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[Random_Dragon]

It's basically either that or war, it seems. And in both cases, no matter what the outcome is, regular people will suffer while the people playing these political games get away consequence-free. :/

[Lord Shonus]

Even the most deranged leaders rarely make war for the sake of making war. There is always a cost/benefit analysis, even if some of the costs and benefits can be rather insane - "eliminate all Jews and Jewish influence in Europe" being the most famous "benefit" in Hitler's "do I war?" ledger.

The goal of sanctions is to pump the "cost" side of the ledger higher in an attempt to make the leader in question decide the benefits aren't good enough. They don't prevent a more aggressive solution if they don't work, and gives you a way to draw a line in the sand short of crying havoc.

[LordBaal]

Oil prices are already at the highest since 2014 and probably will keep rising. Lots of stock markets going down and the moment this war materializes everyone knows China will try to fuck Taiwan. This year will be interesting, in a sad, sad way.

[martinuzz]

One of the sad side effects of sanctions is going to be famine and death in Africa.
Russia is one of the, or maybe even the biggest producer and exporter of grain. If full sanctions go into effect, Africa won't get bread anymore (except maybe via China)

[Lord Shonus]

There's more than enough production in the US and other countries to take up the slack at need. Biggest problem would be controlling the price rise.

[TamerVirus]

Putin declaring a ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine.
The die has been cast

[Random_Dragon]

Full-on invasion evidently underway, Kiev under attack already. Guess WWIII's on now.

[martinuzz]

Explosions reported in many Ukrainian cities.

[Frumple]

Yeah, that... probably needs a dedicated thread. Definitely don't have the energy to make one, though.

[Random_Dragon]

Fiiiiine, I guess.

[martinuzz]

Does anyone have room for 20 million Ukrainian refugees? Our European refugee camps in Turkey are already irresponsibly overcrowded with people from Africa.

[Ziusudra]

Fiiiiine, I guess.

Here's a link to the thread.

[lemon10]

Full-on invasion evidently underway, Kiev under attack already. Guess WWIII's on now.

Nah, this isn't WWIII at all. Its just Russia invading somebody and all the western countries giving him a few sanctions and looking the other way.

So what's the rationale behind sanctions being used against obviously illogical leaders?  I mean I suppose the idea is you make life so hard for the general population that they force policy or regime change? Because I don't think you can actually cause hardship for people with the kind of wealth and power that the elite of sanctioned countries have.

I don't see how sanctions work if you're in a place where the leadership has enough following in the military to simply ignore or brush off any potential public pressure.

Am I just out of touch with reality?  (I often wonder lately... my state of mind is ... odd.)

Putin isn't illogical at all. He looked at the situation and said "What's the reasonable worst case of me invading Ukraine" and he likely thought "Some sanctions that will get dropped in 5-10 years when the western democracies lose interest (which still ends up with us owning Ukraine)".
Like Lord Farquad he probably also went "Well, some Russians might starve to death if the sanctions hurt the economy enough, but that's a price I'm willing to accept", so he went ahead and did it.

If we had a Trump style president (that wasn't Putin's bitch) as a leader and they said they were moving the US army into Ukraine a month ago and that if Putin invaded he would massacre the Russian army then as a logical person Putin wouldn't have invaded.
---
As for what sanctions will do? Absolutely nothing. If these levels of sanctions were enough to make Putin care he wouldn't have invaded in the first place knowing they would be put into place.
If we impose absolutely crippling "nobody is allowed to trade with them ever for any reason" sanctions then he might care, but IMHO that seems pretty unlikely.

[Micro102]

Putin isn't infallible. He could have thought the sanctions wouldn't be as bad. He could have thought the west wouldn't arm Ukraine with as many weapons as it did. And he can't back out all of the sudden because doing this was expensive as fuck, and will make them look pathetic if they back down.

There are plenty of oligarchs in Russia with plenty of money, and if Putin costs them a few billion dollars, then it's not unreasonable that they decide it's a better idea to try and get rid of him.

[Duuvian]

There's more than enough production in the US and other countries to take up the slack at need. Biggest problem would be controlling the price rise.

Fertilizer commodity prices are very high right now, and that is a large input cost for grain commodity prices. Here is a very technical pdf that explains it. I am no expert but in my inexperience it seems like it could be something to work on to lower food prices. The TLDR charts are on pages 5 and 6 of 10.

https://agmanager.info/sites/default/files/pdf/Ibendahl_Fertilizer_02-09-22.pdf

EDIT:
Here is how it is applied by farmers who use it:
https://www.agriculture.com/crops/corn/2022-could-be-profitable-despite-skyrocketing-input-costs