There's a fine line between advocating for collective punishment and just acknowledging the fact that populations who more-or-less fail to advocate and/or work towards responsible government within their own countries will eventually reap what they've been (perhaps inadvertently) sowing-- if only by getting caught in the resulting cross-fire. The latter is an important point and it should not go unsaid in such a challenging situation. No one sane is happy about average Russians' current predicament. But it is what it is.

Sorry, didn't realize, but the context is the question of collective punishment, which really is being imposed by the world. I'm explaining what is rather than calling for anything that hasn't come to pass. Thanks dang for keeping this place intellectually functional on a daily basis.

I think he meant punishement as in sanctions

The burden is on the commenter to distinguish their comment from sickening tropes of inhumanity.

It's astonishing how quickly these things come back to the surface and feel ok and perfectly justified. They're not ok, they're not justified, and this is no way to react to the atrocities and suffering happening right now.

The guidelines do not contain any mention of punishment.

And if a sanction is punishment, we are not allowed to discuss if sanctions and what level of them is okay?

The site guidelines for comments begin with Be kind. It's hard to imagine an uglier absence of kindness on the internet than advocating for vengeance against an entire population. If you want to make a policy point you can do it without that level of inhumanity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: you've already managed to break the site guidelines repeatedly in multiple threads on multiple topics. That's not a good sign. If you'd please review the guidelines and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

It's one thing to say "I recognize that individual Russians are not at fault, but in the middle of a total war civilians inevitably get caught in the crossfire. At least with these economic weapons no one is getting killed."

It's another to say "you are all at fault, even if indirectly, and so you all deserve to be punished."

That second comment would violate at least "be kind" and "comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

Modern international law is based on the acknowledgement of popular sovereignty, which has an unavoidable "collective" dimension. What's wrong with making the argument that, like most everything else, sovereignty comes with rights but also responsibilities when the country that one's "sovereign" on starts engaging in bad behavior towards others? Average Germans have had to apologize and be responsible "collectively", at least to some extent, for the Nazi regime's atrocities. Was that inhumane, too?

For the purposes of what kind of comments are acceptable on HN, the HN guidelines supersede international law or your interpretation of it. Fulminating at an entire nation is pretty straightforwardly not ok.