The fact that Russian websites are still on internet seems like a failure of serious response to me.

Cut their circuits.

Having to rewind their VHS tapes before returning them or facing paying a fine will teach em lessons “targeted sanctions” are unlikely to achieve.

Russian aggression will likely end when the Russian populace gets fed up with their psycho leader. That is a lot less likely to happen if they get cut off from the Internet.

In fact, during the Cold War, the US policy was to try to connect the USSR to the world to force regime change - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Libert...

Having grown up in Soviet Union I am not entirely ignorant of these facts.

However, times have changed and new generations have grown up knowing nothing of the experiences of the past. They watch Avengers, Naruto, and Game of Thrones, they play Call of Duty on Xbox live, they travel to Europe and Turkey for vacations. And yet 70% of them support Putin’s government.

Perhaps waking up one morning and finding the Iron Curtain drawn once again will convince them much more effectively than watching a Youtube video will, that this isn’t the course they are willing to continue to support.

given that Russia has serious aspirations to take itself off the internet, it's questionable what effect cutting Westerners from Russian sites is supposed to have

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50902496

Imagine your government doing something you don’t like and the international response being to cut your internet connection, destroying your financial security and jeopardize the supply chains allowing you to get food every day. Does that sound like the proper balanced response to the actions of your government? Does it affect your view when it’s not about punishing “them” but about you being punished?

While I made the original post somewhat in jest and laughed off expected downvotes, I would like to say that I find your reply especially either naive or somewhat detached from realities of this world.

You don’t believe that the citizens of the country acting as a belligerent aggressor should suffer any inconvenience as a consequence of the actions of their government, such as change in living standards?

How do you think warfare is conducted? Do you not believe in the right of victim of agression to strike back? Does it not quite register that there are people now losing their lives in Ukraine?

Do you think Ukraine would be within their right to conduct a strike against Russia?

Consider that perhaps in contrast to a potential retaliatory strike - a prospect of Russians waking up to a new world where they are no longer part of the modern civilization would be preferable and may in fact result in them thinking that this isn’t the kind of life they want to return to?

Don't worry... Putin made a billion or two shorting it. Very patriotic.

You know what's most scary? He's not afraid of his business associates anymore. It means he might be close to death.

I've actually wondered if this whole gambit of his is a last ditch "legacy" hail Mary pass, because he's nearing some personal or administrative fin de ciecle (or both); whether because of his own mortality and/or because the regime is, after decades of perpetual crisis, now exhausted and running out of ways to otherwise scare the markets into sustaining him, he's now going back to the 80s for inspiration. Whether the Ukraine turns into Afghanistan part II is yet to be seen, but there are certainly enough folks still alive from the tail end of the USSR (who are not part of Russia) to recall that period, and want no part of it.

The Baltics seem to be the first to start really firing off the klaxons.

I suspect (or at least have seen no evidence to the contrary) that Putin has set up no real successor to him, so most likely if he does expire, Russia will yet again drop vertically into total chaos.

Autocrats just kill their enemies. MBS in Saudi Arabia locked a bunch of wealthy people in a hotel and tortured them because they were fucking around with Aramco. In reality, Putin is not doing enough compared to his counterparts in China and SA, Turkey, etc, to extinguish his foes internally.

This war might be a good chance to launch an internal campaign on ‘traitors’ who happen to be oligarchs. The cost is to become a global pariah, but hey, Iran and North Korea manage. China won’t ever stop working with them.

"China won’t ever stop working with them."

Not really. They've had a co-opitition things for decades (in the 60s they nearly went to a nuclear exchange, and it stayed frosty well into the 90s and has been touch and go since depending on who is benefitting from what; TBH I suspect Russia is also concerned about becoming a junior partner to the Politburo of Beijing, but first things first and their mutual enemy (the US) seems to be keeping them tenuously together.

But if Russia causes any negative externalities on the Chinese economy, it won't drive the PRC to the US, but could very much still push them out of assisting them in any way whatsoever. Even this month China has been talking about unassailable aspects of sovereign borders and not getting involved in such dsputes.

Who are his business associates?

Most likely anyone that owns a yacht, a home in London's most expensive real-estate market and has a Russian passport.