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Comment by _fat_santa | Hacker News Reader

While I agree that we should be sanctioning Russia, I think a carve-out should be made for things like commercial aviation parts. Eventually there will be an accident as a result of parts that can't be replaced, we don't need more lives lost to this war.

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>Eventually there will be an accident as a result of parts that can't be replaced, we don't need more lives lost to this war.

Such an accident would solely be the fault of the (well known) piss-poor safety programs in Russia.

They have the option to just, you know, not fly their Boeings and Airbuses. There's no NATO brainwashing machine forcing them.

I can't get myself into a headspace where any amount of mental gymnastics is going to somehow make an airline crash the fault of the sanctions. Can you elaborate on your thought process? I'm genuinely mystified.

The vast majority of West-built planes that are currently being operated in Russia are stolen from their owners (they were leased and then Russia simply didn't return the planes when the lease was ceased due to the war).

Are you proposing to permit sending parts to repair stolen planes?

"The United States and Western allies have seized more than $300 billion in Russian central bank foreign currency assets frozen by sanctions."

Really dumb way to doom the US dollar and the world banking system. I guess Russia took a few planes as consolation? https://www.reuters.com/world/yellen-says-legal-obstacles-re...

Because West just decided to do it out of the blue and not in response to full scale invasion of the biggest country in Europe.

> we don't need more lives lost to this war.

The supply of massive amounts of lethal aid suggests a policy decision that that’s exactly what we need, in the immediate term. (We don’t, OTOH, need civilian lives lost, but there is no such things as non-dual-use aircraft components.)

Also, Russia could just not fly planes if they aren’t safe.

Russians could stop flying to take vacation in occupied Crimea beachfront instead

There are places in Russia proper which are only reachable by plane due to lack of roads.

Get the dudes digging trenches in front of Crimea to build those roads instead

Just a thought, but may be they shouldn't have started a war of invasion then.

Not stealing western planes would be good too.

Who are "they"? Civilians who have to fly by plane because they have no other option?

The majority flying Aeroflot at this point are inherently "elite" or "elite-adjacent".

Making their life less convenient is literally the point of sanctions.

Uhm, I'd say those who fly Aeroflot are middle-class. You're not elite if you fly Aeroflot. Just not poor.

Like some of the roads they dug up to prevent getting couped by Wagner?

No, places in Siberia, the Arctic, the Far East. Say, there's no road between Norilsk and the rest of the country, the only practical way to go in/out of the city is by plane.

Unfortunately, there's plenty of precedent both in terms of sanctions and lives lost in Iran, which is a flying junkyard of ancient planes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Iranian_aviation_accid...

For example, if you'd like to fly an Airbus A300 (first flight 1972), the only ones left in passenger operation are in Iran.

Civil aviation is not a life-or-death necessity. This is precisely the purpose of sanctions.

These planes have been stolen, remember? They were under lease and Russia just said "we're keeping them" because you've all been mean to us.

Supplying them with parts for stolen place is next level of cuckoldry.

If the options are:

- have sanctions, more Russians die, and fewer Ukrainians die because the war ends sooner

- the opposite

Then your suggestion seems to value Russian lives over Ukrainian ones.

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