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Comment by Reichhardt | Hacker News Reader

Economic sanctions will do nothing for the Ukrainian men and women fighting for their homes on the ground. Western nations need to begin running air missions over Ukraine directly. With control of the air, the local Ukrainian troops can easily triumph on the ground.

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Sanctions work and have worked against Russia[0]. Anyone telling you otherwise is wrong.

What's important here is to maintain the moral upper ground. China won't be able to withstand public opinion swaying to the side of the Ukrainians as more and more video evidence surfaces of massacres. If we offer real military support to the Ukrainians, China would use any video of our success as justification to begin helping the Russian side.

Protip: If you want to research the effects of sanctions, go to Google News search and set the time period to exclude articles from after 2020ish. You'll get higher-quality articles.

[0]https://www.brookings.edu/articles/can-sanctions-stop-putin/

The Brookings article you linked to directly contradicts your point. It argues (correctly) that sanctions will hurt Russia's people but are extremely unlikely to change Putin's policies, and in fact, will only entrench Putin's control over what remains of the Russian economy.

I suspect you might have stopped reading the article at the first paragraph - which presents a thesis that the rest of the article then proceeds to analyze and disprove.

>It argues (correctly) that sanctions will hurt Russia's people but are extremely unlikely to change Putin's policies

If I'd linked you an article that said the Russian people wouldn't be hurt but that the sanctions were likely to change Putin's policies, then would you feel the opposite? It seems like you're trying to play both sides of the coin here.

We can only control the financial damage of the Russian people with our sanctions in the hopes that their public opinion will sway the opinion of Putin's cabinet and we've accomplished that here. There is no intervention on Earth that would guarantee the changing of Putin's mind short of a gun to his head. I'd go so far as to say you've erected a straw man.

> If I'd linked you an article that said the Russian people wouldn't be hurt but that the sanctions were likely to change Putin's policies, then would you feel the opposite?

Of course.

> It seems like you're trying to play both sides of the coin here.

It seems like your telepathy machine is broken.

> There is no intervention on Earth that would guarantee the changing of Putin's mind short of a gun to his head.

That might be the case. But if you think that is the case, why are you suggesting a different, ineffective but cruel intervention? An uncharitable interpretation of your proposal is that you want to hurt ordinary Russian people because you want to see someone suffer for Putin's actions.

World leaders are scared to give more weapons to Ukraine, let alone actually fight in that space.

Germany is having issues delivering the 5,000 promised helmets, let alone any arms deal to Ukrainians. Lets start with a more reasonable goal, like NATO countries standing together and actually arming the Ukrainians?

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Ukrainians need more missiles to keep up their defenses. Politically speaking, that's where the discussion lies for now. Its unreasonable to expect the various world powers to give more than that right now... and seems like a political battle to even ask for this much.

You want NATO (mostly US jets) shooting down Russian planes over Ukraine? Why not just come out and say you want WW3?

> You want NATO (mostly US jets) shooting down Russian planes over Ukraine? Why not just come out and say you want WW3?

Are you so sure it would escalate like that, or is it a bluff?

And if it's a bluff, should Putin be able to bluff his tanks all the way to Berlin?

If Putin pushes outside of Ukraine the USA/NATO won't have any choice but stop them, especially if it's in NATO or NATO allied country. I think if goes anywhere outside Ukraine that the USA will start sending troops and Putin won't be able to talk his way out of it or threaten his way out. It will be like Poland in WW2.

i hope this is a joke

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