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Comment by kadoban | Hacker News Reader

At best that's a messy plan. Are you willing to intentionally make millions of people as miserable as possible on the slim chance that they'll overthrow the people with all the guns and power?

Note that the Maidan revolution was driven from within, as far as I know, not forced on the people from without.

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When the flipside of the equation is potentially MAD then, yes.

Millions are already miserable on the slim chance that they'll overcome the people with all the guns and power and retain their sovereignty and freedom (i.e., Ukraine if that wasn't clear).

The Ukrainian people deserve our help and support. They're doing the best they can with a really shitty situation.

I just would not intentionally target the _common_ Russian people as much as it can be avoided. Hurt the oligarchs, Putin, anyone who is actually helping him, etc.

It won't be painless for the common Russian people, and we can't really help that. But targetting them is just hurtful for no benefit.

On the contrary hurting them will provide a very strong signal to them that something is actually quite wrong. Kremlin is a propaganda machine and while some don't believe what they hear there are others that do. It gets kind of harder and harder to believe you're the good guy when things like that start happening to you. It may prompt you to look at alternative, non-Kremlin news sources and formed a more accurate picture. This may in turn lead to higher and higher numbers of people willing to revolt against Putin.

It's absolutely a last resort, but this is the highest stakes game in existence and there is no time to mess around.

That sounds like a plan that _at best_ works on the timeline of years, and more likely never works.

what is the other option?

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