It's too late... Where were US and Europe with their sanctions when riots on Bolotnaya square happened? https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bolotnaya_Square_case When Navalny was incarcerated?

Do you think it is easy to stay against government with army? Look at Ukraine, there's the same Russian army there.

Did sanctions ever achieve this?

If the West actually wants to defend Ukraine, it needs to intervene militarily. If it doesn't, then it shouldn't try to placate its conscience with meaningless token gestures.

> Did sanctions ever achieve this?

Governments have changed behavior after sanctions regimes were put in place. The degree and mechanisms of any causal relationship are infinitely debatable, because it's near impossible to falsify them conclusively.

> If the West actually wants to defend Ukraine, it needs to intervene militarily. If it doesn't, then it shouldn't try to placate its conscience with meaningless token gestures.

The government of Ukraine, who is both better positioned to evaluate the value of interventions and whose leaders have quite a bit personally at stake, doesn't seem to have this attitude of “intervene militarily or fuck off”, and has indeed been calling for sanctions and specific enhancements to them.

The only clear case I can think of is South Africa, but even that had its own internal movement; sanctions merely sped things up.

Besides, Russia knew of all the possible sanctions way in advance, and proceeded to invade anyway - which already tells you how much the government there is worried about them in practice.

Biden is absolutely correct: sanctions couldn't and won't prevent anything. What he's not saying, but what follows directly, is that military force is the only option that'll work.

Collective punishment is against the laws of war and the UN charter. My preferred resolution would be NATO backing off and agreeing to Ukraine as a neutral buffer state with Russia withdrawing troops.

The American foreign policy instinct is always for unrelenting brutality.

> Collective punishment is against the laws of war and the UN charter.

There's nuance that you're missing (e.g UN not empowered to sanction war crimes by a veto-power state), and your broad interpretation doesn't align with accepted practice.

A relevant analysis: https://www.epw.in/engage/article/do-sanctions-violate-inter...

> UN not empowered to sanction war crimes by a veto-power state

The UN has had a structure for dealing with veto-power obstructionism since 1950.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assem...

Yes YOUR preferred resolution The people of Ukraine however would probably approve of the sanctions as the ongoing conflict persists.