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Comment by kweingar | Hacker News Reader

Until very recently, rhetoric about sanctions was masked in polite fictions like "this is meant to target corrupt leaders" and "we fully support the people of the country in the struggle against their authoritarian leader," etc.

It is alarming how quickly this has shifted to open acknowledgment: "yeah, these measures are meant to punish ordinary people until they sacrifice their lives for regime change." This has always been the subtext, but I haven't seen it wielded so freely like this.

I wonder if this situation will change the framing of sanctions in other countries. Maybe we can stop pretending that sanctions aren't strictly meant to bend the population until they break.

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”It is alarming how quickly this has shifted to open acknowledgment”

The mask have been taken off. All we see is the cold face of war.

Something like that said the president of Finland. And the diplomatic paths were tried for months already.

We (the west) all know that sanctions are going to hit ordinary Russians, but also people outside the Russia. Nothing to compare with horrors in Ukraine. But it looks like we have currently no other option. Are we sliding to a new world war. That is what we try to avoid. We are already sending weapons but non-acting would seem we support the war Russia has started. Putin has went so far that it is unlikely that he will stop. We hope the change comes from the inside, and that he is stopped. I know, it is a naive thought.

This is a lose-lose situation for everyone.

At the same time we are in danger of escalating energy crisis, banking crisis and the climate change.

There is a fine line between making it hurt for normal people and make the affirmation of Putins world view that they are under attack. People are already living with a lie their whole life, it doesn't help if we affirm this just when they start to see the light... Cutting of the people that is trying to get the truth to the population is very counter productive in this case.

And, People with internet domain names, tend to be younger, more against Putin already?

> Until very recently, rhetoric about sanctions was masked in polite fictions like "this is meant to target corrupt leaders"

I think this was always an excuse by economic interests trying to limit the scope of sanctions in hopes of reducing the business impact, at least that's how I've read it.

Sanctions are a flexible tool of warfare that scales from targeting leaders, to damaging the enemy's ability to replenish supplies, to total economic collapse so as to destroy the state's ability to function.

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