Unless Biden goes all in on oil and gas production in the US and supplies Europe with energy. Otherwise Europeans, specifically European civilians, will pay more for energy and thus a higher cost of living across the board. The more we sanction Russia and Putin, the more pain will be felt by the European people. Germany gets roughly 75% of its energy from Russia. This is a huge deterrent from a potential WWIII, but a spark for 1848 across Europe especially considering the amount of protests there's been across Europe the past two years due to covid mandates.

In the end, sanctions will hurt the West especially Europe with higher energy prices and Oil and natural gas shortages. A year from now Europe will lift their sanctions, out of economic necessity, and Russia will end up with what it wanted... natural resource rich Ukraine. To get USSR attention NATO needs to put combat forces in all eastern NATO nations along with sanctions on USSR. That will not happen as NATO and especially US has no guts.

In the end, western European Democratic Socialism is to blame. I'm speaking to all Bernie Sanders fanboys on the board. Germany and felt it was better to provide welfare and socialized medicine to its people for free. Europe is weak and far too reliant on the US as a result. Hopefully today is a wake up call for western Europe and Scandinaviafor defense spending. If Germany, France and UK had viable militaries, Russia wouldn't be so obliged to flex.

But yea, sanctions will do nothing.

Sanctions will hurt the average citizen on both sides

Putin isn't going to be hurt my them

I told my kids to make sure they keep the tanks filled for a spell. Things might get a little weird.

The higher oil goes the more Putin makes. The US needs to produce more oil than they have ever produced and drive the price down. Can't depend on the ME to do it because they like money more than Putin.

"No one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening.”

- Joe Biden 2/24/22

China is licking its lips. Sanctions against Russia from the West means China gets to fill the void and minimize the affect of sanctions on Russia. Instead of buying high tach from the west, they buy from China, etc. Also China is eyeballing Taiwan and can't wait to snatch it.

(02-24-2022 07:15 PM)WKUApollo Wrote:  China is licking its lips. Sanctions against Russia from the West means China gets to fill the void and minimize the affect of sanctions on Russia. Instead of buying high tach from the west, they buy from China, etc. Also China is eyeballing Taiwan and can't wait to snatch it.

This

Russia has been under sanctions and threat of sanctions so they are nearly sanctions proof. And by sanctions proof, I mean you may be able to see some effect on them, but it not going to get them to simply give in and take more of the wests bad advice. Following bad advice from the West about how to run their country did 100X more damage to Russia than any silly old sanctions can.

These sanctions are nothing but a sanction on the American/Russian people who are irrelevant to this conflict. Other than cutting Russia's crude supply lines...nothing can be done about this. Putin has been planning this for a long time...waiting for a weak POTUS and a world not interested in war. All we can do at this point is arm the Ukrainians and hope they can make Ukraine the new Afghanistan. Send lots of body bags back to Moscow and make the women of Russia tired of war.