This might be the first admission in western media that the sanctions are having a blowback effect:
No doubt, Russia is feeling the impact of sanctions, but so is the west. Indeed, one reason for the over-egging of claims that the Russian economy is close to collapse is that western policymakers know their own voters are suffering from the collateral damage: dearer energy, rising food prices and falling living standards.
That is no surprise, and most people are understanding and accepting that we’ll have it slightly less easier day, to help push the Russian bully back out of Ukraine.
Removing Russian sanctions would maybe give a slight better day for Europeans in the short term (IMO the ‘damage’ is already done, and we’re already moving away from Russia for our needs) but disastrous in the long term.
All the west has accomplished so far is to ensure that countless thousands of people died, and that Ukraine has been devastated. Ukraine lost millions of people who fled the war, much of its industry has been destroyed, and its economy is in shambles. There is absolutely no evidence that Ukraine will be able to reverse the gains Russia has made, and western support is now starting to run dry because the west lacks the industrial base to keep this conflict going indefinitely.
If not for western interference, then the whole war could have been avoided. All Russia demanded before the war was that Ukraine stays neutral and honors the Minsk accords that it and its western sponsors agreed to. It is absolutely surreal that anybody can look at what happen to Ukraine over the past year and a half and claim that this was done for the good of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the sanctions have had little effect on Russia which was able to reorient its economy towards the east and are now they’re dealing with friendly countries that aren’t seeking to undermine them. Russia’s economy is actually projected by the IMF to have over 1% growth this year.
On the other hand, the sanctions have had a catastrophic effect on the European economy, and it’s not clear how Europe will be able to recover from that going forward.
If not for western interference, then the whole war could have been avoided
And instead be replaced by waves of more country invasions
There would have been no invasions. The war was started in response to NATO expansion towards Russia, which itself included invasions such as Yugoslavia. This a well documented fact that you continue to ignore. Russia tried to resolve this problem peacefully for 8 years, and it was perfectly happy if Ukraine implemented Minsk which the west now tells was never meant to be implemented. Now thanks to the genius of western diplomacy, the west got itself into a proxy war with Russia that the west is currently losing.
Meanwhile, it’s pretty rich for you to moan about waves of more country invasions when it’s the west that’s been invading countries for decades. Learn a bit about what happened to Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, or Iraq and who invaded them. Of course, I understand that westerners don’t consider people who don’t have blond hair and blue eyes to be human, so I get why you wouldn’t care about those invasions.
