It’s the ordinary Russians who are hurt by this, not the elites.
I doubt the elites care what the Ruble is worth, because they operate in foreign currencies (namely USD and EUR). Most of their oil is sold in EUR, and other commodities in USD.
I doubt the elites care what the Ruble is worth, because they operate in foreign currencies (namely USD and EUR). Most of their oil is sold in EUR, and other commodities in USD.
Note that the Maidan revolution was driven from within, as far as I know, not forced on the people from without.
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.
It's absolutely a last resort, but this is the highest stakes game in existence and there is no time to mess around.
I'm not too familiar with history but IIRC most empires fall when they lose internal cohesion or get invaded by a bigger empire. The only alternative to an internal revolution is an invasion (AFAIK). That's not feasible with MAD. Alternatively you can just give them what they want. For how long you can keep that up is the question tho.
Will the common people be affected? Yes. But that shouldn't be the goal.
> This perception that ordinary people should be immune to the actions of their governments is weird. Civilian opposition to their government is what prevents unnecessary wars. It's not other's duty to fix your country. Civil unrest is the only way to prevent war and a lot of bloodshed.
In fact, I think that ordinary Russians are absolutely complicit. Even last year Putin was still enormously popular with Russians.
I was just pointing out that the Ruble falling doesn’t hurt the elites one bit, nor does it stop the Russian war machine.
In fact, arguably one of the biggest things we've "learned" from the past week is that we (the west) have been _way_ too economically entwined with Russia for decades, and that is what has enabled this aggression.
You'll see lots of headlines about how the West failed to curb Putin, failed to stop or confront his actions at various points. You know who overwhelmingly didn't do anything at all to try to stop him during his long dictatorship? The people of Russia. They are culpable, they are responsible (specifically those that haven't protested or made an effort against his regime, which judging by the small push-back he has faced overall throughout his dictatorship, is the extreme majority of the population). When he began shutting down free news reporting and media, and curbing human rights early into his dictatorship, did they all go into the streets and act against his regime? Did they try to stop him? No they did not, they rolled over promptly, and they didn't do anything much about him since then either. And they thoroughly enjoyed the good times during the oil price boom, no complaints about Putin then (quite the opposite). It is their fault. He has in fact been widely popular with the people of Russia for most of his time in office (not 90% popular, that's fake, but certainly majority positive typically). They liked the fake image he projected for them: power, empire, Russian strength, greatness - like the supposed old days of glory; it made them feel good again after what happened with the USSR.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_democracy
Sometimes you have to force people to be free. There are people who will, bizarrely, fight for the right to be enslaved. Why? Because their brains are broken.
Some broken by years of humiliation, some because they were born that way, some because they thought "it's hip, suave, and I'll get into cool kids crowd." Such things were novel for the West, but now you see them more and more.
It's very much like a stance on whether you do forcefully treat people from alcoholism, or substance abuse. You see it being very destructive, down to such person becoming a danger to society once they run out of cash.
Similarly, you would not want such people to hit the bottom of brainrot, when they will be ready take Russian money, or turn their country into another Hitler Germany.
The seeds of current crisis were sown when the West thought "job's done" when USSR collapsed, and scat on Russia instead of keeping trying to make a proper country out of it.
According to the Russian government, as influenced by _heavy_ government propaganda.