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Comment by asveikau | Hacker News Reader

Sorry to go there, but reports are that the Russian Federation is not currently making this distinction in Ukraine right now.

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Two wrongs don’t make a right.

That's correct. And we can't draw false equivalences either; we should consider the scale of the wrong. For example, I would consider loss of life to be quite a bit worse than loss of Yandex.

We should indeed. But we shouldn't use that to justify, excuse or dismiss any wrongs done that isn't at the scale of other wrongs.

>For example, I would consider loss of life to be quite a bit worse than loss of Yandex.

That'd be a fine choice if it was actually the choice.

Instead you lose Yandex and all the people still die.

Even if that were true (it’s not - high collateral damage is not the same as not making a distinction), that doesn’t justify us deciding to also treat Russian civilians as military.

Putting pressure on Russian citizens motivates them to protest and take action inside of their country. The Ukrainians didn't have a choice either.

I'd much rather have the US heavily-handededly knock down the Russian economy than the alternative of involving itself militarily.

How about side effect of sanctions?

People might say: look how West is behaving, when America invaded other countries or when NATO bombed Yugoslavia no one sanctioned them, but they are doing it to us, they hate us

At the end of the day Ukraine will be in ruins, so sanctions don't help

> Putting pressure on Russian citizens motivates them to protest and take action inside of their country

Is there any evidence this has occurred in the past? Didn't work in Iran, Iraq, North Korea...

Not sanctions, but ironically Ukraine is a place where popular uprisings worked. In 2005 and 2014. (Though if you buy the Russian line, it was all Nazis or something.)

What is the alternative then?

Nobody has done anything after the fake bombings before the Cechnya intervention in 1999, which at least is in their own territory. But then again silence in 2008 after the Georgia invasion, and again in Crimea in 2014. They are using their nuclear arsenal as a free pass to invade everyone and break every treaty.

I think it just became unsustainable at this point. And honestly this is the best we can do to help without making things worse.

What's the fucking difference when thousands of civilians are dead and millions displaced?

The difference is that hundreds of thousands or even millions of civilians aren't dead. Which is what would happen have happened if they truly made no distinction between civilians and military.

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