Quote from: Royse777 on February 27, 2022, 10:44:50 PM

You are suffering, scaring to death for the decisions made by your politicians and 144.1 million Russians are going to suffer for their politicians too. What harm these 144.1 million people did that they will face the consequences of the sanctions coming from all over the world?

Imagine just because you are a Russian - your assets will be seized if they are in abroad, you can not fly, you can not participate in any financial deal with foreign county, you can not see your relatives, they can not come to you. Imagine you are living in abroad and just because your are a Russian, you will lose job, you can not conduct any business, your assets will be seized, you are losing your identity. Imagine you hated this war as much Ukrainian people did and you never wanted your Ukrainian brothers, sisters, cousins to be killed but you are facing all these consequences.

The purpose of the sanctions is to cripple the Russian economy, so Russia does not have the ability to continue its war effort. Wars are not won with weapons that each side had at the beginning of the war, they are won with weapons produced during the war. So if Russia is unable to continue to produce tanks, planes, and bombs, they will be unable to continue to fight the war.

Another purpose of the sanctions is to incentivize the people of Russia to overthrow/change their government. Russia is no democracy, and there are risks to speaking out/protesting, however, if these types of things happen in large enough numbers, the Russian government will be unable to suppress the protests.

Quote from: Cnut237 on February 28, 2022, 06:24:27 PM

Quote from: af_newbie on February 28, 2022, 05:13:58 PM

Blow up all gas pipelines from Russia. Cut them off.

The problem I suppose is that sanctions etc need to go far enough, but not too far. If Putin is put in the situation where he has nothing left to lose then he becomes even more dangerous - difficult as that is to believe. It's not great if he gets pushed into a corner where all he has left is the nuclear weapons.

The gas pipelines from Russia provides Russia with money to finance its war in Ukraine. Russia's only real trading partner left is China, but China is not going to give away goods for free. If Russia cannot sell its gas, the Russian government will stop having the ability to buy things. Russia receives approximately 40% of its receipts from sales of gas.

Quote from: theymos on Today at 03:20:04 AM

I think it'd be a great idea for the West to welcome Russian immigrants/refugees in with open arms. Russia already has a very low birth rate, so depleting their population even more would essentially be an additional type of economic warfare, and helping ordinary people escape the sanctions would make them a little less cruel.

I don't think this is a good solution, just as it is a bad solution to violent places in Central America.

When people being oppressed can simply leave the control of an oppressive/bad government, there is less pressure on other governments to pursue change because the people being oppressed can simply seek refuge. This also gives the people of these bad governments less of an incentive to try to change their government. Unhappy citizens will try to leave instead of changing their government.

Russia is no democracy, and when citizens dissent in smallish numbers they will be punished. However, if enough of Russia's population resists its government, the government will collapse. Allowing people to immigrate from Russia will reduce the incentive for people to resist their government. It is also something that will take a very long time to have a meaningful impact.