Thread by @THUotila

I'm all for dropping all trade with Russia.

With that out of the way here's a few points.

1. Sanctions are not going to make Putin withdraw. He will only withdraw by losing on the battlefield. The main point of "sanctions" is to do the right thing. You don't deal with evil.

Over the very long term, the sanctions will impact Russia's ability to continue the war or start new wars. And a predecent of hard sanctions should discourage opportunism. However, not all sanctions are the same.

2. Import sanctions are more important thant export sanctions. By making sure Russia doesn't get spare parts, tools and components to build more weapons or run current ops, we can directly impact the ability to sustain this war effort. Export sanctions only take away money: slow.

3. Russia's main exports e.g. energy can find other customers in the world. There is no way (and it is stupid to even try hard) to get China to not buy Russian oil, for example. Sure, doing the right thing and not buying the oil, will impact the price they get - to some extent.

But Ukraine will definitely not be saved by forcing Russia to accept a few % less from their oil exports when the market price is very high for crude in general. They'd anyway get more than last year. (And its their main export!)

4. So not all export sanctions are the same. The focus should be on those exports that are harder to sell to others. E.g. gas is more important to drop than oil, since the pipelines go to Europe and not to Cuba. Gas is probably the most important export to sanction: big & hard.

5. Second category of imports to sanction beyond those related to war efforts are those items that make the war concrete to those people who might be inclined to fight for a regime change. It's a slim hope, but maybe there is a way. Not sure if this is household or luxury items.

Some experts have claimed that there is no history of popular uprising in Russia and thus it would indicate that household items are not the main item to target. Anyway, the right thing (again) is to simply not trade with evil.

6. All sanctions besides the probability of a coup are very slow in relation to the ongoing war. So the main effort for countries symphatetic to the cause of Ukraine is to directly support the ongoing war effort. If not troops and units, then weapons.

As you may have noticed, I don't prepare my #threads in advance, but just write them out. Sorry for the typos and more difficult to follow structure.

Just wanted to say something to "Europe only gave 1b of weapons but bought 30b of oil" comments. And was triggered by @satuhassi.

So if by buying 10b worth of Russian oil, you can afford to send 1b worth of weapons to Ukraine, you probably should buy the oil and send the weapons. It will be then Russia doing the mistake of equipping their enemy. Not you.

End #thread. Have a blast day, y'all!