What do you want to world to do? Russia is already under increasingly crippling sanctions and many countries are funding + arming its opponent in a war.
Russians need a travel visa to go to any Western country and most of the world. Some EU countries are banned Russians from entering; the US is not issuing travel visas in Russia anymore.
US is actually quite good on offering entry to refugees from Russia. At least 30,000 people from Russia entered US through Mexico and requested asylum in US and many got it. The problem is that it's only option for basically rich citizens of Russia because whole process is expensive, hard and quite dangerous.
EU is much closer, but it does nothing. Putins regime could've lost 30-50% of it's high-skilled workforce if EU or UK just made it easier to immigrate. E.g literally 100,000s of Russian IT workforce left due to war and political situation, but getting actual work visas is hard process and outside of country of citizenship it's only gets harder if not impossible.
But honestly west can't even help Ukraine efficiently. How can one expect EU to actually do anything to cripple Russia economy...
There are a lot of political immigrants from Russia as well as people who trying to avoid being drawn into army. And for people who left Russia back in 2022 it's just basically impossible to get any visas anywhere simply because you can't apply for one outside of Russia without having some other residency permit that' impossible to get in Georgia / Turkey and many other countries.
EU still provide visas to tons of people who continue to live in Russia and pay taxes in Russia, but dont give any visas to people who left and dont support Putins regime.
And a tourist visa is hard to get even with a residence permit. The consuls (rightly) see you as an immigration hazard. After all, you've already moved countries one time, who's to say you won't repeat the trick?
Meanwhile in Moscow, you have a good chance to get a 5-year visa from France.
Fun fact: the exact same phenomenon was being ridiculed by the White Russians, back in the 1920s. European countries were suspecting them of being Bolshevik, yet the actual Bolsheviks could come just fine.
Now, of course tourist visas are not really relevant for emigration, but it's an example of the attitude shown towards us.
It's not like west suppose to kill or inprison them. Just go after their finances and throughfully check their source of wealth. Lots of lots of people who are close to Putins regime continue to live in a west and spend money they get out of Russia.
> No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.
> Pillage is prohibited.
> Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.
KYC and AML procedures have nothing to do with Geneva convention. There are a lot of Putin cronies whose families still live in west and launder money they make on this war every single day.
To add to this: Germany is more than happy to launder russian money - see Deutsche Bank, Vivid money, Solaris Bank etc. BaFin (the financial regulatory authority in Germany) ignores the situation (like they did with Wirecard)
I did. Now you may argue that NATO and Russia are not in a state of war and therefore Russian citizens do not fall under the definition of a protected person given in article 4, but then you would be saying that it is alright to commit war crimes during peace times. Which seems kind of backwards to me.
It's a war economy. Russia builds a lot of tanks, mans a large army, pays a lot to the families of the fallen, it all adds a lot to the GDP.
But those tanks are going to burn, they don't add value to the economy, won't be exchanged for foreign goods. If you dig a hole into the ground, you increase the GDP, war destruction is not much different in its value creation. GDP is not a perfect measure of an economy.
A) Russia is large enough that it doesn't really need foreign trade to have an economy
B) We -- ie "the west" have no control over what India and China does wrt russia. If they keep buying Russian oil, we can't stop them.
> Russia is already under increasingly crippling sanctions and many countries are funding + arming its opponent in a war.
Supply more weapons to Ukraine? No matter what, Ukraine lacks resources everywhere. Tanks, long-range missiles, anti-air defense, artillery, ammunition.
Alternatively, we can do whatever we can to assist the Russian opposition. A lot of them have been forced into exile. Give them money and access to even a bit of the juicy stuff the CIA is bound to have on the entire Russian elite...
That's different from having a working country and well functioning economy. Not that you're wrong, just I don't think that is in indication of the sanctions being effective or not.
They're not nearly crippling enough. But the problem is that there are a lot of sanction breakers and that those get away with it because we allow them to. That could and probably should stop. Obviously that will hurt the West as well but I'm ok with that, there are no principles without a cost.
There're countless studies conducted during the Ukraine-Russia war pointing out what sectors to hit with full export ban to grind Russian military capability to a halt (e.g Austrian GFM manufacturing equipment for artillery barrels production). But this is very politicized discussion. Obviously companies will want to protect their interests and politicians prefer to make strong and visible statements in place of the working ones (like, freezing Russian assets outside of Russia does very little damage to Russia itself right now, compared to, say, decimating their heavy equipment supply chain)
Business is separate from war (see Sweden's metallurgy industry during WW2).
I think you’ll find that even the neutral countries are providing support to Ukraine via the backdoor (eg Swiss with their armour going via DE).
I believe the strategy that the powers at be are attempting is to keep Russia occupied in Ukraine for as long as possible without major escalation. Without assigning morality, it seems like a tough balancing act to achieve.
There isn't much more we can do. NATO could end Russia with more weapons and making a defence deal with Saudis in exchange for price dumping of oil and gas[1].
But no one wants a nuclear state to fail. Moscow must be terrified of another coup d'etat, hence Navalny's death.
[1]extracting, insurance and delivery cost for Saudis are about $17 and for Russia it maybe as high as $40 now.
When Russia invades Poland to create a land connection to Kaliningrad, just as they invaded Ukraine to create a land connection to Crimea, Europe will wish it had done 10x as much as it did.
Western countries could deliver planes, Germany could deliver Taurus cruise missles, countries could give submarines in the atlantic to target Russian oil rigs etc.
Exactly this. They're slow-walking this thing when they should be decisive. Kick Orban and Hungary out of the EU if they keep playing silly games, make a real stand and stay the course. This dumb half-assed stretching the line is going to end up in misery.
> When Russia invades Poland to create a land connection to Kaliningrad, just as they invaded Ukraine to create a land connection to Crimea, Europe will wish it had done 10x as much as it did.
If it invades Poland. Finland joining NATO makes such an invasion less likely, because (I'm told) that membership gives NATO enough logistics to encircle Kaliningrad without going through the Suwałki Gap, and this in turn changes Kaliningrad itself from an asset into a liability. No, I'm not sure why Latvia/Lithuania/Estonia were not already sufficient for this.
> Western countries could deliver planes, Germany could deliver Taurus cruise missles, countries could give submarines in the atlantic to target Russian oil rigs etc.
Yes, though I've heard convincing arguments that part of the current Russian strategy is to keep NATO sufficiently worried about escalation that they focus on building up their own forces instead of donating those same resources to Ukraine.
To be fair, a nuclear state did fail. The US launched a program to help secure nuclear material and it more or less worked out.
You could argue that if the Russian state failed then a group of nations could literally just buy their nukes from whatever gangsters ever up in charge.
I'd argue USSR collapse was a messy dissolution. A failure would be: Tatarstan declares independence, regular fighting in the streets of Moscow for months.
Why would Saudi go against Russia for doing something they do themselves, i.e murdering opposition(Khashogi)?
Similarly, why would this be the trigger when the Saudi experience shows US is fine with it?
In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter. The number one problem for SA is security. The state is fragile. Wahabi, Muslim Brotherhood, tribes that hate House of Saud. Secondly, Iran possess a direct threat, Houthi could destroy critical infrastructure. $$$$ spent on military doesn't help - they lost the war in Yemen.
SA is on a lookout for allies: Defence partnership with Pakistan which probably end up in a nuclear technology transfer or purchase of atomic weapons.
If USA would give better security guarantees to SA (similar to Jordan) with some tech transfer, SA would increase the output by 2x, which would result in $45 per barrel.
Wahhabism isn't an internal threat to Saudi, like at all. It's their export ideology and it is not at all appealing to the citizens of one of the best welfare states in the world. Wahhabism in actual Saudi is completely different to what gets exported.
As for Iran, seems like recently there has been a rapprochement(mediated by China), will need to see where it leads. It's pretty clear to me SA is on the lookout for allies, but US is low on their list, as they realised(correctly) that all the human rights issues in Russia exist there as well and might get tackled by the West in a decarbonised future.
Not anymore after MBS came to power. Wahabhi missionary worm was a King Fahd policy (and why so many foreign mosques are named after him).
> it is not at all appealing to the citizens of one of the best welfare states in the world
Not to most, but it's definetly appealing to a small subset similar to how White Nationalism is appealing to a small subset of Americans.
The religious reforms post-2017 have been massive [0], and the fact that shows like Masameer or Bait Tahrir are being openly produced is a testament to that fact
> As for Iran, seems like recently there has been a rapprochement(mediated by China)
Only limited to Yemen. The relationship post-rapprochement was still fairly shaky and went down the gutter once 10/7 happened [1]
> pretty clear to me SA is on the lookout for allies, but US is low on their list
Yea no. Saudi is still continuing with US lead Israel-Saudi normalization [2] along with pushing for a US Defense Pact similar to what Japan has [3]
I didn't say anything about who was or wasn't to blame. My point is just that it's weird to say "there's not much more we can do" when that funding package is still in limbo.
You didn't say it, but it is the Republicans that are to blame. They seem to believe that obstruction is a form of government. And the weirdest thing is that their supporters seem to believe this is true.
Russia has already failed. The mob controls the nukes, that's the only reason why they managed to get as far as they did in Ukraine. If not for that it would have been long over.
Russia is a nuclear kleptocracy, it is ruled by a mob that seized power in a country that was already very fragile but that still had a massive arsenal. If you think about Russia in terms of a large gang run empire it starts to make a lot more sense. I know plenty of absolutely great Russian people, the country however is giving me the creeps and I don't see any of it ending well.
You can attack a country with nuclear weapons, provided you use only conventional ones, then threaten to escalate to nuclear if they do that. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate threat which would ensure mutual severe damage if not destruction if used, therefore nobody uses them first unless they're completely nuts, or they're cornered. Putin is a criminal but he's far from being crazy, and as for now is surely also far from being cornered. Surgical attacks in
Russia with conventional weapons would undermine his powers and create enough public disapproval to facilitate a coup from within, but should be done with extreme care and up to a certain point in order not to trigger a nuclear response.
Sadly, even using conventional weapons, the number of deaths would be huge; it is entirely possible that Putin would sacrifice millions of innocents sending them to the front line before giving up, also because when dictators give up they usually die shortly after.
Black/Azov Sea aside, they're not touching the area where the power resides, which is usually needed to weaken the leader image. Last bombing in Belgorod is probably just an error, but in any case it accomplishes nothing aside giving more fuel for Russian propaganda.
I should clarify that I'm not defending Russian actions or trying to be a useful idiot here, there just are red lines that if crossed, a nuclear power will respond with nuclear force. The same is true for China, the US, and even smaller powers like Pakistan.
I support sending Ukraine more ammo to defend its sovereignty. Appeasement is also bad.
Support Ukraine more.
Support refugees from Russia.
Enact personal sanctions against 6000 war-enablers that Navalny team prepared:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6000_List
And their families and kids who all keep their money in US, UK and EU.