> The EU and the US applied just about every economic sanctions (except imports of oil and gas in the case of EU) and Putin won't stop. To some extent, sanctio

> The EU and the US applied just about every economic sanctions (except imports of oil and gas in the case of EU) and Putin won't stop. To some extent, sanctions work more as a threat than a punishment, but threats only work if they are credible. The goal of these sanctions might not be so much to stop Putin (he clearly won't be stopping in the near term, for a number of political, psychological, and sociological reasons) but to a) damage the Russian economy and reduce their capacity to execute this war in the medium term, b) use that example as an object lesson for other countries who are considering expansionism, and c) lend credibility to future threats of sanctions.