War in Ukraine/Med Cruising

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by atoll

I would predict that the incursion into the Dombass is just a diversion,the main force will come from the Belgorod,Valyuki area in the north and push south and meet with an amphibious force landing near Berdyans'k, Zaporizhia maripol area in the south from the azov sea who will push north in the lightly defended areas to the west of donesk and luhansk in a classic pincer movement,encircling the defending Ukranian forces along the Dombass border.

Along with paratroops the mobile russian forces only have to travel 200km to meet up in the middle,thereby capturing a large part of the Ukranian army who can be used as hostages if there are attacks from the west.

mopping up inbetween done by ground troops landing furthr to the east in the south and from the north east of dombass were there are already reserve divisions on the russian side of the border.

could be over in days and fairly bloodless

I'm afraid you are right.

Donbas and Luhansk are utterly meaningless to the Russians and cannot be the objective of deploying 75% of their total military forces.

Also really ominous was the slightly crazy speech Putin made yesterday denying that Ukraine is a country at all. Sounds a lot like he's gearing up to deprive Ukraine of nationhood. If not it was just massive overkill that had most Russians cringing, not to speak of Ukrainians.

Another scenario discussed in military circles is an amphibious landing near Odessa. They have been practicing amphibious landings, and the Ukrainians no longer have a navy (the Russians grabbed it when they annexed Crimea).

I do still think that the dirty work will be done with aviation and stand-off weapons, and land forces, if they come at all, will proceed through the ruins, as we did in Iraq 20 years ago.

I believe only Kiev could be the objective. And I think it could well be over in a matter of days, but the risk that the Russians get bogged down is almost too terrible to contemplate -- not actually in the interests of Ukrainians, either.

The risk to Putin is terrible -- Russia is legally a democracy, and although Putin has made it difficult, the Russian public CAN actually throw him out of office, and can actually throw his party out of the Duma. If there is a long and bloody conflict with the Slavic brothers and sisters in Ukraine, I think it will be his downfall.

Message I received in the night from one friend in Russia:

"That's it. The games are over. He recognized DNR and LNR. [untranslatable obscenity starting with "p" which implies catastrophe, the same word which was the famous last word of one Aeroflot pilot just before a crash]. Now it begins. Is he out of his [obscenity] mind?"

I rode to the Riga airport early this morning with a cab driver, an older Latvian guy, who was almost in tears. Had just come from church to pray for the people of Russia and for the people of Ukraine. Like so many people in the former USSR, he has relatives in both countries.

In Riga airport, sat next to a Ukrainian woman and her young son, who was sobbing. She was desperately trying to get back to Kiev, trying to re-route around cancelled flights. Her husband is a Ukrainian soldier. When she found out I was American, she had a lot of choice words [many more untranslatable obscenities] for U.S. policy, going back to 2013 -- "It's YOU who put us in this position!". I couldn't disagree with her. I felt ashamed and didn't know what to say.

It's happening all around me. A catastrophe for the entire region.

[Alan Mighty]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

In Riga airport, sat next to a Ukrainian woman and her young son, who was sobbing. She was desperately trying to get back to Kiev, trying to re-route around cancelled flights. Her husband is a Ukrainian soldier. When she found out I was American, she had a lot of choice words [many more untranslatable obscenities] for U.S. policy, going back to 2013 -- "It's YOU who put us in this position!". I couldn't disagree with her. I felt ashamed and didn't know what to say.

It's happening all around me. A catastrophe for the entire region.

What specific US policies?

Do you/the Ukrainian woman mean something more than the Aegis Combat Systems installations in Romania and soon Poland?

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-St...rget-for-2022/

[goboatingnow]

Ukraine has been manipulated by the west to put pressure on Russia. The buildup of arms in new NATO countries, the constant discussion about NATO and Ukraine and most importantly no attempt to deal with Russias concerns. The West has attempted to kick the former centre of the Soviet Union when it’s down on the floor. This is what Putin regards as humiliating. Remember the same thing Re-energised Germany post WW1

Personally I do not see any full scale invasion of Ukraine. My reading will be that Moscow will not go past the conflict lines.

Putin has probably correctly calculated that Ukraine will not respond militarily to this incursion , but he clearly knows that they will fight if he goes further and his military is not sufficient to comprehensively defeat Ukraine.

Hence I think he’s pulling another Crimea here.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Alan Mighty

What specific US policies?

Do you/the Ukrainian woman mean something more than the Aegis Combat Systems installations in Romania and soon Poland?

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-St...rget-for-2022/

We intervened in their internal affairs, pouring $5 billion into overthrowing an elected government and installing pro-Westerners. A huge amount of propaganda was disseminated promising the Ukrainians the moon in case they would come over to the Western side. Eventual NATO and EU membership was dangled in front of them.



All of this was not for the benefit of Ukraine, something we don't care about, but to turn Ukraine away from Russia. As part of our geopolitical chess game against Russia. The Ukrainians did what we stimulated them to do, and immediately got Crimea torn off and got a jumped up civil war in Donbas and Luhansk as a prize.


Now 8 years later, they are getting invaded by Russia and possibly annexed, with a possibly bloody war, as we stand by and do nothing but scold.


We sold them down the river. Our promises to them were empty -- we never intended to take them into either NATO or the EU, membership in both of which they are singularly unsuited to. All we did was stir up trouble, and then leave them to face the fury of the Russians alone.



More or less the earful I got this morning, and it's pretty much the truth.


The sociopaths in our foreign policy establishment think it's a good result -- Russia now is totally demonized and isolated, condemned by the entire world, NATO countries huddle in fear around the U.S. again, budgets get increased, careers get enhanced, military spending goes through the roof. In their twisted minds, this is a great geopolitical victory. And only those chumps in Ukraine actually paid any price for all of this beneficence.



And it's pretty much the normal devastation we leave behind everywhere. Shall we talk about Afghanistan?

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Ukraine has been manipulated by the west to put pressure on Russia. The buildup of arms in new NATO countries, the constant discussion about NATO and Ukraine and most importantly no attempt to deal with Russias concerns. The West has attempted to kick the former centre of the Soviet Union when it’s down on the floor. This is what Putin regards as humiliating. Remember the same thing Re-energised Germany post WW1

Personally I do not see any full scale invasion of Ukraine. My reading will be that Moscow will not go past the conflict lines.

Putin has probably correctly calculated that Ukraine will not respond militarily to this incursion , but he clearly knows that they will fight if he goes further and his military is not sufficient to comprehensively defeat Ukraine.

Hence I think he’s pulling another Crimea here.

I hope you're right that Putin will stop here. And perhaps he will stop, at least for a while, and perhaps there could even be a diplomatic solution after all.


But you are not right that "his military is not sufficient to comprehensively defeat Ukraine." On the contrary, any match between Russia and Ukraine would be more lopsided than U.S. vs. Iraq in 2003. There are any number of good military analyses available.


The Ukrainians have no hope of standing up for long against a full scale assault by the Russians, which all military analysts agree about. The risk to Russia, however, is that the Russian public will not tolerate much blood -- Putin's political position is more precarious than most people in the West believe. So if the Russians do a full scale attack, there is no question that they will win. The question, however, is whether the price of that victory is Putin's head. It's not even clear the Russian military will agree to go into a bloody, long-lasting conflict against their own people (Ukrainians are not really considered to be foreigners, by Russians). There is fundamentally zero hatred between Russians and Ukrainians.



So the Ukrainians, even if they can't win, could actually inflict a terrible price on Russia if they can even slow them down. And I'm sure they realize that, and I bet that's the main objective of their war plans.


But there are so many wild cards, however -- it is also not clear whether the Ukrainians would fight. That part of the population which loudly proclaims that they will fight and die for the glorious Ukrainian motherland is actually a fairly small minority. A very large part of the population was quite happy, prior to the coup, to be aligned with Russia. There will be people, maybe a lot of people, who don't see fighting worthwhile, will (accurately) see fighting as pointless in any case, and who will see being incorporated into Russia as not the worst thing in the world, and infinitely preferable to a bloody war, even if they would have preferred independence, given the choice.


Anything could happen. Wouldn't it be cool if BOTH armies refused to fight? It's not impossible to imagine.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by letsgetsailing3

The United States has informed the United Nations it has credible information showing that Moscow is compiling lists of Ukrainians “to be killed or sent to camps following a military occupation,” according to a letter to the U.N. human rights chief obtained by The Washington Post on Sunday night.

The letter alleges that Moscow’s post-invasion planning would involve torture, forced disappearances and “widespread human suffering.” It does not describe the nature of the intelligence that undergirds its assessment.


- - - Washington Post



No, we don't do that.

How quickly (conveniently) is Abu Ghraib forgotten.. only exposed because some of the sadists decided to film and share incidences with friends.
How about the covert CIA interrogation & torture sites scattered around the world, the Rendition flights.. 54 countries colluded and supplied facilities.
How about the assassination squads sent to take out targets.. some are publicised for propaganda like Osama bin Laden or the latest in the Middle East, but how many are carried out that are never heard off because its not politically expedient.
Hell.. you even had Hilary Clinton calling for a drone strike on the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to take out Julian Assange..
Pot Kettle Black..
So don't make me laugh anymore.. my stomachs hurting..

[carlosproa]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Sorry, you are just truly deluded about this. One more time: the actual Nazi party, Svoboda, had THREE ministers in the first post-coup government, including the Deputy Prime Minister.

Svoboda's manifesto at one point contained this:

“To create a truly Ukrainian Ukraine in the cities of the East and South…we will need to cancel parliamentarism, ban all political parties, nationalise the entire industry, all media, prohibit the importation of any literature to Ukraine from Russia...completely replace the leaders of the civil service, education management, military (especially in the East), physically liquidate all Russian-speaking intellectuals and all Ukrainophobes (fast, without a trial. Registering Ukrainophobes can be done here by any member of Svoboda), execute all members of the anti-Ukrainian political parties....”

Svoboda was at one time the leading political party in West Ukraine, and was at the center of the U.S.-appointed post-coup Yatsenyuk government.

The Azov Batallion militia group, skinheads and all, are still a major force in Ukraine. SS death heads and the Wolf Rune swastika are everwhere.

The speaker of the Ukrainian parliament for more than three years, Andry Paruby, feted by U.S. Senators, was one of the founders of the Social National Party, which later became Svoboda. He said at the founding cermony, that the Social National Party is "the last hope of the white race, of civilization as such." His Mein Kampf style memoir depicts him in Nazi uniform with pistol and wearing the SS style Wolfsangel swastika. The SPEAKER of the Ukrainian parliament.

You can't make this stuff up.

Then there's the C14 group, named after the white power "14 words", Right Sector -- I could go on and on.

I don't believe that the majority of Ukrainians are anti-Semites or support fascism. But with $5 billion of U.S. aid, neo-Nazis and other kinds of fascists and white supremecists ended up at the center of power in Ukraine after the coup we financed. And neo-Nazis have put themselves at the center of the process of the creation of a national identity for Ukrainians. This will not end well. And we Americans are, of course, criminals to finance and support this.

I think with the election of Zelensky, Ukrainians took at least a small step back from. It would be really good if they would go further and take a BIG step back from that.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-c...-idUSKBN1GV2TY



Bandera doesn't need to be demonized -- he is objectively one of the most odious figures of the 20th century, right up there with Goebbels, Dr. Mengele, and Lenin. He was an outspoken fascist, anti-Semite, ardent admirer of Hitler, and Nazi collaborator, and created and led the organization which massacred hundreds of thousands of women and children in Poland, one of the most brutal partisan/terrorist groups in history. These are historical facts, confirmation of which you can find in Bandera's own writings. Bandera and his henchmen were so brutal that even the Nazis had misgivings about him.

The idea that "[Bandera's] alleged anti-Semitism is now revisited by [revisionist] historians" is also pure mythological whitewashing. There are no "neutral historians"; there are frank propagandists like Viatrovich and Volodymyr Serhiichuk who under the aegis of the Institute of National Memory, have systematically rewritten and whitewashed the history of OUN and Bandera, so elaborately as to include even the writing of entire fake memoirs (e.g. the infamous Krensbakh/Kreutzbach forgery), and then there are the actual historians of various civilized nations who know without a doubt that Bandera's OUN massacred hundreds of thousands of Jews and Poles, mostly women and children, who have the written records of Bandera's frank statements about ethnic cleansing, racial purity, and the need for mass murder. The historical record is abundantly clear about this. This is what actual historians think: https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/122778. No one outside of Ukraine with even superficial knowledge of the history of that time takes seriously this almost child-like mythologizing of OUN and Bandera. The whitewashing of this is similar to Holocaust denial, and uses the same techniques and tropes. Ukrainians will never take there place among civilized countries as long as they keep this up.

A good academic paper on this subject can be found here: https://carlbeckpapers.pitt.edu/ojs/...e/view/164/160
Published by the University of Pittsburg; written by Per Rudling, professor of Lund University in Sweden, and eminent specialist on nationalism.

The historical facts on Bandera are clear. The World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center have harshly condemned and continue to condemn the attempts at whitewashing Bandera and disassociating him from the Holocaust. It really hurts the cause of Ukrainian nationhood and independence, to make a national hero out of such an odious figure -- it's a big mistake. The U.S. will not cover this up forever.

As Rudling wrote:

"Yet, simplistic heroic tales based upon myths, half-truths, and deliberate falsifications have not only resulted in a failure to examine the past. What is worse, distorted, even fictional, narratives are presented as “truth” and scholarly inquiry is derided as enemy propaganda, critical voices are labeled as communists, 'Ukrainophobes,' Putin supporters, or “useful idiots” in the service of Yanukovych and the Kremlin. This logic implies that Ukraine would benefit more from silence, state propaganda, and mythmaking than from critical inquiry. Furthermore, the philo-Semitic narrative of the OUN and UPA constitutes a form of Holocaust 'revisionism'—it denies the OUN-UPA’s involvement in the Holocaust and
divorces it from its fascist and anti-Semitic legacy by means of producing an unrepresentative and factually incorrect version of the organization’s past. It shares with other forms of Holocaust denial the gross exaggeration of relatively insignificant details while it ignores, overlooks, or presents well-documented facts as falsifications. By legitimizing the myths of the extreme right, this narrative has aided the mobilization of the Ukrainian extreme right.

"These myths failed to constitute a basis for national mobilization outside the diaspora and the Ukrainian west. On the contrary, the cult of the OUN-UPA has polarized Ukraine and antagonized its neighbors. The deliberate distortions have complicated the process of historical and political reconciliation among Ukrainians, Jews, and Poles. It has frustrated Poland and the EU and unneccesarily complicated Ukrainian integration into European institutions. Last, but not least, it made it easier for the Kremlin to portray the Ukrainian leadership as irresponsible and politically immature, and to exploit this for political purposes.

"Whereas children—and nationalist politicians—may need fairy tales, the task of the historian is to deconstruct and understand the past. Awareness of the Holocaust, attempts at understanding the mechanisms behind the OUN and UPA’s racist violence, and respect for their victims does not have to be an obstacle to nation-building. On the contrary, an open inquiry of the past is an important component of the building of a liberal democratic society with rule of law, pluralism, and respect for human rights."

Amen to that!

The thing I really do not understand is why spend so much money and time outside the America’s continent and yet allow the whole Central America and South America be run over by Russia and China?

If you claim is because of oil,special minerals, and feed sources - you got plenty of that in Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador. The biggest copper mines in Chile and Peru, and of the biggest bread baskets and cattle in Argentina.
The spread of unchecked “comunism” in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Peru, Bolivia, now Mexico is under way, Chile is under way, Argentina just flipped too… and so on - is a disgrace - take care of your own backyard before you go out there spending all kind of money with little to no political return on that investment.

[atoll]

Good analysis here,in other news Boris has decided to sanction all the Russian Oligarchs who are not Tory party doners,no mention of the £20 billion pounds of UK trade we do every year with Russia.

My money is on every thing going back to normal with Ukraine losing 2 provinces that don't want to be part of Ukraine anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJQ1v-y2tNI

[AlfaGTV]

Putin's view on things: Article byÂ*Vladimir Putin â€�OnÂ*theÂ*Historical Unity ofÂ*Russians andÂ*Ukrainians“ • President ofÂ*Russia
Fascinating read.

[letsgetsailing3]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

We intervened in their internal affairs, pouring $5 billion into overthrowing an elected government and installing pro-Westerners. A huge amount of propaganda was disseminated promising the Ukrainians the moon in case they would come over to the Western side. Eventual NATO and EU membership was dangled in front of them.

All of this was not for the benefit of Ukraine, something we don't care about, but to turn Ukraine away from Russia.

I'm going to guess that the U.S. made investments to counter Russia's moves to install a puppet government. Which is what Russia they did in Belarus.

And now that that's been foiled, Russia is dipping into the playbook for a military invasion.

You don't have to repeat this in every post. We got your opinion.

Oh yeah, the Nazis. No. The Russians are playing the part of the Nazis here, by invading countries because they can.

[hedgeworth]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I hope you're right that Putin will stop here. And perhaps he will stop, at least for a while, and perhaps there could even be a diplomatic solution after all.


But you are not right that "his military is not sufficient to comprehensively defeat Ukraine." On the contrary, any match between Russia and Ukraine would be more lopsided than U.S. vs. Iraq in 2003. There are any number of good military analyses available.


The Ukrainians have no hope of standing up for long against a full scale assault by the Russians, which all military analysts agree about. The risk to Russia, however, is that the Russian public will not tolerate much blood -- Putin's political position is more precarious than most people in the West believe. So if the Russians do a full scale attack, there is no question that they will win. The question, however, is whether the price of that victory is Putin's head. It's not even clear the Russian military will agree to go into a bloody, long-lasting conflict against their own people (Ukrainians are not really considered to be foreigners, by Russians). There is fundamentally zero hatred between Russians and Ukrainians.



So the Ukrainians, even if they can't win, could actually inflict a terrible price on Russia if they can even slow them down. And I'm sure they realize that, and I bet that's the main objective of their war plans.


But there are so many wild cards, however -- it is also not clear whether the Ukrainians would fight. That part of the population which loudly proclaims that they will fight and die for the glorious Ukrainian motherland is actually a fairly small minority. A very large part of the population was quite happy, prior to the coup, to be aligned with Russia. There will be people, maybe a lot of people, who don't see fighting worthwhile, will (accurately) see fighting as pointless in any case, and who will see being incorporated into Russia as not the worst thing in the world, and infinitely preferable to a bloody war, even if they would have preferred independence, given the choice.


Anything could happen. Wouldn't it be cool if BOTH armies refused to fight? It's not impossible to imagine.


Attachment 253362

@dockhead: So far a lot of your analysis and predictions have been spot on. I appreciate your insight and so I hope you will understand it is with respect that I asked this question. You seem to have substantial financial interests in the area we are discussing. Would you say these interests color your view of Russia’s behavior?

I personally think you are simply trying to convey the facts as you see them, but I also see others here who seem to suggest you are a bit of an apologist for these aggressors. Would you care to comment?

[letsgetsailing3]

Originally Posted by boatman61

How quickly (conveniently) is Abu Ghraib forgotten.. only exposed because some of the sadists decided to film and share incidences with friends.
How about the covert CIA interrogation & torture sites scattered around the world, the Rendition flights.. 54 countries colluded and supplied facilities.
How about the assassination squads sent to take out targets.. some are publicised for propaganda like Osama bin Laden or the latest in the Middle East, but how many are carried out that are never heard off because its not politically expedient.
Hell.. you even had Hilary Clinton calling for a drone strike on the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to take out Julian Assange..
Pot Kettle Black..
So don't make me laugh anymore.. my stomachs hurting..

I didnt' forget about Abu Graib. I knew someone would bring it up. It's a fair question.

In Russia, party leaders torture their political opponents, almost as a rule.

The incidents in Abu Graib were absolutely against U.S. and international law. The targets were also accused terrorists, not people who spoke out against the party in power.

The incidents in Abu Graib were also against our law, and were dealt with in the legal system. From wiki:

In response to the events at Abu Ghraib, the United States Department of Defense removed 17 soldiers and officers from duty. Eleven soldiers were charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault and battery. Between May 2004 and April 2006, these soldiers were court-martialed, convicted, sentenced to military prison, and dishonorably discharged from service.

Two soldiers, found to have perpetrated many of the worst offenses at the prison, Specialist Charles Graner and PFC Lynndie England, were subject to more severe charges and received harsher sentences. Graner was convicted of assault, battery, conspiracy, maltreatment of detainees, committing indecent acts and dereliction of duty; he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and loss of rank, pay and benefits.[8] England was convicted of conspiracy, maltreating detainees and committing an indecent act and sentenced to three years in prison.

Sure all that stuff is wrong.

Still doesn't mean we should let Putin slide for killing thousands of people, and invading other countries.

It's not the moral equivalence some folks are pretending.

[letsgetsailing3]

The editors of the Washington Post said this better than I could, regarding Putin's speech last night:

By the time he was done speaking, Mr. Putin had not only broadcast his intent to disrupt institutions that have kept the peace in Europe, mostly, after 1945 but also laid out the ideological basis for launching a war — even if he did not quite declare it. The key point was to recognize two Russian-backed breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine, and thus to discard any pretense of respecting Ukraine’s territorial integrity. More ominous, given his subsequent dispatch of “peacekeeping” troops over the border into the regions, was Mr. Putin’s demand that “those who seized and hold power in Kyiv” cease hostilities, or else “all responsibility for the possible continuation of the bloodshed will be entirely on the conscience of the regime ruling on the territory of Ukraine.” War looming, he had this warning to those who helped oust a Kremlin-backed regime in Ukraine in 2014: “We know their names, and we will find them and bring them to justice.”


Rebutting Mr. Putin’s arguments is almost beside the point — it’s doubtful even he believes his wild accusations about Ukraine as a future platform for NATO aggression — but not entirely. The truth is that Ukraine is a member state of the United Nations, whose security Russia itself undertook to respect 28 years ago, in exchange for Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament. Ukraine has not been waging “genocide” against a Russian-speaking ethnic minority, as Mr. Putin alleged, but defending itself from a 2014-2015 Russian destabilization campaign that created the breakaway regions and engineered the seizure of Ukraine’s strategic Crimean region on the Black Sea. Mr. Putin’s pseudo-history about the kinship of Russians and Ukrainians ignores those facts. His true reason for targeting Ukraine is not Russian national security but to preserve his own power in Moscow, which would be threatened by a successful democratic experiment in a former Soviet republic of Ukraine’s size and cultural importance.

Putin and Russia are clearly in the wrong here. Not the U.S., not the UK, not the EU. This wasn't a noble move on Russia's part, and it had nothing to do with security.

[Rubicon King]

The US moral authority comes at the end of a JASM .it’s tough being the leader of the world, but someone has to do it. I wouldn’t be sailing in the Black Sea for any time in the near future.

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

to suggest after Iraq and the support for a barbaric regime in Syria, That there is (a) An american led liberal world order and (b) that the US has a shred of moral superiority left is simply ludicrous and just massive cognisant dissonance.

I'm not for or against any side, but there is no moral authority amongst any nation on the planet , at the end of the day if they can act they act in their own national interest.



Seriously have you been under a rock , clearly you've not been in Northern Africa, the Middle east , parts of Asia , etc etc etc , "relatively free trade, growing respect for individual rights, and relatively peaceful cooperation among nations'", please give me a break .

Lets not consume our own propaganda, I think we are capable of self analysis , better then that

[Statistical]

Originally Posted by letsgetsailing3

"regime ruling on the territory of Ukraine."

This is an intentional word choice. Nobody uses terminology like that to refer to a foreign country not even an adversary. This is to play up to the Russian population that Ukraine isn't a nation. See Russia can't invade Ukraine (in this false 1984 style rewrite of history) if Ukraine is simply already part of Russia. It would be like the US invading Texas.

There is no point to use language like that unless your intention is annexing and it won't end with these two provinces. Maybe after they digest this territory grab there will be a quiet period but it will start up again. I mean we saw the same apologists making rationalizations about Crimea and how after that obviously Russia isn't going to invade or annex more territory because the goal was just the warm water port and here we are again less than a decade later.

Before Crimea it was Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia has been playing this game a long time. Like the saying goes "how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time."

Sanctions at this point should be kicking Russia out of SWIFT. Russian banks can't move funds to any non-Russian bank. Let Russia start paying for stuff beyond Russia borders by having to haul gold bars around the world.