“To be precise, between Feb. 24 and May 30, at least 4,149 civilians were killed, including 267 children, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office. The true numbers of civilian casualties are much higher but can’t yet be fully counted because of active fighting and lack of access to areas under the control of Russian forces, the organization added.
The deaths bring the total number of civilians killed as a result of Russian military aggression in Ukraine to more than 7,500 over the course of eight years. Prior to Feb. 24, 3,404 civilians had been killed in the war in the Donbas, which broke out in April 2014. A vast majority of those casualties occurred in the first nine months of the war, when the fighting was at its peak. Several ceasefire agreements that never fully materialized kept the fighting at a simmer, with each side trading pot shots from well-worn trenches.
Lyman, a once-quiet town surrounded by a forested nature reserve and the bone-white chalk mountains, was once home to 20,000 residents — more than 43 percent of which were ethnic Russians, according to local data — until people began spilling out in recent weeks. It had largely avoided hostilities, save for some street fighting with automatic rifles and grenade launchers in 2014.
Now it’s synonymous with Russia’s brutal new military campaign in the Donbas, demolished homes and shattered lives.
“We can never go back. There is nothing left there for us,” cried a woman brought to the Raihorodok staging area carrying several bags of clothing and possessions, her two young children in tow. “They are bombing everything. Our city is dying.”
Her husband interjected: “No, the city is already dead.”
The family, who declined to be identified, said their home had been partially destroyed in mid-May. They spent nearly two weeks living in a neighbor’s basement with little food and water, no toilet, electricity and gas until Holtsyev and the other rescuers came to pick them up. Everything they had to begin their new lives fit into four duffel bags. Asked about what they would do next and where they would go, the husband tried to speak but no words came out of his mouth; he just shook his head and shrugged.”
“Angell didn’t think that war was impossible, but that it was futile. It’s illogical and uneconomical, even from the invader’s perspective. In a modern, globalized economy, countries do not benefit from wars of conquest anymore. Countries don’t grow richer just because they have more land or a bigger military. In fact, small, peaceful countries like Switzerland and Norway were richer than mighty empires like Britain and Germany, Angell pointed out.
War would be costly even for the aggressor. Integrated financial markets would unleash chaos back home. If you lay your neighbor in ruins, you also destroy your own suppliers and markets. As Mises put it, if the tailor goes to war against the baker, he must henceforth bake his own bread. There’s a cheap way to satisfy the craving for another country’s natural resources: Buy them.
Angell did not deny irrational national passions and the madness of leaders. The fact that Europe’s leaders chose madness in 1914 did not refute his thesis. The fact that no one came out of the war in an improved state rather validates it.
What about the invasion of Ukraine? Does it refute this liberal peace theory? Well, the kind of exchanges in which Russia engages are not the types of free and open trade that enrich a broad segment of independent entrepreneurs. On the contrary, it is mostly trade in natural resources managed by monopolies, controlled by the government. The so-called oligarchs are not so much powerful business leaders as they are Putin’s poodles, safe in their positions only as long as they fall in step and line his pockets.
Despite this, it seems like most Russian oligarchs and businesses were opposed, and remain opposed, to the war, even though they don’t advertise it for obvious reasons. It doesn’t take independent entrepreneurs to understand that upending the relationship with the West would be an economic disaster. An energy system that makes Germany dependent on Russian energy might be terrible for Germany, but it would be self-immolation for Russia to end it.
It seems like the really enthusiastic pro-war constituency in Russia (before February 24) was limited to one man, give or take. And that’s precisely what Kant had in mind when he wrote that the spirit of commerce is not enough to deter the spirit of war, you also need republican institutions that channel that spirit and bind leaders.
In a despotic state, wrote Kant, thinking of all the Putin-like leaders of the late 18th century, the ruler is not affected by doux commerce. While the people suffer, “he goes on enjoying the delights of his table or sport, or of his pleasure palaces and gala days. He can therefore decide on war for the most trifling reasons, as if it were a kind of pleasure party.”
This is a reason why Thomas Friedman’s bastardized liberal peace theory—that countries with a McDonald’s don’t wage war on each other—has fared slightly less well. You can order a Big Mac without a side order of free markets and rule of law.”
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“We are in the longest stretch of peace between major powers for 1,800 years, the old archenemies France and Germany almost cozy up too much to one another, and Putin’s invasion is the first attempt to launch a major war of conquest since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. In a world where peace used to be just a brief interlude while everybody rearmed, something has gone right in the post–World War II era. If you want the whole story, read Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature, but clearly doux commerce has something to do with it.
Proximity and interdependence are not always deterrents, especially if different groups share one pool of resources that they all want the largest share of. Additionally, not all cultures and communities are happily harmonious, and civil wars are often the most vicious. However, the general relationship between trade and peace is a strong one.”
“”Under an amendment adopted on 4 March, any Russian or foreign person can be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison for spreading ‘false information’ about the Russian armed forces,” Reporters Without Borders notes. “Under another law passed on 22 March, ‘false information’ about the activities of ‘Russian state bodies’ operating abroad – including the presidency, executive, parliament, national guard and Federal Security Service (FSB) – is also punishable by up to 15 years in prison.”
So, war gave Russian authorities expanded leeway to muzzle dissidents and prod a public already inclined to rally around their leaders. But if war arouses tribal instincts among the aggressors, it does so no less among the aggrieved. Under existential threat, Ukrainians understandably lose patience for those in their midst who are sympathetic to Russia or are suspected of undermining defense efforts.
“Eleven Ukrainian political parties have been suspended because of their links with Russia,” The Guardian reported last month. “The country’s national security and defence council took the decision to ban the parties from any political activity. Most of the parties affected were small, but one of them, the Opposition Platform for Life, has 44 seats in the 450-seat Ukrainian parliament.”
The Opposition Platform for Life had reportedly denounced the invasion, but it was undoubtedly pro-Russian in its sympathies and highly suspect in a situation where Ukraine’s continued existence is at risk. It was suspended under the provisions of martial law, which was extended on April 21 through May 25, and can probably be expected to remain in place throughout the war.
But it’s not just lawmakers. As open warfare became increasingly likely, the Ukrainian government banned media suspected of sympathizing with the enemy.
“Three pro-Russian TV channels have gone off the air in Kyiv after pro-Western President Volodymyr Zelenskiy signed a Ukrainian security council decree imposing sanctions for five years on eight media and TV companies,” Germany’s Deutsche Welle reported on February 5.
Then, in March, the Ukrainian government forcibly merged all TV stations under state control.
“The move means the end, at least temporarily, of privately owned Ukrainian media outlets in that country,” Deadline observed.”
“The point of sanctioning is that, if we don’t, the norm against territorial incursions will collapse. Preserving this norm — and working to prevent similar abuses in the future — is worth the cost of sanctioning. But why is norm collapse an inexorable consequence of failing to sanction? Fortunately, a bit of game theory can help us answer this question.
Let’s call this the Repeated Sanctions Game, which has two players. In each round of the game, Player 1 (i.e., an adversary such as Putin) chooses whether to transgress, then Player 2 (i.e., NATO) chooses whether to sanction. Transgressing benefits Player 1 (Putin would like to annex Ukraine) but costs Player 2 (NATO would prefer that Ukraine be free). As in real life, sanctioning is costly not just to Player 1 but also to Player 2, who might prefer not to, for example, suffer higher prices or lose revenue from Player 1’s products and businesses as a result. Then Player 2 plays the game again and again — perhaps with the same Player 1, perhaps with another (Putin now, maybe Xi next time).
For Player 2 to deter future transgressions in this game, she would have to threaten to sanction Player 1 whenever he transgresses. This threat has to be credible, otherwise Player 1 will simply call Player 2’s bluff. Player 2 must, if called upon, reliably follow through on her threat.
How can this be worth it for Player 2, given that, as already acknowledged, sanctioning is costly? To see, we must factor future expectations into the cost-benefit calculation. When a transgression isn’t met with sanctions, everyone would reasonably expect that future transgressions may also go unpunished. This is the norm collapsing. So long as Player 2 cares enough about the costs of all those future transgressions, she’ll prefer the collateral costs of punishing the transgressor today to increasing the likelihood of future transgressions. It’s not preventing or stopping the current transgression that’s motivating Player 2 to sanction, it’s the fact that without sanctions as a response, there will inevitably be more transgressions.”
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“what the international community is really trying to avoid is other, more rational actors, such as Putin’s eventual successor or Xi, inferring that future invasions will not be punished.”
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“So, yes, it’s true that sanctions will hurt our economy, and it’s true that they may even push Putin to further escalate Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. That’s all really bad, but it’s not as bad as a future where national sovereignty is not respected. For the norm against territorial incursion to survive, everyone must forever know that we are willing to pay the cost to sanction.”
“The United States and its allies imposed unprecedented economic sanctions on Russia in the wake of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The swiftness and intensity of the penalties crashed the ruble, forced the Russian stock market to close, and sent Russians to line up at ATMs to withdraw dollars from their bank accounts.
The Russian economy was in free fall. Until it wasn’t, exactly.
The country’s central bank responded by sharply hiking interest rates to 20 percent and imposing strict capital controls. Those interventions, along with Russia’s still-intact ability to sell its oil and gas abroad, helped create a buffer against the economic chaos after the initial sanctions shock. The measures were “straight out of the country’s economic crisis playbook,” said Adam Smith, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, who worked on sanctions during the Obama administration.
The economic crisis playbook did its job, and calmed the immediate crisis. The ruble stabilized. That allowed Russia to declare victory over the sanctions onslaught. “The strategy of the economic blitz has failed,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in April.
At least, that is what Russia would like to claim. Russia’s efforts to shore up its currency mask the profound economic disruptions and transformations that sanctions are unleashing within Russia right now. The West’s sanctions are isolating Russia, cutting it off from key imports that it needs for commercial goods and its own manufacturing to make its economy work. That means high-tech imports like microchips, to develop advanced weaponry. But it also means buttons for shirts.
Right now, there is “this false sense of stability,” said Maria Shagina, a visiting fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
Russia is facing a deep recession, one the Bank of Russia says will be “of a transformational, structural nature.” The Finance Ministry has predicted the Russian GDP will shrink by about 8.8 percent in 2022. Inflation is expected to clock in as high as 23 percent this year. Russia is looking at a looming debt default. All of this will mean hardship for ordinary Russians, who are already seeing their real incomes shrink. Some tens of thousands have tried to flee, especially those in tech, prompting a potential “brain drain.” And these are the things we know; Russia will cease publishing a lot of economic data, a tactic, experts said, Moscow has used before to obscure the effects of sanctions.
These sanctions, said Yakov Feygin, a political economy expert at the Berggruen Institute, are pushing Russia — a modern economy, integrated around the globe — back decades and decades.
“They’ve stabilized it, they’ve taken emergency measures. That was to be expected. But that’s not going to help them in the long run,” Feygin said of Russia. “You’re not going to see people queuing for food for quite a bit. But with the current course of things, it’s still very possible.”
The US and European allies have continued to pile on more penalties, refining and sharpening the sanctions, all in an effort to ratchet up the pressure on Moscow. The EU has proposed a phase-out of Russian oil products, and depending on the final details, that might further erode the Kremlin’s lifeline. And the US could take additional steps, like threatening secondary sanctions that go after countries like China or India, to deter them from buying cheap Russian energy. That comes at a cost, and not just for Russia.
Even without more escalation, the sanctions regime against Russia is one of the most aggressive in history, untested on an economy of Russia’s size and as entangled in the global financial system.
Whether the sanctions are “working,” then, depends on what they are intended to achieve. One thing is clear: Over time, these sanctions will likely make it harder for Russia to rebuild its tanks, manufacture cruise missiles, and finance a war. It will also make it harder to produce food and make cars. And it still may not stop Russia from pursuing its campaign against Ukraine, all with unpredictable consequences for the rest of the world.”