They still need food, energy, shelter, and security.
Just thinking about how far the pendulum can swing before it becomes immoral for other reasons.
But the West is too afraid to fight. So it'll keep pushing for sanctions, which it can later point at and say, "see, we did something!"
We're doing that. We're letting loose "one of the largest and fastest arms transfers in history" [1]. What we're avoiding is military intervention.
Because, in one part, nukes. And because, in another part, the clear red line that is NATO membership.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/nato-members-mount-huge-operati...
If only... If only we would just cave, maybe everything would be fine (I don't know).
At least it's not clear that fighting will solve anything.
And all this talk about NATO being the "red line" is not particularly believable in context, either - I sincerely doubt that, if Russia threatens e.g. Latvia, US would be willing to risk escalation then if it doesn't do so now.
South Korea is bravely defending from North Korea, though with great losses. Not a day passes by without a tragic report of civilians bombed in their homes, or attacked during an evacuation from a sieged city. Sanctions against North Korea just don't work, we have to finally gather an army to invade North Korea and end this dragging war.
Not really. There is a fast strategy and a slow strategy.
The fast strategy aims to convince elites to change course. If Putin withdraws, he gets his economy back. That's unlikely here; the real targets are e.g. his generals.
The slow strategy is about degrading capability. The slow strategy is a worst-case option for when the fast strategy fails. Smaller economies power smaller war machines. Brain drain, industrial decay and material shortages make unmanageable threats less potent.
They also undermine the appeal of popular uprising. External pressure tends to bring people together, which in this case means tolerating eroding freedoms in exchange for security. And starving, broken people don't revolt. When we deploy long-term sanctions, we're putting a nation in international quarantine. For a nuclear state run by a lunatic, that makes sense. (For e.g. Cuba, Iran or Venezuela, I find it deplorable.)
It kinda helps that their country is the major exporter of the first two. Not sure about construction materials, but it seems that whatever is missing will be readily supplied by China in exchange for the first two.
Hmm, lets ask the North Koreans!
Sanctions don't make a better world, but it's better than bombs.
We can also try another "Russian Reset", I think both Bush and Obama did a "Russian Reset" with Putin.
If we don't want Russia to have a powerful military, sanctions is the least evil tool we have.
For me one of those would be to deny someone food and water from my own surplus.
I understand that RedHat consulting is not the same, but as I see more and more companies pull out I wonder how long it will be until it's wheat, insulin, medical devices etc? The russian citizenry are not (directly) responsible for Putins insanity, nor for being brainwashed by state media.
Yet, that didn't make us ease sanctions significantly. Did it?
My point being: things can probably get very bad in Russia before we ease sanctions due to humanitarian concerns.
Yes, it's a tragedy. Hopefully, all of this ends before it gets that far.
One could equally flip that. Did famines and sanctions make them our allies? No, it hasn't.
Sanctions won't make them surrender, or make them our friends.
It'll just make the poor.
The only good thing sanctions against North Korea did was:
1. Make their army poorly maintained,
2. Discourage others from doing similar tricks.
I'm not even sure we were successful at (2).
they are and alot of them still support both Putin and this "special operation"
I have a hard time blaming people for doing exactly what their environment programs them to.
Your words not mine, I do love Russian people and the culture but Putin cult of personality is sick it makes the whole of society rotten. Russian people are not naive they need to understand they are being brainwashed and stand up for themselves, they could in the times of Perestrojka and can do it now.
They didn't and they most probably won't. Perestroika was a top-down change, not some kind of a people's revolution, they just rode the wave.
That attitude puts you in an abusive relationship. Reminds me how my brother would ask me for money to pay for his next car loan installment, and when I would help him, he would spend his money on entertainment.
Or like in situational jokes in comedies: two guys order a beer, guy A drinks a beer. Guy B wants to drink a beer, but is stopped by guy A: "this is mine beer, yours was the one I already drunk".
In other words, Russia has the resources to feed its people. But if Russia decides to spend the resources on building nuclear warheads, we shouldn't help its citizens with food.
And yes, I'm aware it's less about giving the food for free and more about selling it. But there are other resources than money: if Russia is unable to secure food for itself, this is because the government has diverted attention (being another resource) to something else like military efforts.
We're not sanctioning a small, heavily populated island. To the contrary. Russians have a lot of time to prepare food reserves.
So do the Ukrainians, is Putin affording them that?
But I think it's rare there is a tradeoff there, little reason we cannot do both (continue subsistence trade with aggressor, provide humanitarian aid as we're able to defender)
"Continuing trade with the aggressor" is telling the aggressor they can continue the slaughter of civilians in Ukraine with little consequences. That's immoral and unacceptable.
All the aggressor has to do stop sanctions and businesses boycotting the aggressor is to stop the slaughter of Ukrainians and get out of Ukraine, it's pretty simple.