While the sanctions are having a devastating effect on the Russian economy, there are a few countries that are actively helping Russia to evade them for profit.

"With the EU hammering out its 10th package of sanctions against Russia, plans are afoot to clamp down on their circumvention. A year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Group of Seven Nations is seeking a new tool to coordinate efforts to enforce sanctions and boost compliance. It will include information sharing on countries and firms anywhere in the world that try to evade or undermine sanctions. To take stock of the situation, Financial Services Commissioner Mairead McGuinness, who is in charge of EU sanctions implementation, will today chair a meeting of member states and industries to see what worked and where circumvention prevailed. "

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-02-23/g-7-to-create-new-russia-sanctions-enforcement-mechanism

As the minority regions are suffering the highest casualties and loss of income the question is whether Russia will splinter into different countries similar to what happened in 1990.

I have never had much interest in the Russia/Ukraine business, apart from our idiot government's donations of equipment to Ukraine, a country with which we have near to zero relations. The EU has been huffing and puffing a about its loss of Russian gas etc, but when our own idiots started to get on the same bandwagon and claim Russia as the reason our our sky-rocketing energy prices instead of their own emissions stupidity, the was it for me.

Even the hysterical media has stopped the sob stories about women scampering out of Ukraine and leaving their men to fight. It seems that people are now sick and tired of it, particularly given the widening divisions in their own countries, and the gradual erosion of democracy that we are seeing under the Socialists in Australia.

My own thinking is: bugger Ukraine and Russia; we have enough to worry about on the home front.

Major upsets in other countries should concern us.
Think of it as two families further down your street, and one is waging war on the other.
Your neighbourhood is being disturbed.
This disrupts the smooth functioning of everyday services.
Power and food production can be affected?
So yes, you need to do what you can to slow them down without going to war yourself.
The best way is to 'ban' the aggressor.
If you cannot 'send him away', the next best thing is to isolate him.
And give the 'aggressed' enough material to defend himself.
There will be no winners, but inaction on your part will make you a loser too?
You cannot ignore such aggression just next door.
Some of it will spill over on to you.
You cannot just bury your head in the sand and pretend it is not happening.
And 'isolating' the aggressor is just what other countries are trying to do now?

The west started this war, just another one of it's endless wars of western hegemonic imperialism, with a coloured revolution in Ukraine.

Extending Russia Competing from Advantageous Ground
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR3000/RR3063/RAND_RR3063.pdf

But it's backfiring spectacularly, and all the west can do is dig their whole deeper.

So I say go right ahead, sanction China, sanction India, sanction Saudi Arabia, it doesn't matter, the world has had enough of Americas threats, blackmail, regime changes and military interventions.

All the people it has screwed over have become friends and have found ways to de-dollarise.
This means the US can't print 'greenbacks' and trade them for the worlds produced goods anymore.
The petrodollar is almost dead and the petroyuan is here.
The US won't be able to sell it's bonds to raise capital to service it's debt obligations, will default or print money causing massive inflation like the Weimar republic and then face economic collapse.

America's years of lazy abundance are over.
The are not exceptional anymore, but they are holding on for dear life to their same old tired methods of treating others,
- but are actually stuck in quicksand.

- The more they struggle, the worse it will get, so go ahead - sanction everyone.
They're only isolating themselves and ensuring their demise that much faster by struggling.
The unipolar world order is over, the multipolar world order is here.
The US is descending, while other nations are ascending.

Face facts.

'Welcome to the Brussels Edition' - Nice article SM, Lol

http://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/10/19/josep-borrell-apologises-for-controversial-garden-vs-jungle-metaphor-but-stands-his-ground

>>After days of mounting international backlash, Josep Borrell, the European Union's outspoken foreign policy chief, has apologised for his controversial remarks in which he described Europe as an idyllic "garden" of prosperity and the rest of the world as mostly a "jungle."<<

Without cheap Russian gas and paying 4 times the price for LNG and buying higher priced oil (much of which still comes from Russia through third parties), it won't be long before Europe becomes a jungle again.

- That's what you get when your own 'allies' blow up your energy pipelines.
Americas willing to sell out it's own allies for short term gains in energy and military sales.

The West is going down fighting, and dragging all it's 'allies' down with it, like a drowning man.

Hi AC,

Consider the war against Germany, Italy and Japan. Those nations went from being international terrorist states to being peaceful prosperous nations contributing much to the world. Russia could be a great nation like them, but it chooses to be an impoverished terrorist state run by gangsters.

How were Germany, Japan and Italy destroyed by the west in ww2? The only nation intent on remaining a shithole seems to be Russia, and they are proving to be a brilliant success at it. That is where a them and us mentality leads.