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by grujicd 1594 days ago
It's not like that, sanctions make it harder to overthrow a dictatorship.

On one hand, 90% of people can only hear official media. With sanctions, they have much easier job telling that someone else is to blame.

On the other hand it makes much much harder for political opposition to fight that narrative, to propose opening the country towards West when they're clearly acting against population through these sanctions.

That's why these sanctions benefit regime, and that's why they're double evil - hurt people + make it harder for opposition to fight the dictator.

In Serbia's case, sanctions didn't help at all with overthrowing Milosevic. They just brought misery to ordinary people and he remained in charge through the 90-ties.

It took loosing all the wars, getting country bombarded by NATO and de facto loosing control over Kosovo, getting entire opposition united, and massive protests to remove him from the power.