In fact, the sanctions should be even worse by your logic, since the people had much more power to prevent these wars, unlike the people of Russia.
Of course what Russia is doing is unacceptable, but it's hardly alone in the world in this type of behavior. Rather than getting on your high horse and condemning the people of Russia, it's better to send help to the people of Ukraine who are suffering in this brutal war, and maybe as well to the people of Yemen and Palestine and other invaded places.
Also, see if you can lobby your leaders to advance negotiations for treaties to dismantle all nukes - a major weapon that enabled Russia to bully its neighbors.
However, this does not mean that we should consider the invasion of Afghanistan as "defense" either. No state had been attacked by the state of Afghanistan. That a few afghan civilians conducted a terrorist attack in the USA doesn't mean that Afghanistan attacked the USA. Afghanistan even agreed to consider handing over Osama bin Laden to the USA, as long as they were provided with evidence of his guilt - like any state that is asked to extradite a resident. The USA decided that it didn't care to wait and produce such evidence, so they launched an invasion less than a month after the attack.
It is true that this war in particular got acquiessence from the UN security council, so I will admit that it was not technically illegal (unlike the Iraq war).
My only point was that claiming NATO is a "purely defensive alliance" is not supported by history. This means that some NATO claims about Russia's lack of reasons for fearing NATO expansion are bullshit.
But to be very clear again, this doesn't justify Russia's illegal murderous invasion of Ukraine.
This is wrong. The country of Afghanistan did not conduct the WTC attacks. The nominally ruling clique in Afghanistan would not extradite OBL. If anything Afghanistan was an area of civil war in which the US intervened.
After the Taliban refused to turn over the mastermind of the attacks, Osama Bin Laden, Operation Enduring Freedom officially began 7 October 2001 with American and British bombing strikes against al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan.
https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/wars-conflicts-...
If we actually eliminated nukes NATO influence would only expand.
I was discussing the principle of it - would UN sanctions against NATO countries be justified, especially if they were to target the population of NATO countries?
Note that my country is in fact a NATO member.
> If we actually eliminated nukes NATO influence would only expand.
My point was exactly that eliminating nuclear weapons entirely would in fact be a boon to NATO, since for example in the current situation it could have actually considered some limited military aid without risking nuclear Armageddon.
So at least one pretty important NATO country is very clearly not prepared to get rid of its nukes, or pressure allies to get rid of theirs. Even more scarily, per president Trump, this same country is very interested in finding ways to get usable nukes.
Sanctioning state organs and oligarchs is good and overdue, but the mob extending that to canceling all of Russian civil society seems stupid and evil to me.
Besides the majority of Russians support the war. The so-called "resisters" are a rounding error.
Listen to Ukrainians on social media. They're all calling for total sanctions against Russia.
People are dying, many of these people are friends, relatives, and co-workers of people living in Russia. Many Russian soldiers are dying needlessly because one - ONE man is having a end-of-life mental break. One man's pride is the cause of all of this. Just one man.
Period. One man. Blame Putin for Putin's war. If you don't like suffering for one man's tantrum -- call the Kremlin.
I'm sure they'd love to hear your complaints.
This reminds me how people in Soviet Union wrote letters to Stalin to describe injustices and how much they love him because he is the best possible leader they could have. Putin isn't Stalin yet, but the Russian people are waiting patiently for him to become one.
There is significant risk of Russians blaming the West if NATO gets involved. Navalny's organization did a survey of Moscow's internet users, and nearly half think Russia is liberating Ukraine. It strongly suggests the vast majority of Russians do not see this as them having started an aggressive war.
https://mobile.twitter.com/PopovaProf/status/150105368420955...
The nation-state system tends toward distributed blame (to the nationals) even when there isn't distribution of power (autocracy). For once, most of the world is blaming the autocrat rather than the nation. That's an improvement.