Not true.

Tell me, if Google banned you from all their services because you only lived somewhere and you were a "soft liberal", would you support Google in their decision or would you dig in and go the other way? Or in more simpler terms, take football fans, are they hungry at their ultras when they get fined for something or are they angry at UEFA?

All Europe is doing by these discrimination measures is creating a siege mentality among Russian citizens.

The “rally behind your leader” effect is only usually temporary.

These sanctions and moves spread an unambiguous and clear message which can’t be blocked by state news channels which is “no matter what your government says, nobody supports you”.

It's not temporary, or it depends on what time scale do you define "temporary".

>“no matter what your government says, nobody supports you”

Exactly my point, people at this point flock toward their country not against it. They develop this "so fuck 'em" mentality which would just enable wars to go on.

Those of UEFA and Google are silly, symbolic sanctions. What the EU and US are doing is trying to tank Russia's economy and seize/block the oligarchs' properties. Whether that works is left to be seen, but there are already large protests against the war, there might be more protests against the harsh economic conditions, and Putin cannot just arrest everyone.

But in any case, the whole point is that sanctions are unfair, as they will hit plenty of people that are not involved in the war in any way and do not support it. "We" use them because "we" believe that they work (I hope so, but you might be right of course, I'm no expert), not out of spite for a whole population.

I was using a personal anecdote what happens when some foreigners sanction "our" nation, so I used UEFA as an example. It's a similar mentality when it comes to other kinds of sanctions waged against "our" nation.

>not out of spite for a whole population

You may see it that way, but you and average Russian were consuming different media up to this point, and if we admit or not, media has an enormous influence on our worldview.