Ah, yes, Turkey, the dependable ally which still hasn’t agreed to Sweden’s accession to NATO!
All I’ve seen are words from Turkey. First the words were “we won’t accept Sweden”. Then the words were “we will accept Sweden”. Still Turkey has not officially accepted Sweden and Sweden is not yet a member. Erdogan says a lot. His actions is what I count.
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.
Every nation should kick Russians out, block their accounts,
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.
Where do those stats come from? The stats I have found are significantly lower than that. It is also important to note that Russians who are against Putin and the war are far less likely to respond to a survey asking them about the war. In the survey I found, only 18% of citizens surveyed that were against Putin felt comfortable sharing this. It’s not at all unlikely that many were too scared to say they were against the war.
It feels you are heavily oversimplifying this to support your beliefs. Even if it were true that most Russians supported the war, many of them are faced with constant propaganda, and it would not be entirely fair to contribute this to any moral failing.
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.
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.
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.
You can’t force Russia’s hand in this, but you can make the situation for their people uncomfortable.
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.
The alternative would be to say “Russia pls open the grain corridor again” and I think you can imagine their response.
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.
And what power do Russian expatriots have to effect change in their home country exactly? Huge numbers left precisely because they disagree with the politics, which poses a huge demographic problem for Russia. Forcing them to go back would be counterproductive, not to mention plain xenophobic.
You can’t simultaneously call Russia an authoritarian dictatorship and say that its people have the power to change the country’s trajectory.
Because the only way to force change in a country, is to push it’s people to make that change.
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”.
They aren’t, but they just can do that. International politics is reallllly anarchistic because how the fuck do you arrest a country. Say if the U.S decided to just stop exporting anything at all- no more food and other stuff- all you could really do is just tell them pwese downt doo that, we need the foweign aiwd :3 This also assumes your the leader of a powerful country, which is a rather difficult position to get to.
In essence, get fucked international politics go brrrrr
Except that isn’t remotely true. For example we can set up trade embargos and cut Russia off from all trade under US sphere of influence so they’ll only be able to trade with Brazil India Iran and China. We can also seize foreign owned assets owned by Russians in western nations. More aggressively we can send US/NATO war ships to Ukraine to provide an armed escort for Ukrainian ships carrying grain in order to ensure that shipments do not delay.
If we haven’t already, all foreign assets of Putin and all Russian leadership and oligarchs need to be seized immediately. Unless the pain is felt by those with power nothing will change.
There are also a number of Western companies still operating in Russia. That needs to change.
I do believe that this was a terrible move by the kremlin, but there are some rules that must be followed even between enemies. If we all do petty thing, whats the difference between us and them.
I think a better argument is that Russia is holding a few more cards here than we do. If we want to get petty, they have explosives planted in a nuclear reactor that they could just blow up.
If we want to go in and kick their asses, we risk global war.
There’s a lot of reasons that this is bad, but there are a lot of really smart people working on these problems.
“What’s the difference between us and them” not only is an emotional appeal, it dehumanizes them, which weirdly makes your argument the same as theirs.
The answer to the paradox of tolerance is usually “the one fighting for peaceful coexistence is in the right”.
I mean, every action a police officer takes in any country parallels to some of the worst crimes imaginable. An armed person saying “You are not allowed to leave” is a felony in my country punishable by up to life imprisonment. While people argue about problems with police behavior or severity of criminal penalties, it is generally agreed upon that an arrest of a suspected violent offender is always less severe than civilian kidnapping.
And perhaps outside of the police, for every person I’ve met who is so anti-cop they consider arresting even a serial-killer unacceptable, I have found common ground of some severe behavior they feel is only rightly done by the party trying to find a peaceful coexistance.
Now I agree that there must be some method of repercussions for weaponizing food, however this is an unideal world. Holding assets’ hostage will only lead to a migration from western assets to maybe Chinese ones, and as a south-east Asian, I can guarantee you that’s the last thing the world needs tight now. Similarly, brash actions using the hegemony of the dollar will only lead to increased scepticism over it and the rise of yuan.
If we all do petty thing, whats the difference between us and them.
(Not) invading / annexing your neighbor, to name one.
US currently occupies a larger percentage of Syria than Russia is occupying of Ukraine.
It’s a really good thing that I’m not President. I have NO patience for this shit. Stopping Ukraine’s food shipments is simply unacceptable. I would have sent the Navy into the Black Sea by now, and possibly started a war with Turkey if they tried to stop the ships.
The world does not need people like me in charge.
Fuck man I wish our world leaders would actually take action on stuff like this. Direct war with Russia appears to be becoming more and more an inevitable conclusion. They are going to cross a line sooner or later that will necessitate it. The only question is how long will we allow them to fuck over Ukraine/Their neighbors/The world before we do so. I’m anti wars of imperialism but despite what edgy tankies might believe the only imperialism at play in Ukraine is Russian imperialism. And I am absolutely in favor of war to end genocide and Russia is committing genocide.
Fun fact: only 2.5% of the grain went to the poor countries in need. And none of the non-Russian parts of the deal were honored, so not really a surprise it was dropped after Erdogan won the election.
It doesn’t really matter where exactly they sell the grain. If there is less grain on the global market, the price will rise, which is very critical for poor countries
Russia already stated that they’re going to continue supplying food to Global South https://sputnikglobe.com/20230717/russia-to-continue-food-supplies-to-global-south-despite-black-sea-grain-deal-suspension-1111949743.html
