I'm aware that the sanctions aren't having as deterring effect as was hoped, but it's still worth keeping them in place at the very least, and increasing their severity.
I totally agree. But I also don't get the way they are being implemented and governed.
I know a girl, who lives in Crimea. We used to play computer games together when we were younger, but that ended with the invasion and subsequent sanctions against Crimea. Because a very large part of the sanctions were applied to Crimea (only, not for example also on Russia), like some sort of victim blaming, and at the same time some sanctions essentially took form of thievery. For example, residents of Crimes couldn't use Steam, but Steam works as a library of games that the user purchased with money, and for a while they actually lost access to play those games they paid money for. Same with e.g. Google Services being unavailable essentially makes your Android phone somewhat useless.
I think a lot could be done to make these sanctions much more targeted against who you actually want to have feel them. I'm sure if political correctness was shelved, creative and bright minds in government could come up with even more effective sanctions.
As another example, the EU stopped importing gas from Russia upon the invasion of Crimea. An obvious and necessary move that we were immediately warned would likely hurt residents of the EU more than Russia. This caused a minor energy crisis throughout EU.
Gas (fuel too) got (and still is) quite a bit more expensive here now. And I pay happily to not support Russia. However while one country can't really lower the fees and taxes imposed on vehicle fuels (their supply would be depleted by especially truckers choosing to fill the tanks there), the EU could have imposed regulations at the same time as the sanctions stating that Member States must reduce fees and taxes on fuel to maintain price levels rather than actually profit from fuel being more expensive to the consumers based on political actions. (Fees and taxes on fuels are a combination of fixed amounts and percentages).
I know its a big statement to use, since obviously these sanctions are not imposed light-heartedly, but I still wish there was a bit more thought involved.
I also think sanctions should be expanded to collaborator nations and that this should have been announced simultaneously with the sanctions right from the get go. You obviously can't sanction e.g. china for "happening" to do more trade with Russia, you can only really frown upon it. But you could expand sanctions to countries who act as proxies to circumvent sanctions.
And as for regular trade, the only answer I can think of would be for governments to announce that import quotas would be imposed on all source countries in which any (increased) trade with Russia by any country will be deducted dollar for dollar (or even with any factor) in import allowances from that same country. This would completely remove the financial incentive to do business with Russia, at least in the open market.
But the big issue with that is that it would obviously require the populations of all first world countries in particular to be able to actually tolerate not being able to get certain goods. Amber has to live without an iPhone15 in such an instance, and I'm far from sure people are actually able to manage even small sacrifices like that.
