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Comment by tharne | Hacker News Reader

I worry that a lot of these sanctions are going to backfire. If I'm an average Russian citizen, maybe I'm against the war, or more likely I just don't feel very strongly about it. If the West then destroys my livelihood and financial wellbeing with sanctions, eventually my reaction is going to be something like, "f*k these NATO guys, they're ruining my life for something I have nothing to do with and can't do anything about anyway".

I was against the Iraq War back in 2003, but I would have been livid if the whole world punished ordinary Americans with sanctions, even though the majority of us voted against G.W. Bush in 2000. The fastest way to create unity among a group of people is to arbitrarily punish all of them together. This is, in part, why the military runs basic training the way it does.

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Unfortunately NATO has been played into a corner. Sanctions are the only tool that NATO is willing to use right now (alongside lethal aid to Ukraine). What a lot of Western media is overlooking is that this invasion is modestly supported by the Russian population (20-50% depending on which sources you trust). As you said, these same Russians that support the invasion will ultimately blame NATO.

We are gambling that making life more difficult for the average Russian will result in regime change. There is an alternative where sanctions increase popular support for further escalation with NATO and/or Ukraine, in order to result in Ukraine being under the Russian sphere of influence _and_ dropping of sanctions.

The West has become an incompetent, incomprehensibly stupid bully with a gigantic hammer it calls "market theory". It doesn't so much identify and nullify threats so much as it generates market opinion to blindly hate and blacklist anything not considered "good".

I'm scared of not having a Ukraine flag in my Twitter handle - despite being Polish and supporting Ukranians in the actual conflict - because I'm scared of the zealot Westerners who might try to pillory me for holding unsavory opinions that go against the current marketable beliefs.

I understand how the West is responding and it's not productive, nor is it a "let's wait and see" kind of strategy. This is the same weapon they've been using on everyone else for the past decade. Race, sex, belief, now nationality. It's about turning everything into a market that they control, and we know how people targeted by it react to it. They go cold, MAGA, embrace the antithetical - maybe they even start dropping nukes.

When the current round of Western propaganda fades away, who will Russians blame? Only the ones swallowing it on Twitter will blame Putin. So once that's gone this becomes a huge problem for us.

The plan is to have the propaganda never end. More people now live their lives through the lens of the internet (or internet-first mentality), who have swallowed enough of the insanity that it's no longer a set of sponsored opinions but "reality". It's clear now that the West completely dominates all propaganda on the internet - I barely see any of the Russian stuff. The Russians can't even get a word out, and I'm wondering who the censors are trying to protect. I highly doubt it's us.

What I'm seeing here is the new Western approach to politics in the 21st century. Reality manufacturing and blacklisting, supported by relentless propaganda. The market does the state's dirty work now, and it's constantly hungry for its master's approval, like a big dumb ogre.

The only way to stop the Russian aggression is to negotiate with their government. Not put Russians into camps, metaphorical or otherwise.

EDIT: If you think I'm wrong, then consider the possible influences. Does doing this push Russia to end the invasion, or does it push them to continue it? Does this help us align ourselves with reality and face it, or does it blind us? Is this likely to make the Russians more willing to become allies, or less willing? etc. etc.

> The plan is to have the propaganda never end.

It's quite scary. While I support the Ukraine, I'm shocked with how little media discussion there is about American hypocrisy on this topic. This certainly in no way excuses Putin's actions, but it's quite amazing how our elected officials can stand there straight-faced shaking their finger in disapproval at Putin after the number of countries we've invaded in my lifetime alone. Good God, I can't even imagine what we'd do if we got into a conflict with Mexico and the Russians we sending them weapons. Oh wait, that happened with Cuba in the 1960's and we threatened to wipe the Soviet Union off the map with nuclear weapons.

Sure Americans did invade countries and kill civilians and now they act hypocritically.. but on the other side, are there any examples even remotely approaching the hamfisted Russian manners in Chechnya, Syria and Ukraine? Perhaps Israel toward Palestinians but we're talking about USA here.

Regarding Chechnya, I want to remind you that you are talking about an insurgency that was very used to commit terror attacks on civilians and take hostages to negotiate their terms. Including hundreds of children.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budyonnovsk_hospital_hostage_c...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kizlyar%E2%80%93Pervomayskoye_...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_siege

So you say leveling whole cities with ground like Grozny is the right response here?

I am not saying that. What you use is a classical demagogue trick called "strawman fallacy".

Yes. I am talking about civilian casualties, you strawmanning with insurgents. Or why did you mention them, what is your reasoning? "They killed hundred our children so we kill thousand of theirs?"

The side that takes children as hostages of the 'other' side is not above using their own civilians as a human shield so people like you would lament their sufferings.

What next, you'll be judgemental about population of Berlin when it was taken from the Nazis?

So let's not judge the US either. And if you're satisfied with the overall result (like Chechen warlord being #2 man in Russia)...then it's all okay I guess.

The Iraqi people would like a word.

The Vietnamese too.

I'm not concerned with hypocrisy, we're all hypocrites. My concern is that they didn't even consider dealing with accusations of hypocrisy. They don't care, because the level of politics is so low that I'd start comparing it to tribal warfare. Just get the tribe members riled up to do what we want, no one is going to meaningfully challenge what we do anyway.

They're setting us all up to mindlessly support their reckless "missions". And this shows they're not competent in creating or managing a stable system, and have devolved to the level of small tribes in terms of political thought.

>The only way to stop the Russian aggression is to negotiate with their government.

And get sent to prison? There is no negotiation in a country without free speech.

I meant that the Western powers should negotiate with Putin.

We tried that for months in the leadup to the invasion. If Putin wanted to negotiate, he should have negotiated. Instead he played for time by deliberately making demands he knew we couldn't meet.

Why should we assume, after that show, that he'll be reasonable now?

You always try to negotiate with your enemy, even while shooting at them. It's just a law for succeeding in ending conflict.

The Russians have changed their demands since the conflict started, here they are currently: https://twitter.com/BlessedCloudz/status/1501095011584077826

The Ukranian alliance is negotiating, per your own link.

That Russian negotiating position is not serious. No nation will recognize any concession inconsistent with Ukraine's sovereignty (all three demands are), nor should they. Russia has no leverage to achieve any of those goals, and the longer it goes on, the less they have.

> The West has become an incompetent, incomprehensibly stupid bully with a gigantic hammer it calls "market theory". It doesn't so much identify and nullify threats so much as it generates market opinion to blindly hate and blacklist anything not considered "good".

Ain’t that the truth.

> If I'm an average Russian citizen, maybe I'm against the war, or more likely I just don't feel very strongly about it.

Unfortunately, no. A LOT of Russian citizens are enthusiastically pro-war, and it's very hard to de-program them from state-run propaganda machine.

Source?

Lived in Moscow almost all of my life, have been a political activists for a few years, have 30+k subscribers on my Russian political tik-tok account. I talk to a lot of Russians both online and offline. The support and bloodthirst is real, I'd say at about 60% support this war. Russians saying that "we should just nuke the states and kill them all" are not something out of the ordinary.

Yeah right. They are so pro-war that the government recently made it a crime [1] punishable by up to 15 years in prison to be publically against the war or spreading information about it not coming from official sources.

[1]: https://www.bbc.com/russian/news-60594110

Suppressing alternative sources of information is a part of any fascist propaganda machine, yes.

It is also a gift to China https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-08/china-con...

Least surprising thing ever.

The future dictionary definition of cutting off our nose to spite our face but banning Russian oil will make Twitter happy for the next 8-12 hours until the next move with zero thought given to the long term consequences.

China might be our only hope to avoid WW3. It was just a few days ago that banning Russian oil was not going to happen but Twitter gets what it wants in 2022. Twitter wants a no fly zone and WW3.

What's the alternative? It's forcing Russians into tough decisions, hitting Putin and friends where it hurts, or letting Putin get away with it.

The government sanctions are relatively well targeted at the Russian powers; it's all these companies running around and doing "virtue sanctions" that are hitting civilians.

And nobody dares sanction the actual gas that is flowing through the war zone itself ...

> The government sanctions are relatively well targeted at the Russian powers; it's all these companies running around and doing "virtue sanctions" that are hitting civilians.

Virtue sanctions? How do you expect those companies to operate in Russia with the rouble in freefall and SWIFT cut off?

The companies mentioned are NOT cutting off just Russians, they have been cutting off anyone with Russian citizenship, no matter where they may be located.

> What's the alternative? It's forcing Russians into tough decisions, hitting Putin and friends where it hurts, or letting Putin get away with it.

I honestly don't know what the right path is here. Sometimes all the choices are bad.

In all likelihood, Putin probably will get away with this in the long-term. Most of us are happy to change our Twitter profiles to a Ukrainian flag, but how many of us would go and fight in Ukraine ourselves, how many of us would willingly send our kids over there to fight? Not most of us, I suspect.

I think the best possible outcome, which still isn't great, is that the Ukrainian people turn this into a quagmire and the Russians leave. The Russian public, much like the public in the West probably doesn't want to send their kids to die in another country that hasn't attacked them.

Do sanctions actually work? Maybe, but I'm not 100% convinced. North Korea is still sabre rattling and developing nuclear weapons despite years of sanctions. Cuba hasn't buckled despite over 50 years of U.S. sanctions. Iran hasn't had a regime change despite all the economic levers pulled against them over the years. The boycott Israel movement hasn't stopped the construction of settlements.

> I think the best possible outcome, which still isn't great, is that the Ukrainian people turn this into a quagmire and the Russians leave.

I don't think a quagmire in your own country is ever a good outcome. I honestly believe it would be preferable for most civilians if Russia quickly wins the war rather than dragging it out for a decade until Russia withdraws.

Of course, ideally Russia will agree to a peace relatively soon, take a few things they already had (Crimea, parts of Donbas) and some security promises, and lick their wounds after the sanctions...

I don’t think you’ll get any support for this kind of reasoning in any of the countries that have been invaded by Russia.

I happen to live in a country that was invaded by the USSR at the end of WWII and chose to trun arms against the Germans and help the USSR rather than face a protracted battle, Romania. This led to us losing a pretty big part of our country, Moldova, and staying as part of the Eastern bloc for the next 50 years. Still, no one thinks our forefathers should have bravely resisted the Allied invasion. Sure, the USSR's enemy was Nazi Germany, an even worse horrid disgusting regime, so the situation is definitely not identical by any means. But still, war takes such a horrendous toll on a population, particularly a protracted war, that almost anything is preferable.

I doubt the people of Crimea for example are suffering as much as if they had been through war - I'm not even sure they would welcome a Ukrainian operation to reconquer them (even though, to be clear, I don't believe Putin's referendum was anything other than a sham). I would also ask the 500,000 to 2 million killed afghans, and the 3 million wounded, if they are happy their deaths tore down the USSR, and would gladly go through that again.

We have basically just broke the petrodollar system and done more for petroyuan than China could have thought up in their wildest dreams.

Who cares about the long term though? All that matters is what we can tweet about this afternoon.

How's that going to backfire? What you've presented as the "bad option" is the current status quo. Putin had sky high approval for decades and the Russian population has supported him while he strengthened his grip on power.

Yeah, ban on running a business abroad is definitely going to hit the public supporting Putin, right.

Also, he doesn't have sky high approval any longer. At the last elections, he could muster his percentage in the first tour with huge falsifications and disallowing any other credible candidate.

Russians have a pretty good history of knocking off their leadership when things aren't going well for the general population. The next leaders aren't necessarily any better, but it's still the main leverage over Putin the West has right now.

Erm when exactly did that happen, after WW1, more than 100 years ago?

Fall of the Soviet Union wasn't that long ago... They didn't kill them that time and it was more peaceful but they did replace them.

Fall of the Soviet Union was mostly an internal coup supported by the street rather than a popular uprising.

It's still "Russians knocking off their leadership".

People aren't expecting Russians on the street to get rid of Putin. They're expecting that it will cause pressure on other Russian leaders to side with Russians and the West over Putin...

There are no 'other russian leaders'. Putin's political theater before the war was clearly aimed to make any russian official of note into an accomplice, publicly supporting the invasion. They have all made their bones and are all sanctioned by the EU and world countries now. So this course of events is highly unlikely.

Part of the risk of being a strongman-style leader is there's always someone waiting in the wings, and they don't have to have been previously prominent.

"Why are coups always led by colonels?" https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/02/22/why-are-coups-always-le...

There always is someone willing to cut a deal to save themselves... And the west will facilitate it.

If Americans had faced consequences from having elected Bush once, and responded to that rationally instead of emotionally, they probably wouldn't have elected him again for a second term.

> If Americans had faced consequences from having elected Bush once, and responded to that rationally instead of emotionally, they probably wouldn't have elected him again for a second term.

True, but most people respond to most things emotionally, most of the time.

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