Do the sanctions actually hurt Putin, or are we hurting ourselves and the everyday Russian for nothing?
I’m inclined to believe the former opinion that gas price hikes ultimately affect the average person and elite persons need not care. Putin and his inner circle operate at a level of power that is above even money. To an oligarch money is a toy thing, the power they have is above any short term economic concern. I’m reminded of that old Weibo thread of Chinese people posting symbols of their wealth, one upping each other over and over, until the ultimate show of “wealth” was posted as being an invite to a dinner with the president (or something like that) which not even billionaires have access to.
All this to say that theatre and public relations is a major tool of war and power, as much as soldiers and bombs.
Members of the ruling class also may not join the rest in struggling to afford day to day life, but they certainly cannot be happy with having all their money trapped in a country without the rule of law.
There is a reason they have their children born in the West.
As for the argument that popular opinion will turn against the west: it already has [2] and I think we should not talk about sanctions any longer, but of separate blocks with minimal exchange and interaction. I understand that going back to an iron curtain of some sort may be shocking for some, but at least that will severely limit the risk of miscalculation and nuclear war. Putin is a dictator and we have to act.
[1] Says a former Russian diplomat: "They also thought the EU was weak because of how toothless their sanctions were in 2014" https://twitter.com/andreivkozyrev/status/150061067692600525... [2] https://twitter.com/ABCNewsLive/status/1499449302728462342
Russians are bi-modaly distributed: there are people who approve of him (many Russians like strong leaders, which explains photographs of topless Putin riding a horse, Putin in an expensive car etc.) and there are also Russian people who demonstrate and speak out despite the clearly severe consequences that come with that attitude (4,300 arrests of protesters against the invasion of Ukraine to date).
In this thread on sanctions versus non sanctions it is discussed whether the sanctions hit only ordinary people or also the super-rich. What we need to also mention is that a large part of the pro-Putin people are only supportive because of government propaganda bias, and the absence of any high-quality international media.
Finding more effective ways to make ordinary Russians aware of what is going on might be the least painful path to ending the nightmare (but it's still a long game).
Sure. I applaud the people who protest. However I also want people reading this to understand that most people support Putin. At least I have strong data points that support this and denying that fact doesn't help anyone.
> Finding more effective ways to make ordinary Russians aware of what is going on might be the least painful path
Maybe. The US tried to build a western society in Afghanistan for 20 years and that failed. I'm not convinced "educating" Russians to what we (the West) think is happening will work either.
I'm not so sure about the official sanctions (based on a quick skim[1] they seem to be mostly banking bans and bans on high tech exports), but the sanctions enacted by western companies (eg. netflix pulling out of russia), are definitely hurting the average citizen more than the oligarchs.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during...
Stopping the sanctions to pretect the average Russian would be like refusing arms to Ukraine to protect Russian soldiers. While technically that would do that you are sending a very different message but taking that action.
A country is a collection of natural resources and people. Unfortunately that means punishing a country will nearly always punish the people in it. That doesn't mean it is wrong to do so.
Also Putin isn't invincible and it isn't just ordinary citizens hurt by this. After all if the rich didn't care if they were worth $10m or $100m the world would not look like it does today.
It's hard to say whether any given sanction is "worth it." But the long term trend is a politically advantageous one for NATO: oligarchs now need to keep all of their money within Russia's borders, where it's both unstable and subject to court whims. That should worry them, and the hope is that it worries them enough to unmoor them from Putin.
Normally the US uses them against countries who are not doing such a thing.
In the meantime, we get to accelerate our transition away from fossil fuels and eliminate all kind of corrupt actors in the West that have been keeping us locked into gas. Win-win.
This conversation will go nowhere unless you define "hurting ourselves" vs "hurting everyday Russians" in actual definable terms. What would you say is evidence that would support that we are only hurting ourselves, and what evidence would distinguish that from the view that sanctions hurt "everyday Russians"?
> for nothing?
Also this is a separate point. Whether sanctions work or they don't, there is the separate point of whether sanctions _work_. Do they work? What evidence is there for that?
Now apparently _this_ time they'll work.
North Korea can't afford anything new for its military. Sure they have a sizable army of weapons your grandfather fought against, but they also operate bitcoin scams to fund their country, despite sitting on tremendous mineral wealth.
Iran has to make ever more economic sacrifices to fund its nuclear program and again also struggles with procuring weapons due to the cost.
We didn't get the regime change desired, but the enemy was substantially defanged as a result and they fall further behind as time goes on.
I would argue sanctions against Russia succeed if the next time they invade somewhere, they send their troops with rusting weapons and no body armor and cannot really afford to replace their equipment losses in Ukraine.
Not sure if anything else would have been an option given that China does not want them to open to the west, but you have to wonder if cooperation and help to develop their economy and trade might have resulted in less human suffering.
I don't think these are comparable though. They're all unique circumstances and the people in power have varying capabilities of suppression and motivations.
Remember, at one point recently Iran turned the lights off on an entire city and gunned down hundreds of protestors[0]
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Iranian_prot...
> Remember, at one point recently Iran turned the lights off on an entire city and gunned down hundreds of protestors[0]
This wasn't supposed to be an example of how the ruling class was hurt by the sanctions, surely. Not sure what the relevance is.
yes, the sanctions probably aren't impacting Putin's day-to-day quality of life, nor that of any of the other oligarch's. but that's kind of beside the point. they are cutting off a source of funding for the russian military that is currently invading ukraine. that is really not "for nothing".
Sanctions only hurt if you import, look at what they’re importing — it’s not much. What they do import is primarily from trade partners who aren’t sanctioning (China, Belarus, etc).
Germany $23.38B United States $13.21B Italy $10.20B France $8.08B …