Russia is isolating the Russians. Roskomnadzor is throttling and blocking the Russian people's access to the wider internet, not Western providers.
Let's not help them do their job, then, even a little bit. Some of the recent sanctions/pullouts are probably counterproductive, e.g.:
1. Visa/Mastercard cutting off service. - It seems like a big result of this has been to make it more difficult for Russians to flee the country. If you want to harm the Russian government, one way to do that is through a brain drain, so make that easy.
2. The Cogent disconnection. - If an authoritarian government wants to disconnect, then the correct response is to try to do the opposite.
3. etc. - e.g. the Namecheap thing. Maybe they should have enacted a content policy rather than just cutting off the whole country. Though their response seems forgivably human since they have so many people in Ukraine.
IMHO, cutoffs should only be done strategically or for reasonable tactical reasons (e.g. cybersecurity threats). In some cases if you want to Russia's actions, in some cases the best action is to leave, but in other's it's to stay (or carefully change policy).
I'm doubtful of that. I think an authoritarian government might benefit from a brain drain.
Even if a brain drain were desirable, there's no way the effectiveness of that outweighs the harm to the economy that the cutoff by Visa/Mastercard would have.
My understanding is that the cutoff only affects 1) foreign cards in Russia and 2) Russian cards outside of Russia, because domestic Russian credit card transactions are cleared with a different (domestic) system. So it mainly affects tourists and expats, and probably has minimal impact on the domestic economy.
Wouldn't that also affect online transfers that cross their border? For example, their international purchases and payment of services, and also their receipt of payments from international employers or clients.
Cutoff by Visa and Mastercard has zero impact on local economy. They do not handle local transactions for their branded cards. But indeed, they made life much more difficult for a hundred thousand Russians who are fleeing the country at the moment.
But West, blocking Visa essentially made it impossible for average Russian IT guy to pay for VPS. And if The Internet would be cut off, the game is over, the entire country will be brain washed by Russian propaganda exclusively. I guess, it should be possible to use UnionPay to buy VPS in Turkey or something like that.
I, personally, don't believe that western propaganda is one bit better that Russian propaganda. It's the same half-truths, half-lies, just picked differently. But what I do believe is that every person must have access to all points of view, without any exclusions. And must be encouraged to learn all points of view for important subjects.
The things is, there is no way to buy a $5 VPS/VPN now in Russia "thanks" to Visa / Mastercard actions.
An example:
> Namecheap: Russia Service Termination
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30504812
EDIT: Better example:
> Internet backbone provider shuts off service in Russia
https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/5/22962822/internet-backbone...
While I generally agree that the West should not be shutting down the information pipes, in this environment the additional harm of such actions may be minimal.