While true, I think it’s the wrong criticism in this case, as the necessity of hurt has to be at the target of the sanctions rather than at the one imposing them.
Rather:
The sanctions that appeared after the Russian annexation of Crimea were the painless ones. The current situation is so much worse for EU interests that the EU feels it needs to demonstrate that it is willing to experience at least some discomfort in order to prevent Russian aggression.
The problem here is... are we really stopping the conflict by eg. banning import of russian oil? Russia is just exporting it to eg. India and China, them having cheaper oil is making their economies stronger, russia still gets the money, and europes economy is going down. So, we're hurting our economy to not hurt the russian one while helping china and india.
I don’t think sanctions will make Russia stop the war, the only thing that will is a large enough flow of dead soldiers coming back home. But it will impact its ability to finance this war, its military capabilities (replace hardware), and potentially (though not clear to me), create opinion backlash in Russia.
See e.g. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Energy/China-turns-to-Russi...
Before the UK left the EU, there was technically one such pipeline from Norway, but it was mainly used to supply an oil export terminal located in the UK, rather than for importing oil into the UK for domestic consumption.
Europe expects to rely on sea transport to import oil after foregoing use of oil from the Russian pipelines. This is why the landlocked countries of Hungary, Czechia, and Slovakia were concerned during the sanction talks, though Hungary's Orban has exaggerated the concern to obstruct sanctions and/or to score dubious Realpolitik points.
Hungary's only alternative is the Adria pipeline that starts at a port in Croatia; it can be used in either direction and has sufficient capacity to meet current demands. Czechia's only alternative is the IKL pipeline that starts at a pipeline junction and tank farm in Vohburg (near Ingolstadt) in Germany. Slovakia's only alternative (if my research is accurate) is to be supplied through Hungary, using the Adria pipeline and a soviet-era connection between Hrkovce and Százhalombatta to be run in reverse mode.
The EU has about 10x the nominal GDP of Russia. Is a 10% contraction of the EU for one year equivalent to the entire Russian population reverting to subsistence farming for a year?
Also: I should’ve thought of this before, but cost to each party isn’t the right metric — it’s what does the EU gain at what cost to the EU (and likewise for each party), so the question is probably more like:
Q1) does this situation look like a warmongering power trying to rebuilding a lost empire? If so, what’s the cost of sitting back and doing nothing?
A1) let’s say p=0.1, €3T/year
Q2) [insert more hypotheticals, probability estimates, and costs here, a real analysis wouldn’t fit in a comment]
Finally: multiply the chances by the costs, add them all up, that’s what it makes sense for the EU pay.
> If we read between the lines, we're also at the brink of a massive food crisis
We’re not even close to that, despite the breathless headlines and the fact the Russian forces interfered with a significant quantity of food production and are blockading the ports that would normally export it from Ukraine.
Hell, even the UK isn’t that screwed and they’re short of farm hands to pick crops and vets to certify the abattoirs because of Brexit.
They're also friendly with countries like china and india for the rest of the things they need, and have gas to export/sell to them to be able to pay for all that stuff.
I'm more afraid that Janez and Hans and Pierre will have to pick up crops to survive, and not Boris.
> Hell, even the UK isn’t that screwed and they’re short of farm hands to pick crops and vets to certify the abattoirs because of Brexit.
And it's funny, because this is a purely economical issue... pay more and you'll get workers to do the work for you. You cannot pay romanian paychecks to british workers.
I’m not asking you to judge the likelihood of two things, nor their consequences, I’m asking you to tell me if you think they are equivalent. Does A=B, where A is a 10% recession, etc.
> Russia produces enough food, that we (=rest of europe) have problems if they don't export
False.
Russia exported €1.8 billion agricultural products to the EU last year:
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2022/7292...
The EU agriculture sector is about 1.5% of its $US 17,000 billion nominal GDP, i.e. $US 255 billion nominal, which at current exchange rates is €237 billion, or to put it another way, what it gets from Russia is 0.75% by value of what it makes itself.
I’m old enough to remember when the EU’s biggest problem was colossal over-production of food, and it’s agricultural policy being called a market-distorting subsidy.
This is also backed up by EU countries having access to more food per person than Russia. Not that it matters because both are about 1000 kcal/day higher than actually needed: https://ourworldindata.org/food-supply (because, in case you skimmed over the bit at the top, hypotheticals about what constitutes “equal harm”).
> they also have enough oil/gas, that again, we have problems, if they don't export it
Yes (hence Hungary realpolitik), but not insurmountable problems, and we should be moving away from those fuels anyway even without this war.
> they also have most of the raw materials available locally plus a lot of companies that produce everything needed for basic infrastructure.
Define “basic infrastructure”.
Then ask yourself why Russian tank production halted.
> have gas to export/sell to them to be able to pay for all that stuff.
Not on the scale they need to keep their economy running.
> pay more and you'll get workers to do the work for you.
Vets are licensed. The number required is greater than all of the ones in the UK.
As for crops, the farmers have tried this and get basically no takers. Can they try again for even more money? Only if the supermarket are willing to pay more for the food, which requires the customers to be willing to pay more for the food, which they can’t because too many are already short of money.
I wouldn’t know.
But I can say the fungibility (or not) of oil is necessarily equivalent for both importers and exporters.
Consider the implications if it were trivial to change markets: Russia losing X units of exports per year to the EU and increasing exports to China and India by a total of X, means China and India are buying X fewer units from not-Russia, which means the EU could buy X more units on the everyone-else marketplace.
Realistically, Turkey China and India are mostly exporters. When Europe and the US go into recession, they won't need as much oil because they won't be exporting as much (they are the dominant importers)... and that likely means that Russia turns off wells when their storage fills up (soon). Those wells are slow to restart. The rest of OPEC replaces their oil (at somewhat higher prices) for the next few years.
What is an immediate concern is food, oil, and fertilizer not being exported from Ukraine (can't plant/harvest or ship) for much of the developing world. Turkey, Egypt, Sri Lanka... Sudan are all very dependent on wheat, sunflower oil, and fertilizer from eastern Ukraine. Even India will be quite affected. See how evil EU starves the poor! Only beautiful Russia can save them!
This seems wrong. 1) Russia cannot be penalized to any great degree with it producing negative consequences. Though I'm open to being wrong in this, and would entertain ideas about alternative sanctions that would penalize Russia equally without being uncomfortable. And 2) The discomfort is a function of EU tying itself too closely to Russia, something about which it was warned repeatedly over the decades even by some of its own members. The discomfort here is not merely necessary to penalize Russia, but also to remedy reliance on a Russian government wielding that clout as a license to act just as it is acting now in the Ukraine.
The EU must be willing to experience discomfort, but they are not doing so right now merely as a hollow signal.
Thanks, I was afraid I might have come across that way. Was aiming more for “we have to show we’re tough and not just talk it”.
Id be more willing to suffer discomfort if diplomatic options were exhausted before this war.
As it is we are made to suffer ultimately, because NATO and Russia are spoiling for a proxy war and because the US has been itching to sell us some overpriced LNG.
The US should be giving us LNG at a discount on prewar levels. This is largely their proxy war, not ours.
If you did, the USA involvement in Vietnam would be a proxy war for the USA, and the American war of independence would be a proxy war for the British — in both cases some other power also had some interest, but I would never call either a proxy war for the USA and British respectively.
The US has a long history of demanding others to sacrifice themselves at the altar of its imperialist struggles, whether it's Australians being sent to die in vietnam or European pensioners being asked to die of cold in dec 2022.
Every war has horrible tragedies and innocent lives lost or harmed, but to suggest invading a stable democracy to annex it is even remotely the same as supporting a locally led uprising against a murderous dictator like in Syria is absurd and offensive.
To be clear, I don’t agree we shouldn’t sanction Russia. EU should remove its dependence on Russia since Putin doesn’t seem to be going any where and if he does, we don’t know what that means
But our politicians are fucking up that too... just look at the german fight against nuclear power, while being happy to buy coal-generated power from poland.
We have a nuclear powerplant in slovenia, and we're talking about expanding it for literally 30 years now, and all the arguments against it are "this will take 10years, that is too long, we need power now". ...well, and austrians protesting against it.
From the very beginning the "locally led uprising" was 50% Islamists.
And by the way, Turkey is essentially annexing Syria right now. Unlike Ukrainians, the Syrians can't meaningfully fight back because Turkey is in NATO, so their forces have absolute safe harbor.
Beyond this, there is no reasonable moral argument that an annexation is any worse than installing a puppet dictator.
NATO won't protect Turkey if they are the aggressors. NATO is a defensive alliance.
NATO means that Turkey doesn't have to worry about any retaliation from Syria's allies. That is to say, impunity. On the other hand if Israel invaded Syria and IRGC troops fired a missile onto a base in Israeli territory, the US wouldn't invade Iran, but they would if it was into Turkey. That's a significant chilling effect.
Preventing allies from retaliating
More like Revolution of Installing Puppet Government by western nations.
Ukraine was attacking russian minorities in donbas and lugansk.
I'm not pro putin, i'm just saying that we're not any better than him, while acting so, and that we're destroying our own countries with sanctions, that don't hurt putin but hurt as. Maybe we deserve them though, but i'd prefer better economy for us.
It is not the same as the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which includes the army.
Several of your comments here are regurgitations of Kremlin propaganda. Please stop spreading misinformation.
> It is not the same as the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which includes the army.
This is a bizzare distinction to emphasize. The National Guard is an armed unit. During war, their role is exactly the same as the armed forces.
What do you mean by ‘not any better than the Russians’? What has Azov or anyone else in Ukraine been doing that rises the the same level?
Russia has been promoting and funding racist and white supremacist groups just as bad all over Europe. The only thing about Azov that’s different is they are anti Russian.
I know Azov are an unpleasant lot and have distributed hate propaganda and harassed people, but as part of the national guard they are under military command and discipline. Furthermore politically speaking they were utterly insignificant and got absolutely nowhere in elections. The whole ‘fighting nazis’ line is utter garbage.
There's a decent article on this (from a strongly pro-Ukraine publication) that expounds on this theme in a relatively neutral way (IMHO). The sad thing it's in Russian, but should be readable through the magic of google translate if you're interested enough.
https://meduza.io/feature/2022/04/17/ot-bandery-do-azova-otv...
"After the worst such [anti-Islam terror] attack in recent years—the massacre of 51 people in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019—an arm of the Azov movement helped distribute the terrorist’s raving manifesto, in print and online, seeking to glorify his crimes and inspire others to follow. .... It might seem ironic for this hub of white nationalists to be situated in Ukraine. At one point in 2019, it was the only nation in the world, apart from Israel, to have a Jewish President and a Jewish Prime Minister. Far-right politicians failed to win a single seat in parliament in the most recent elections. But in the context of the white-supremacist movement globally, Azov has no rivals on two important fronts: its access to weapons and its recruiting power."
There's also stuff like [2] which is a freedom-of-information act report from the Department of Homeland Security. They're concerned about the fact that "Ukrainian nationalist groups including the Azo[v] Movement are actively recruiting racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist-white supremacists (RMVE-WS) to join various neo-Nazi volunteer battalions in the war against Russia".
This whole thing is becoming increasingly absurd where the information warfare is gradually moving from propaganda to 1984.
[1] - https://time.com/5926750/azov-far-right-movement-facebook/
[2] - https://propertyofthepeople.org/document-detail/?doc-id=2202...
* It was founded by a nazi and most of its members appear to be nazis.
* It committed atrocities in a civil war against ethnic russians.
* It was instrumental in keeping ethnically russian majority areas of Ukraine under Ukraines control.
* It was made an official part of the army and lavished with praise by poroshenko despite being largely nazi and having committed atrocities because territory.
* When Zelensky came to them asking them to lay down their arms and help end the civil war they told him no and denounced him as a traitor.
Officially they have little power or democratic mandate but they told the president that the war shall continue until its bitter end and he capitulated. In the west nazis dont have that kind of power.
The Nazis were just as much far left as far right, if not more. It's funny to me how people are unwilling to acknowledge this.
He has every right to say that the West (and a bit of Turkey) are aggressors and he is defending his country by bombing cities in it.
So did NATO in 1999 bombing of yugoslavia.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/may/08/balkans <- cluster bombing a (farmers) market
https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/apr/24/balkans3 <- tv station, "Serb TV station was legitimate target, says Blair"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grdelica_train_bombing <- civilian train and bridge (and having to speed up the video, to make it seem non-intentional)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48134881 <- even a chinese embassy
http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9904/07/nato.attack.01/i... <- "school, a monastery and other civilian facilities"
http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9904/14/refugees.02/inde... <- albanian refugees
http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9905/01/kosovo.military.... <- bus
etc.
Their routine tactics of dealing with rebels is to bomb civians dear to those rebels. When they don't hope to make territorial gains, they wish to inflict some damage and civian targets are way easier to hit.
This week, they're using freshly supplied M777 to bomb areas of Donetsk they could not reach previously. Such as by hitting four schools in a single day.
How is this principially different from Assad?
We are much closer to this.
Also guess who might have joined Russia after Ukraine? You don't think having Russia suddenly as your neighbor doesn't matter?
So they wouldn’t have had Russia as neighbor, but a Russia-friendly country, just like they did for most of the rather brief time Ukraine existed as an independent country. Or another Belarus, which Poland at least is already neighboring.
I get why these countries are nervous but Ukraine’s very very different from Romania or Poland or any other EU country.
Did the US want to annex that country into the US? And convert its citizens into obedient Americans? And murder everyone who resisted?
The benefit the US gets from protecting Poland is that in doing so it helps keep Russia boxed in, it keeps great influence over the EU (Poland is a pivot of US influence on the EU), thereby greatly helping curtail 2 out of 3 threats to the US's position as the most powerful country on Earth. It's not done out of benevolence but it's quite great for Polish people.
That's, by the way, a result of a 12 year period, compared to the list you gave that's over 80 years.
Those aren't great lives by any means, but avoiding Iran-Iraq V2, or Turkish invasion of most of Syria, a complete Azerbaijani victory, or complete subservience to China, is genuinely a positive. On the greater balance, simply existing as a counterbalance to the US is something that's useful for most of the world, which explains indifférence over Ukraine.
The Serbs are still stirring things up in Bosnia. Stop now and embrace Tito's genius.
You learn something new every day...
So no, it’s not the same at all as NATO intervening in an actual ethnic cleansing campaign.
Somehow we treat those wars and those agressors differently.
We really don't. There's been much acknowledgement that the Iraq war was a mistake and wasn't justified, since no weapons of mass destruction were found.
I think it would have been great for countries to sanction the US over it, but at the time, part of Europe also thought that if Iraq had nuclear weapons they'd be a threat to them. But Russia should have sanctioned US and Europe, they should have cut their supply of oil for example. I'd have been for it.
Just as the US should have been sanctioned then, and the war in Iraq should have not happened or been prevented, so is the war in Ukraine.
Normally we should learn from past mistakes, Iraq was a mistake, the world should have acted different back then and didn't. Now Ukraine is a chance to do better and act as we should have in Iraq.
Note: The other distinction is that Iraq was a clear and obvious dictatorship, so there was hope that it could improve the lives of the people of Iraq and lift them into more individual rights and prosperity.
Ukraine is not as clear, in appearance it seems they are on a good path to have more individual rights and prosperity, and it looks like Russia's trying to stop them from doing so. Is that completely accurate, hard to say, but probability wise it is a possibility.
So from the angle of picking a side as well, it's easier to side with Ukraine, which appear to support individual rights and democracy, and against Russia, which appears to oppose individual freedoms and seems to be moving towards full on dictatorship.
But we didn't sanction them. We're still friends with them. We even helped them.
> but at the time, part of Europe also thought that if Iraq had nuclear weapons they'd be a threat to them.
I'm pretty sure 'we' (our leaders, who sent our armies there) knew that iraq had no such weapons... Tony Blair even half admited it.
> Normally we should learn from past mistakes, Iraq was a mistake, the world should have acted different back then and didn't. Now Ukraine is a chance to do better and act as we should have in Iraq.
So, we knew iraq was a mistake, and we stopped? After the first time? Or after the second time? What about syria? Libya? What about somalia? Didn't biden just send more troops there? I won't even mention afghanistan... US basically armed the terrorists for the next few decades with their pull-out.
> Ukraine is not as clear, in appearance it seems they are on a good path to have more individual rights and prosperity, and it looks like Russia's trying to stop them from doing so. Is that completely accurate, hard to say, but probability wise it is a possibility.
Let's be fair... ukraine has areas where a lot of russians live, and they weren't very nice to those russians (and i mean "nice" in the same way as israelis are not "nice" to palestinians...). Somehow many people have forgot about those things (ukraine) or don't care about the others (isreal).
Yes, we didn't sanction them, and you seem to argue we should have, and I agree. That's why I think with Ukraine this time we're doing the right thing, same thing we should have done with Iraq. Do you disagree?
And before you say “Ukraine”, consider that Ukraine and Russia have a common history going back hundreds of years and together with Russia were part of the USSR. The attack on Ukraine is illegitimate, but at least it makes some logical sense.
Russia going after Romania or Poland which are part of EU and NATO and were never part of the USSR, but instead individual countries in the Warsaw Pact makes no sense at all.
The Baltics are more complicated, but once again - NATO and EU.
Also, who gives a f*ck what Putin says?!?
Edit: locals have been at it for yemen in particular.
EDIT: Ok I see now what you took offensively. Most of us Westeners I should have wrote. Most regulars peoples' attention as example diverted much more to the case of Johny Depps' Trial than to the war in Ukraine.
Age of information, not communication and all that
If your country is a member of NATO, i'm pretty sure there are a few countries right this moment, that consider your soldiers on their land as an occupation.
I live in slovenia, and even we have soldiers in places like syria , and I'm pretty sure none of the locals want us there... now we, the occupying force of country X, complain about someone else doing the same to country Y.
But native syrians have had their country basically destroyed by nato (too). So did afghanis, etc., and they're not happy for being occupied (as we saw after the pullout from afghanistan).
Considering turkey is a part of nato, it's interesting that we let them attack the kurds without any sanctions... maybe we have to wait until they annex a part of syria to make it "bad".... but in reality, noone will care.
Europe and the US also "foolishly" integrated with China and whole lot of other countries who are not exactly shining beacons of freedom. Either crawl to your own hole and do not deal with anyone or admit that there is a world around us and it sometimes does not conform.
Besides Europe did not become rich just by being nice. It and UK in particular had raped the rest of the world in the process. It does not seem to mind "mass murder" either when it is done by "right" countries to a "bad" ones.
Europe spent decades of cooperation with Russia instead of working toward complete independence from Russian energy.
Thanks to sanctions, Russia is becoming independent (less/no ties to outside economies)--do not recommend.
A democratic country is expected to be more rational than an autocratic one. The EU was naive in trusting Russia.
America did the same in the 2000's and ramped-up domestic supply of oil.
Russia is still selling their oil to india and china, and europe is slowly destroying itself with the anti-russian sanctions and many other internal things they do. Germany went from one of the strongest economies in the world to telling their people to wear sweaters at home, because they'll be cold, while countries oposing the sanctions still have cheap gas (eg 1.23eur/l in hungary).
Media is saying one thing, but people in the streets (and surprisingly, also in the comments everywhere, somehow not censored yet) complain and most not in the politically-correct way. Add to this the blatant censorship of media, eg banning RT in europe (let's be fair.. putin, being somewhat a dictator, banning CNN is perfectly understandable... but EU, "a pillar of democracy" banning RT, to me, seems a very very bad precedent), and stories like "evacuation of azovstal" (and not saying it was a "surrender") make people trust the media even less.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2022/may/17/evacua...
:)
This guy made an informative video about what happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwu5Gp8AFnk
Dictator invades neighboring country, says their people don’t have a right to exist? The mainstream media is to blame for using a word I didn’t like. Dictator’s propaganda channel is removed from distribution? A conspiracy by the mainstream media and their political cronies. Etc.
It does make it much easier to understand the Americans who in 1939 were saying “Hitler is not our problem — at least he’s not a communist — look at the good job he’s done cleaning up the radical left — the press is out to get him — why should we hurt our own economy by not trading with Germany?”
Before 2022, we were listening about ukranians shelling russian settlements in ukraine. Ukraine had a nazi problem, Azov was nazis, and even the mainstream media said it: https://i.imgur.com/mRAaOo0.jpg Now they're acting as if none of this has ever happened.
On the other hand, we've let and activelly helped americans to the same thing to many, many different countries, lied about weapons of mass destruction, destroyed afghanistan for hiding obama in pakistan while bombing pakistani weddings while not being at war with them, plus of course syria, libya, etc. Now US troops are entering somalia. I live in a small EU country with a shitty almost non-existant army, and even we had soldiers in afghanistan (and still have them in eg. syria and lebanon). Yugoslavia was bombed for 78 days for doing the same as ukranians were doing to russian minorties, and civilian targets were intentionally chosen for the bombings.
Yes, the mainstream media is guilty of saying one thing until day X, and changing their narrative from day X+1.
> Dictator’s propaganda channel is removed from distribution?
You are aware that all of the media is just propaganda? CNN is propaganda, BBC is propaganda, and RT is propaganda. If we didn't ban the news outlets saying that iraq has WMDs, why are we banning RT? If RT saying that ukranians are nazis, why are we not banning all the mainstream media outlets from here: https://i.imgur.com/mRAaOo0.jpg ?
> It does make it much easier to understand the Americans who in 1939 were saying “Hitler is not our problem — at least he’s not a communist — look at the good job he’s done cleaning up the radical left — the press is out to get him — why should we hurt our own economy by not trading with Germany?”
Lets be fair.. for most of the world, americans are the largest problem for peace in their area. Russians are at worst, second, depending on how you look at saudi arabia vs yemen and israel vs palestine conflicts.
I do think that it is within a nations right and responsibility to defend against such actors.
Naturally there are no clear cut lines and things can get murky but this is the case with many aspects where we expect and accept government intervention.
The Nazi thing in Ukraine is just tired and old, especially since Russia has active ranks of Nazis (like the Wagner Group) that they send abroad. If the Nazi factions justify exterminating civilians in Ukraine, then for consistency's sake, the same could be said of extermination of Russians. (I support exterminating nobody)
America is wrong to start wars. Most people (especially outside of America) agree with that. That doesn't mean Russia gets a free pass to actively threaten Europe and commit genocide, and no amount of paragraphs will change that.
Of course russia doesn't get a free pass... but why do we get one? Why can my small shitty eu country (slovenia) get to have soldiers occupying foreign countries without sanctions? Why can americans do it without sanctions? The French? ...? Why do we treat russia differently for doing the same thing we are... and why are we hurting ourselves by those sanctions?
If Putin now decided to invade Finland, you’d presumably be here with the following arguments:
“Why is nobody talking about the Finnish Nazis? Media reported on that before, they’re not talking about it now. It’s all lies.”
“How do I know Russia is actually bombarding Helsinki? BBC is just propaganda and the Finnish media is probably controlled by the Nazis.”
“Finland sent peacekeeper troops to Afghanistan so they’ve implicitly supported American aggression. Why should we expect different from Russia. Can’t we sanction Finland too”
It’s safe for you to engage in this kind of nonsense pseudo-media-critical sophistry when nobody you know is getting killed.
At least I assume that Finland’s nazis don’t form militias and aren’t part of the armed forces and don’t receive military weapons from NATO.
This doesn’t excuse Russia’s war, but it does make one wonder why Western politicians condemn right-wing extremists so often and so thoroughly with not a peep about the nazis they’re literally sending weapons to.
Well, there was a bit of a scandal when an interview with an Azov neo-nazi was broadcasted in the Greek parliament, but even the Greeks were mostly criticizing themselves for allowing that to happen.
And then online posters would be using this is as proof that Russia has a point with the “denazification” tales they use to justify aggression on other countries’ sovereign territory. “Well, you have to ask why the Finnish army invites Nazis, and now NATO is supplying arms to them too. Just asking questions here that media doesn’t. I am very smart.”
And? Did anyone did anything so America wouldn't start wars? Why America has a free pass?
It is unconscionable we are not trying to increase supply in the US IN ORDER to harm Putin.
I mean how do people not see that Putin is probably laughing at the idea of $120 oil meant to harm him.
By not increasing US supply we are basically helping Putin and forcing other countries to burn more coal. It is just unconscionable but we tend to not really care in the US about actual results as long as the moral intentions are good.