficient decentralized means of communication.
lolinder 5y ago
I'm all for annihilating Russia's economy (even if it means civilians are caught in the crossfire) but the treatment GP received after leaving is extremely disheartening. The goal should be to welcome fleeing Russians with open arms and make it as easy as possible for them to permanently put down roots.
- AutumnCurtain 5y ago
  It's also a wasted opportunity just from a competitive standpoint. Brain draining the shit out of Russia is a totally valid strategy that boosts the host nation while hindering Russia.
  - ignoramous 5y ago
    Some of these Russians would go on to make millions, and then the foreign governments would threaten them with sanctions and seizures just the same? Such a ridiculous double standard.
    - bigfudge 5y ago
      This is absurd. The Russians being sanctioned in Europe are gangster crooks who robbed from their own.
      - ignoramous 5y ago
        Expatriate Russians all over the Western world are being cancelled by Xenophobes with Ukrainian invasion as a convenient excuse. It isn't also far fetched that the millions one might make may also get called into question just because of their nationality. The West's politics is further fueling this hate-filled divide; ceding air-time, socio-economic pedastal, and political will to the intolerant amongst us.
  - muldoc 5y ago
- 5y ago
akomtu 5y ago
I have another explanation for this. Most people, even the decent ones, get an uncontrollable build-up of anger when they learn about the war, and they have a need to release this anger somehow. This need is like the need to pee: it won't go away by itself. These people rightfully realise that "peeing" at the true offenders - the putin's gang - isn't an option, so they turn to easy targets, I mean the average russians. Somewhere in the back of their head they realise that it's wrong, but their much stronger animal part of their brain strongly supports punishing members of the enemy tribe.
- Etherlord87 5y ago
  By peeing do you mean sanctions or just hostility towards russians?
pelasaco 5y ago
Go to the streets. Worse than in Ukraine won't be. That's the only way to stop Putin. Russian people on the streets. Russian spring!
coldtea 5y ago
>maybe these people have grown in better functioning democracies (unlike Russia or my own country) so they act as if the people were well represented by their governments; I think they're mostly grown in countries doing the imposing of sanctions. If they had to suffer the consequences of sanctions imposed on them, for what their own countries did, they'd have a much different understanding.
- grujicd 5y ago
  These people also have no idea, except abstract one, how it is to live in authoritarian country, when access to non-government news is hard or impossible, and even saying your opinion can be dangerous. As someone who was on the receiving end of sanctions in ex-yu, despite being antiwar and going to protests, I can’t ever support wide sanctions which affect all people. Years we were under sanctions were the worst years of my life. The worst thing is they harm oposition and make regime stronger. Government can tell “the world hates us, and those who want to colaborate with west are traitors and you should not vote for them”, and that’s easy sell to population directly suffering from sanctions.
  - politician 5y ago
    You oppose sanctions. Do you support a global nuclear exchange? Sometimes bad things are necessary to forestall worse things. The stark reality of Mutually Assured Destruction is that America will turn Russia, its military, its cities, its dirt into radioactive glass if they launch their nuclear weapons. Look at this reality in the face and then decide if you still oppose sanctions.
    - grujicd 5y ago
      Most sanctions have inverse effect of strengthening the authoritharian government. Maybe if you have free press and strong oposition you can use sanctions to turn population against governemnt. However, my experience of suffering under combination of sanctions and authorian government is that dictatorship gets stronger in these cases. I would even support sanctions in the 90-ties against Serbia if they increased our chances of overthrowing Milosevic. But they didn’t, quite the oposite. He only went after NATO bombing and defacto loosing all wars Serbia participated in. It looks to me sanctions are implemented as a punishment, as a feel good move, as “we have to do something”. What’s the realistic end goal of blocking internet access, or software, or Visa/MC/Apple pay to Russia? Does it help a goal of overthrowing Putin, or strengthening his case? “We have to do something” is not a good reason if there are no positive effects, but there are negative ones.
traceroute66 5y ago
> a lot of people seem ok with punishing Russian individuals for the actions of the government. Its easy to say that but you have to look at the bigger picture. It's easy to say "just punish the government / the oligarchs", but as most Westerners know, these people have become extraordinarily adept at hiding their money and distributing their assets. So it is very difficult indeed to target them per-se, hence you need to make it difficult to move money/assets around, sell assets and gain new money/assets. You also need to look at the even bigger problem. How do we stop Russia attacking Ukraine ? Nobody wants World War 3. Even the Americans who are usually keen to test out their latest toys are being remarkably disciplined about sitting on their hands. So, you don't want to engage in a direct fight with the Russians, what's left on the table ? Diplomacy ? Well, they've tried and are trying, but not much light at the end of that tunnel as of yet. So your only option left is to accept that running a war needs two things, money and supplies. If both of those dry up then its only a matter of time before the war grinds to a halt too. Hence you end up doing things that affect banks, the central bank, transport and logistics. Regrettably its not just about targeting the military and the government, you have to target the supporting structures too (food, parts, consumables), hence you need to go big and go fast on sanctions. Yes your average Russian will get caught up in the sanctions. Yes it will be difficult and unpleasant for families. But frankly the alternative, full-blown war across Europe and the potential for nuclear bombs being used is unfathomably worse for everyone both inside Russia and outside.
- lowkey 5y ago
  I feel like you are conveniently skipping the part where millions of ordinary Russians are being economically devastated by broad brush sanctions that punish the poor and middle class Russians who are innocent of war crimes, simply because they were unfortunate to be born in the wrong country and they may justifiably be afraid for their lives if they protest. For those who say beat the war drums, punish them all, just so we can make it harder on the authoritarians and oligarchs - are you ready to enlist in the Ukraine militia or is that too much to ask? It seems a little too facile to be willing to put others lives on the line when you are not willing to risk your own.
  - 5y ago
kova12 5y ago
Complacency is not a crime, true; nobody is obligated to take arms against his government, but at certain point the argument that you are but a bystander no longer works. For example if someone is dying on your watch and you won't help, you are at a minimum morally guilty. It's your government after all, you have to bear some sort of responsibility for its actions. Same by the way applies to everybody else, USA folks included
lottin 5y ago
This is just how international relations work... Russian citizens who are being affected by sanctions also benefit from trade agreements and treaties that their government has signed.
risyachka 5y ago
Have you seen any major rebellions in Russia in the last decade? No. Here is a kicker - there were few coups even in North Korea. So russians are fine with regime. And even though actions speak louder than words, most people even didn't SPEAK against it until few days ago. So unless you openly spoke against putin and regime for years, you were part of the problem. Also, in Ukraine people go against armed forces with bare hands on protests and risk being KILLED. In russia they are afraid to protest to get 15 day jail time? Sorry, no excuse here either.
- veganhouseDJ 5y ago
  All easy to say as you post this from the comfort of your home.
  - helge9210 5y ago
    In 2014 I flew from Israel back to Ukraine to participate in Euromaidan. So instead of fleeing all the Russians of the world should flock back instead.
  - dzikimarian 5y ago
    Don't be so sure about that. There's a lot of posters from eastern Europe in this thread. Many may remember their own fights with USSR. Not to mention maidan.
  - risyachka 5y ago
    I've been on Maidan in 2014 mate, when all the crazy shit happened. So when I say people are not afraid to get hurt for freedom here - I know what I am saying.
- jpindar 5y ago
  >15 day jail time 15 YEARS. I'd rather die, especially if I was giving my life for my country.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
So we are supposed to just let dictators do anything they please because we don't want hurt their subjects? There's not many options beside kinetic war and obliterating the economy. What do you suggest we do that would be more effective? Hand over Ukraine's sovereignty?
Mirioron 5y ago
Putin isn't the one pressing the button to shoot a missile that hits a kindergarten. He's not the one that's threatening you with a rifle. It's an average Russian guy that does it. It has been an average Russian guy that does it for centuries. Virtually every country bordering Russia has suffered from this in the past few hundred years. I don't mean to say that it's right, but it should be easily understandable why any country that had portions of their population deported to Siberia and sent to gulag campus would have tensions that were reignited with this conflict.
GoldenMonkey 5y ago
The Russian soldiers can’t lay down their arms?

by bsedlm 5y ago

retrac 5y ago

I think it's just how we tend to think, unfortunately. We conflate individuals into uniform groups. Americans certainly do it with domestic politics. ~100 million people become "the Republicans" or "the Democrats" and are spoken of as if they have a single, united mind behind them.

mancerayder 5y ago
We do it everywhere: You'll hear teenagers talking about their generation in the third person: "I recognize that my generation has a lot more to deal with than previous generations". College students in a similar way. You'll hear us paint the enemy, as you described with "the Republicans" and "the Democrats" - although each will use other terms less endearing. Politicians always talk about what "American families want .." The recent culture wars as well, whether it was about Covid stuff, or the racial conversations that were prominent up until recently. Am I a "privileged X" or a "member of the community"? Either way, I will start the sentence with, "As an X, I want to say ...". Are "they" "anti-maskers"? Or are "they" "triple vaxxers"? It's almost like people have internalized sociological statistics as identity, and internalize the language used about us, but from the outside. It must be a great time to be alive if you work in a marketing department of a big tech company, given how easy it is to "target the market segment"[1] or perhaps engage in state-sponsored information warfare that pits right against left and left against right.[2] 1 - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/market-segment.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/market-segment.asp 2 - https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook-troll-farms-report-us-2020-election/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/2021/0...

ignoramous 5y ago

> ...a lot of people seem ok with punishing Russian individuals for the actions of the government. Xenophobes are well and truly out of their closets. This is why I hate wars. It incentivizes the absolute worst everywhere.

veganhouseDJ 5y ago
Not to mention it literally feeds directly into Putin's delusions.

ajross 5y ago

> a lot of people seem ok with punishing Russian individuals for the actions of the government. What's the option, though? Inaction? Sanctions hurt the people because hurting the support base is the only way to exert pressure on those unrepresentative governments. At the end of the day, all governments operate via the consent of the governed, even autocracies. But the expression of that consent gets really ugly the less democratic the environment. The international community can't fix Russian democracy, so all that is left for us (absent military action) is to change the reward structure for those who can.

therusskiy 5y ago
what's going to happen with so many countries / companies cutting Russia off is that it's going to play into Putin's narrative that Russia is surrounded by enemies. Imagine you are a neutral teenager who never cared about politics, then Playstation takes all your games, you don't have access to any of the media sources that can explain the situation (they are all banned now), you can only hear what government tells you.
- yoavm 5y ago
  Repeating the parent comment - What's the option, though? What better things can we do to help the > 1,000,000 Ukrainian refugees, and all the other millions that are currently being bombed by Russia? Putin _is_ getting his power from the Russian people. It's unfortunate they believe his lies, but they do, and that's what makes him strong.
  - therusskiy 5y ago
    to be honest, I don't know, that is the reason I left, I have no hope and don't know how to change things. What could help is all these companies that are blocking Russians sending information to Russians about this war and about Putin's actions. If all Russians on Google, Playstation and etc saw more information it would help get through the blockade. Companies haven't been doing it because it requires more effort and risk getting blocked by Russia. By cutting these people off you are turning these people into Putin supporters. It's so much easier to just cut off Russians than actually trying to solve the problem.

Mikeb85 5y ago

Maybe because Ukrainian men don't have the choice to flee. It's not like Russians are moving away during peaceful times. It's a full on war in which one party is bombing the civilians of a democratic country, threatening NATO with nuclear war and Russians are the only ones who can actually stop it.

hutzlibu 5y ago
I still do not see the logic of punishing people who left russia - as they obviously do not support the war. If they stay and get drafted to fight in the war for real, how does this help? And sure, they could try to organize revolts - but would you? That is extremly dangerous and a million times easier said than done. Fleeing the country is a strong peaceful revolt on the other hand. Helping those people will mean helping an opposition that one day maybe wants to go back to russia to build up alternative structures.
- christophilus 5y ago
  You’re right. I like to think that I’d stay and fight / protest if I was single. But as a father with young kids, I’d be getting the hell out of dodge; and I’d hope to find a safe place of refuge. The rest of us need to be supportive of refugees from both countries.
- Mikeb85 5y ago
  >Fleeing the country is a strong peaceful revolt on the other hand No, it just ensures that the only people left in Russia are the ones who support Putin. And like I said, Ukrainians have no choice. Why should Russians? As another poster said, even autocracies need a certain level of support to operate. It's not fair to punish Russians but their country is literally waging a full scale war while threatening the west with nukes. They can stop it. Or we can all wait until Kyiv looks like Grozny, millions have died and we're sacrificing the Baltic states to "prevent nuclear war"...
  - asats 5y ago
    Right, if you were in power people fleeing over the berlin wall would have been shot from both sides, not just by the soviets. Cause they should have stayed inside and overthrown the soviet government. Same goes for north koreans, shoot them and send them back, let them fight the government.

bootlooped 5y ago

I support the economic warfare against Russia, not because I'm OK with hurting average Russians citizens, but because I don't know any better alternative. Would NATO entering Ukraine and engaging Russian troops be better? I don't think doing nothing would be better. I don't think lighter sanctions would save Ukraine or sufficiently punish Putin, because it's questionable whether the current harsh sanctions will even save Ukraine or sufficiently punish Putin. This is a horrible situation all around.

Tistron 5y ago

Everywhere I've seen anyone motivate restrictions on Russian citizens it's been about pushing them to revolt against their government, not about punishing. I don't know whether it makes sense, but it does seem like one of few avenues to try to get rid of putin that has low chance of resulting in atomic war.

Yajirobe 5y ago
Americans about US wars: 'we cannot do anything about our government - they engage in wars and we couldn't stop them if we tried' Americans about Russian wars: 'the average Joes need to go out to the streets and bring Putin down'
- nerkicacy 5y ago
  Americans can change government during election every few years if they don't like it. Russians can't. That's why the only way is 'the average Joes need to go out to the streets and bring Putin down'.
  - akrymski 5y ago
    Except you get 3-15 years in jail for protesting in Russia.
    - lostmsu 5y ago
      There are only so many jails, temporary detention facilities, and judges to give the verdicts.
      - akrymski 5y ago
        Tell that to Stalin
        lostmsu 5y ago
        In his times there were no easy ways to organize masses of people due to lack of efficient decentralized means of communication.

lolinder 5y ago

I'm all for annihilating Russia's economy (even if it means civilians are caught in the crossfire) but the treatment GP received after leaving is extremely disheartening. The goal should be to welcome fleeing Russians with open arms and make it as easy as possible for them to permanently put down roots.

AutumnCurtain 5y ago
It's also a wasted opportunity just from a competitive standpoint. Brain draining the shit out of Russia is a totally valid strategy that boosts the host nation while hindering Russia.
- ignoramous 5y ago
  Some of these Russians would go on to make millions, and then the foreign governments would threaten them with sanctions and seizures just the same? Such a ridiculous double standard.
  - bigfudge 5y ago
    This is absurd. The Russians being sanctioned in Europe are gangster crooks who robbed from their own.
    - ignoramous 5y ago
      Expatriate Russians all over the Western world are being cancelled by Xenophobes with Ukrainian invasion as a convenient excuse. It isn't also far fetched that the millions one might make may also get called into question just because of their nationality. The West's politics is further fueling this hate-filled divide; ceding air-time, socio-economic pedastal, and political will to the intolerant amongst us.
- muldoc 5y ago
5y ago

akomtu 5y ago

I have another explanation for this. Most people, even the decent ones, get an uncontrollable build-up of anger when they learn about the war, and they have a need to release this anger somehow. This need is like the need to pee: it won't go away by itself. These people rightfully realise that "peeing" at the true offenders - the putin's gang - isn't an option, so they turn to easy targets, I mean the average russians. Somewhere in the back of their head they realise that it's wrong, but their much stronger animal part of their brain strongly supports punishing members of the enemy tribe.

Etherlord87 5y ago
By peeing do you mean sanctions or just hostility towards russians?

pelasaco 5y ago

Go to the streets. Worse than in Ukraine won't be. That's the only way to stop Putin. Russian people on the streets. Russian spring!

coldtea 5y ago

>maybe these people have grown in better functioning democracies (unlike Russia or my own country) so they act as if the people were well represented by their governments; I think they're mostly grown in countries doing the imposing of sanctions. If they had to suffer the consequences of sanctions imposed on them, for what their own countries did, they'd have a much different understanding.

grujicd 5y ago
These people also have no idea, except abstract one, how it is to live in authoritarian country, when access to non-government news is hard or impossible, and even saying your opinion can be dangerous. As someone who was on the receiving end of sanctions in ex-yu, despite being antiwar and going to protests, I can’t ever support wide sanctions which affect all people. Years we were under sanctions were the worst years of my life. The worst thing is they harm oposition and make regime stronger. Government can tell “the world hates us, and those who want to colaborate with west are traitors and you should not vote for them”, and that’s easy sell to population directly suffering from sanctions.
- politician 5y ago
  You oppose sanctions. Do you support a global nuclear exchange? Sometimes bad things are necessary to forestall worse things. The stark reality of Mutually Assured Destruction is that America will turn Russia, its military, its cities, its dirt into radioactive glass if they launch their nuclear weapons. Look at this reality in the face and then decide if you still oppose sanctions.
  - grujicd 5y ago
    Most sanctions have inverse effect of strengthening the authoritharian government. Maybe if you have free press and strong oposition you can use sanctions to turn population against governemnt. However, my experience of suffering under combination of sanctions and authorian government is that dictatorship gets stronger in these cases. I would even support sanctions in the 90-ties against Serbia if they increased our chances of overthrowing Milosevic. But they didn’t, quite the oposite. He only went after NATO bombing and defacto loosing all wars Serbia participated in. It looks to me sanctions are implemented as a punishment, as a feel good move, as “we have to do something”. What’s the realistic end goal of blocking internet access, or software, or Visa/MC/Apple pay to Russia? Does it help a goal of overthrowing Putin, or strengthening his case? “We have to do something” is not a good reason if there are no positive effects, but there are negative ones.

traceroute66 5y ago

> a lot of people seem ok with punishing Russian individuals for the actions of the government. Its easy to say that but you have to look at the bigger picture. It's easy to say "just punish the government / the oligarchs", but as most Westerners know, these people have become extraordinarily adept at hiding their money and distributing their assets. So it is very difficult indeed to target them per-se, hence you need to make it difficult to move money/assets around, sell assets and gain new money/assets. You also need to look at the even bigger problem. How do we stop Russia attacking Ukraine ? Nobody wants World War 3. Even the Americans who are usually keen to test out their latest toys are being remarkably disciplined about sitting on their hands. So, you don't want to engage in a direct fight with the Russians, what's left on the table ? Diplomacy ? Well, they've tried and are trying, but not much light at the end of that tunnel as of yet. So your only option left is to accept that running a war needs two things, money and supplies. If both of those dry up then its only a matter of time before the war grinds to a halt too. Hence you end up doing things that affect banks, the central bank, transport and logistics. Regrettably its not just about targeting the military and the government, you have to target the supporting structures too (food, parts, consumables), hence you need to go big and go fast on sanctions. Yes your average Russian will get caught up in the sanctions. Yes it will be difficult and unpleasant for families. But frankly the alternative, full-blown war across Europe and the potential for nuclear bombs being used is unfathomably worse for everyone both inside Russia and outside.

lowkey 5y ago
I feel like you are conveniently skipping the part where millions of ordinary Russians are being economically devastated by broad brush sanctions that punish the poor and middle class Russians who are innocent of war crimes, simply because they were unfortunate to be born in the wrong country and they may justifiably be afraid for their lives if they protest. For those who say beat the war drums, punish them all, just so we can make it harder on the authoritarians and oligarchs - are you ready to enlist in the Ukraine militia or is that too much to ask? It seems a little too facile to be willing to put others lives on the line when you are not willing to risk your own.
- 5y ago

kova12 5y ago

Complacency is not a crime, true; nobody is obligated to take arms against his government, but at certain point the argument that you are but a bystander no longer works. For example if someone is dying on your watch and you won't help, you are at a minimum morally guilty. It's your government after all, you have to bear some sort of responsibility for its actions. Same by the way applies to everybody else, USA folks included

lottin 5y ago

This is just how international relations work... Russian citizens who are being affected by sanctions also benefit from trade agreements and treaties that their government has signed.

risyachka 5y ago

Have you seen any major rebellions in Russia in the last decade? No. Here is a kicker - there were few coups even in North Korea. So russians are fine with regime. And even though actions speak louder than words, most people even didn't SPEAK against it until few days ago. So unless you openly spoke against putin and regime for years, you were part of the problem. Also, in Ukraine people go against armed forces with bare hands on protests and risk being KILLED. In russia they are afraid to protest to get 15 day jail time? Sorry, no excuse here either.

veganhouseDJ 5y ago
All easy to say as you post this from the comfort of your home.
- helge9210 5y ago
  In 2014 I flew from Israel back to Ukraine to participate in Euromaidan. So instead of fleeing all the Russians of the world should flock back instead.
- dzikimarian 5y ago
  Don't be so sure about that. There's a lot of posters from eastern Europe in this thread. Many may remember their own fights with USSR. Not to mention maidan.
- risyachka 5y ago
  I've been on Maidan in 2014 mate, when all the crazy shit happened. So when I say people are not afraid to get hurt for freedom here - I know what I am saying.
jpindar 5y ago
>15 day jail time 15 YEARS. I'd rather die, especially if I was giving my life for my country.

deleted 5y ago

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onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago

So we are supposed to just let dictators do anything they please because we don't want hurt their subjects? There's not many options beside kinetic war and obliterating the economy. What do you suggest we do that would be more effective? Hand over Ukraine's sovereignty?

Mirioron 5y ago

Putin isn't the one pressing the button to shoot a missile that hits a kindergarten. He's not the one that's threatening you with a rifle. It's an average Russian guy that does it. It has been an average Russian guy that does it for centuries. Virtually every country bordering Russia has suffered from this in the past few hundred years. I don't mean to say that it's right, but it should be easily understandable why any country that had portions of their population deported to Siberia and sent to gulag campus would have tensions that were reignited with this conflict.

GoldenMonkey 5y ago

The Russian soldiers can’t lay down their arms?