@dacig Assessing the impact and shortcomings of previous sanctions is a key component of how new packages are crafted.

Even if you take Russian official numbers as fact, their economy is still down substantially from pre-war times. The worst collapse has been avoided by increased government expenditure (especially to military industry) funded in large part by selling off foreign currency reserves at an unsustainable rate. The EU is currently not engaging in such desperate acts.

@itikaneida Fair enough.But there seems to be a consensus that that sanctions have had a limited effect on Russias economy.
My beef though is about who suffers the blunt of sanctions. And it's unsurprisingly the working class, as in Iran, Venezuela, Cuba...
Politicians love sanctions and are for war as they will be unscathed, and may profit.
Sanctions always seem to fall on adversaries of the US and EU, never on them or their allies (Israel) Their structurally unjust nature bothers me the most

@cy @itikaneida Not having sanctions (or wars) benefits all working classes.
Workers in Russia and Ukraine are being punished. German workers are , UK will raise to 2.5% its defense spending, cutting benefits to workers.The assymetry of power between sanctioners and sanctionees is another concern: The US can and does sanction, but hasnt gotten sanctions even when breaking intl law in Irak. Israel hasnt been sanctioned. When everybody can and does get sanctioned would be a minimal condition.

That's true, but how would you propose to stop Russia's (or some other nation's) armies from waging war? That's what sanctions are for, and if they don't work, then we need to do something else.

@cy Hmm. Diplomacy not sanctions. “It is easy to say pacta sunt servanda, that agreements must be kept. But this requires building and maintaining trust. Doing so will require all sides to stop airing their tired narratives in public — such as when Moscow dismisses the perspectives of Central and Eastern European states as Russophobic or when Western countries pointlessly insist that NATO expansion is directed against no one — and recognize one another’s security concerns as legitimate."

I would like to see better diplomacy on part of any country besides Russia, but it's hard to imagine diplomacy coming from them. Does diplomacy work against an undiplomatic conqueror?