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Comment by Schiendelman | Hacker News Reader

It’s intentional to hurt Russian citizens economically. It’s up to them to decide to form a government that doesn’t invade others. Aside from war, this is the only thing the West can do to stop this insane aggression.

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Yes, that is okay with me and understandable. It's just if the West says, lets cut off the Internet from Russia, I think that will just help the Russian government, so therefore it's not a good idea in my book.

If it would help them, they would've done it themselves. They've already taken out Twitter and Facebook without any hesitation.

But government can't take off Telegram, for example. Despite they tried multiple times. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_Telegram_in_Russia And thanks to Telegram, people in Russia could find non-propaganda sources, even when Russia blocks them.

VPN helps too. A lot of people use it.

While Putin has money from oil and gas, he could sponsor war and destroy protests. Let's take away them, stop or reduce buying oil and gas. Regime becomes weak and Russian people could resist it.

Since Telegram is unmoderated there is all kinds of propaganda on it though. You may not know what to believe is that is your only source.

This won't work because a) many of the current measures mainly hurt the most westernized part of the population (i.e. those most critical of the current regime) and b) this plays perfectly into Putin's narrative that the West hates Russia and the Russian people.

It still works. The people who know Russia is the aggressor know the truth, and eventually people less susceptible to propaganda do regain power.

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