Any strategy of war must be effective. Russia maintains a positive trade balance, largely by exporting commodities, and most of the world remains happy to buy them. On 1st January, a Euro would buy you 85 rubles, today, you'd get 62.
It might feel like the right thing to do. It might even be the right thing to do, the West is wealthy and can afford to take certain haircuts as a moral stance.
It doesn't appear to inflict any harm to the target, however. Asia makes all the electronics and Russia has its own heavy industry, what can we deny them, Facebook? No they have their own one of those as well.
The harm it does to our side is obvious, and the polite thing is always to ignore it, but that's premised on the sanctions harming the enemy in some fashion, which, they don't.
Europe pays billions for gas daily basically sponsoring invasion.
It’s enough for Russian elite to flourish and pay people and companies reliant on state (most of Russia).
Putin’s bet is that sanctions will be lifted before tech embargo hits anyway.
Western politicians already drag their feet on arming Ukraine. Just mentioning unrest and refugee influx from North Africa due to hunger is enough. They will pressure Ukraine to surrender and gradually lift sanctions.
You don’t pay for watching propaganda, yet it influences.
Some of the rus authors have had a significant role in shaping the current rus culture and imperialism. The same that thinks it’s alright to murder, loot, rape and pillage.
> Some of the rus authors have had a significant role in shaping the current rus culture and imperialism.
I don't believe that you have any first-hand knowledge of Russian culture or literature. In fact, this seems more like ignorant western propaganda talking points.
I had to chew through quite a few of those rus books in school, read Dostoyevsky again later. Quite enjoyed Bulgakov. But still most of the big names convey rus greatness and how suffering for the czar is honorable.
No they don't. That's like the opposite of Russian literature (at least that which had survived through the ages)
I'd get if this was a difference in interpretation, but I don't understand how can you even make such a claim, when it is a historic fact that most of the "big names" had been in confrontation with czars, had problems with overcoming censorship or were altogether considered crimanals and were exiles.
Either you are confusing the author's point of view with the point of some character (maybe due to cultural perspective and different traditions of virtue signaling), or maybe you don't get the Aesopian language, or worse.
Also, ad hominem is quite a valid argument, especially if it comes to subjective stuff. Especially if we have to consider cultural background.
> Some of the rus authors have had a significant role in shaping the current rus culture and imperialism. The same that thinks it’s alright to murder, loot, rape and pillage.
I don't know this guy; maybe he is a raging monster, no idea.
But in any case, he has virtually no influence in shaping “rus” (you know they switched to “russian” for over five centuries now, right?) culture and imperialism.
I understand that train of thought, but does this really apply to Anna Karenina?
It's a pre-soviet work from well over a century ago, from a time when the Russian state and society were very different from what exists today.
Well, I guess I should be used to the fact that western media often treats their readers as illiterate idiots without their own opinions, but still... Wow!
In the long term, certainly we want to be able to appreciate the positive contributions made by talented creative people.
But in the short term, it feels pretty awful to contribute to anything that might even in some small way support an unjustified war of aggression.