this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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Why is Russia allowed to hold the world hostage? Who right do they have to starve people in other countries?
Every nation should kick Russians out, block their accounts, and sanction Russia.
The Russian people are not making these decisions. Moreover, those who have left Russia are probably among the least likely to support Russia anyway.
What good comes from attacking the people of a country because you disagree with the leadership of the country? This is the same disgusting rhetoric used in the USA after 9/11 where there were widespread calls to kick out ALL Muslims and people from the middle east.
Something around 80 percent of russians actually support Russian imperialistic goals. You can't exactly pity them at this point. The protests were almost non existant in Russia.
Even if Putin drops down tommorow, it's likely that the whole Russia expansion desire remains. Shit even Navalny doesn't want to drop occupied Georgia.
Those polls you got your source from are actually polls done by state-run polling facilities. of course poeple are going to say what the state wants to hear. here's a video on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uQCNjIHeqU
Btw, by saying that "80% of Russians support this war", you're spreading Russian state propaganda.
And of course protests in Russia died down, people get jailed for like 10-15 years in prison if they protest, so by fear of getting jailed, protestors stop. it isn't pretty but it's how the system works.
These stats are more or less what is reported in my country. Can't fact check everything, since it's more or less the first time it got some shade. Most pro-russian populus here also support Putin and find Ukrainians as nazis, so this didn't seem far fetched.
Seeing different level of protests in Russia (against the war) and in Belarus (against Lukashenko) does show that participation was/is quite little. Even before the war, there were larger protests after Navalny.
There were a few Russians I can deeply respect and can call good russians, but they are the minority sadly. For example Ruslan Zizin.
People are sanctioned, people are unhappy, people protest their government that allowed it to happen. It's how you put pressure on the leadership of a country. How else would you solve this? You can't force Russia's hand in this, but you can make the situation for their people uncomfortable.
The alternative would be to say "Russia pls open the grain corridor again" and I think you can imagine their response.
This doesn't follow. First of all, no change happens internally in the USA despite its own citizens complaining of material conditions; so to say that people being unhappy and protesting necessarily leads to change is false. Second, every other sentence people say about Russia is calling it "authoritarian", "dictatorship", etc: you can't simultaneously pretend its an authoritarian dictatorship and also that the people protesting have any say in its trajectory.
Which is just wrong. You're making the everyday civilian uncomfortable. You aren't doing anything against those who actually make decisions. Instead you're punishing someone for their nationality, or where they were born or choose to live. It's punishment for something they didn't do and it's not constructive.
Sure, I understand that you're saying Russia isn't going to just cooperate with requests. But it's also not going to be any more likely to cooperate because you've made the lives of their citizens, or people of Russian ethnicity living on foreign soil, any harder.
In the end this just punishes innocent people and does nothing to achieve the stated goal.
Because the only way to force change in a country, is to push it's people to make that change. It mught not be pretty, but it's reality.
You can't simultaneously call Russia an authoritarian dictatorship and say that its people have the power to change the country's trajectory.
The correct way to say this is: "the only way to force change in a country, is to push the people who can make change to make that change".
Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime.