Apply sanctions on an individual basis?
Exactly. ACF has published a list of every single person responsible for the war. Most of them are not sanctioned because they are filthy rich and have already bought themselves passports in various EU countries. Targeting Russian passports does absolutely nothing to them as they can just use another.
Sanctions are to punish the whole country including individuals. Sanctions work because it makes lives of individuals worse so that they have reason to be unhappy and do something against the reasons the sanctions is put on them. It makes it harder for leaders to be accepted, if under their power live gets worse. And if a leader is not accepted by enough of their people, the chances of resistance is bigger. And the countries that have put sanctions on, want exactly that.
This idea ignores how Russia works. Everyone already knows it’s a totalitarian shithole. They just don’t have the means to fight it, so they either lay low and play along, or try to get the fuck out. Sanctions hit the second group, as well as companies that implement them because they’re losing income. In fact, older folk here still grumble at USSR collapse and how effective free reign of capitalism was in the 90s at extracting wealth out of the country.
Even if that idea was to hold any water, straight up blocks are not what you’d need. For example, when I open up a site and I see a block page, the idea that pops into my head is always the same - “what a bunch of assholes…”. I can bypass the block either way, but the difference is that it can say either “blocked by the ministry of truth”, or “blocked because ur russian, haha get rekt”. Given how easy it is to get hit by censorship for innocent things, it’s rather easy to shift the blame, while keeping the business running, by just standing up to the ideas of free speech, like not removing the “celebrating the pride month” logo in that country specifically, like all of them did…
