Comment by bmarquez
5 years ago
> minimal price that we all have to pay, that includes those of us in the western world
I was talking to a Russian friend recently who also mentioned trying to stockpile some food while it was affordable, just like the parent commenter. I think telling the average Russian citizen that their food insecurity is a minimal price they have to pay comes off as a bit smug.
And the Ukrainians who are dead or have had their homes and communities bombed? Who are now refuges or fighting for their life and country?
I don't think it's an either/or thing; I think it's possible to have empathy for both anti-war Russian citizens, and Ukrainian citizens.
You can have empathy while still taking the punitive steps that need to be taken on the country as a whole.
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The point is that this has to happen for change to occur from within. Change of regime from outside with be far more disastrous to the Russian people.
What if the regime doesn't change though? I hate to say it but if China invaded Taiwan tomorrow and every western tech company started banning Chinese users, 99% of them wouldn't even notice. By rushing to deplatform an entire nationality without nuance we're accelerating the decline of western tech hegemony and won't have any more cards to play if things get worse. A more sensible approach would be sanctions on elites while maintaining pipelines of information to Russians. If Russians get cut off from the world they will become more like North Koreans.
There's certainly a possibility that change will not happen, but this is the best chance we have without escalating it to a world war.
Sanctions on elites have not caused regime change in other authoritarian regimes, we have even less reason to believe that it would happen with this one.
Russian people need to see that they are at a crossroads, and if they don't act in this narrow time window by organizing and protesting by the millions, they may indeed end up like North Korea.
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The West's threat against China is that they would stop importing their goods. A coordinated action like what we're seeing against Russia would completely crash China's export-driven economy. I doubt the CPC could weather that (or at least, I doubt the current leaders of the CPC could weather that).
I agree we shouldn't try to cut off the Russian internet, they need access to non-government-sanctioned information. But the economic sanctions need to apply to everyone in the country - if nothing else, it reduces Putin's ability to wage (expensive) wars. It sucks.