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The net effect is the same. Average Russian citizens are being treated as pawns and they will face the most brutal effects of these sanctions. Oligarchs and au

• ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >The net effect is the same. It's not though. The west doesn't come to Russia and shove their grubby hands into the bank accounts of ordinary Russians to steal their money, resources and taxes, and starve them to death. Russia does that to their citizens and bares the sole responsibility of these actions, not the west. Like come on, Russia can choose to stop the wear at any time and the sanctions would be lifted but they're not doing that. >I don’t accept the decision to dehumanize an entire nation’s citizens for the acts of their authoritarian elite. So we should just let Russia invade whatever country it wants and kill their way through Europe because otherwise ordinary Russian citizens might suffer? What about Ukrainian citizens and their suffering? What about the poor pensioners in Eastern Europe who won't be able to afford the increased energy bills due to the war and might die because instead of buying medicine, now have to pay insane energy bills? What about the European taxpayers who will now have to pay increased costs to house and care for millions of displaced Ukrainian refugees? So Russia and Russians are not the only ones paying the price for Putin's actions, all of Europe is. By your logic, you would have let Hitler exterminate an entire continent because fighting Germany would have been tough on the innocent people of Germany for the acts of their leader (not that it wasn't, but Hitler had to be defeated and that was the price). Except that now, to defeat Putin, instead of going to war with Russia and have millions of people needlessly die on both sides, we can bankrupt Russia and cripple it from the inside, and have minimal casualties on both sides (Europeans will also suffer from the war and these sanctions but the important thing is we save Ukraine and as many Ukrainians as we can, as I doubt Putin will ever see a trial in the Hague for his war crimes).
  • lowkey 5y ago
    It is though. The west does shove their grubby hands into the bank accounts of ordinary citizens - all the time - to steal their money, resources and taxes. - A few weeks ago it was Canada freezing bank accounts of their political opponents. - The US still allows for civil forfeiture of arbitrary assets with no presumption of innocence or conventional due process. - A little while back Cyprus arbitrarily stole private funds from innocent civilians who had committed no crime - just because the gov said they needed it to bail out their bankers - The EU has had negative nominal interest rates for some time stealing money from savers for the benefit of central bank policy - Nearly all western governments have had negative real interest rates on savings for some time. This is a conscious policy to inflate their currencies through money printing in order to more easily manage their national debts.
    • selfhoster11 5y ago
      If anything, that's robbing their own people, not the Russian citizens. That's what OP is saying, it's not the West, but the Russian oligarchs robbing Russian citizens of the wealth they could otherwise have.
      • lowkey 5y ago
        How are the Russian oligarchs robbing Russian citizens of the wealth they otherwise could have? I didn’t read that from OP’s post and I don’t understand what exactly you are claiming here. Do Russian oligarchs steal from the bank accounts of ordinary Russians or is there another mechanism of theft?
        • therusskiy 5y ago
          taxes that Russians pay are largely stolen by the government and given to oligarchs, who are friends of Putin. For example Rotenbergs want to build a new road, they say it's going to cost them 10x times the market cost, but they are going to win this government contract anyway because they had the same judo coach as Putin. Any time West puts sanctions on oligarchs Putin makes a law so they can pay less taxes, meaning ordinary people keep paying taxes for them