This Ain't It, Chief

Hopefully we can send in The Economists to put it all back together again.

As they impose historic sanctions on Russia, the Biden administration and European governments have set new goals: devastate the Russian economy as punishment for the world to witness, and create domestic pressure on President Vladimir V. Putin to halt his war in Ukraine, current and former U.S. officials say.

The harsh penalties — which have hammered the ruble, shut down Russia’s stock market and prompted bank runs — contradict previous declarations by U.S. officials that they would refrain from inflicting pain on ordinary Russians. “We target them carefully to avoid even the appearance of targeting the average Russian civilian,” Daleep Singh, the deputy national security adviser for international economics, said at a White House briefing last month.

I am dumb and don't know what should be done, but we have a very long record of catastrophic failure with the "create domestic pressures by immiserating the population" plan and it tends not to win us many fans!