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"Dig in" on what?  His massive losses in Ukraine?  The absolute destruction of his country's economy?  The rest of the developed world doesn't care about these things, but they do care about the slaughter of babies.

Europe sees him as the new Hitler, and they're not going to let Russia off the hook with Putin in power.  The fact that they are escalating is enough proof, they're done with him.  And the US will follow Europe on the sanctions,  because quite frankly it's no skin off our backs, we don't even trade with Russia in any meaningful way.

when do strongman dictators ever willingly give up their throne? trying to push him around and tell him he's got to vacate- well I don't see that going over to well imo.

IMHO lifting of the sanctions should be tied to a complete withdrawal of all forces from Ukraine by Russia, not tied to the Russians replacing Putin. 

You want an incentive to end this thing, and you don't want to drag on policies which will only inflame the Russian people (as happened to the Germans post-Treaty of Versailles), and which we know are hurting the Russian people more than Putin. 

What's the point of keeping the sanctions on, if Russia fully withdraws? 

The odds Russia ever pulls out of Crimea are nonexistent I think.  Ever.  Sanctions over time start to ebb, other countries step in, their full force diminishes. 

I'm not sure of this, but we may be in a status quo situation where the "news" barely changes and people forget about it.

exactly my thoughts. the only goal should be making peace and ending the war as soon as possible and saving lives and further bloodshed. not regime change. btw, regime change pretty much never works out for us.

It's not really up to us.  It's up to Ukraine.  And it's up to Europe.

I'm not taking a hard line on removing dickface putin from office (and, preferably, from the face of the earth).  

But I do believe that Europe will.  Like I said, he's widely viewed as Hitler 2.0-- and Ukraine is Poland.  

Congress did pass resolutions approving the first and second Iraq wars

As Mdot has said, sanctions don't often do a very good job of "forcing" regime change.

And it has the chance to cause the Russians to blame US for their problems rather than Putin. Which I'm sure their state media will continually highlight and propagandize.

I realize everyone wants to punish Russia for invading Ukraine... I certainly do. And we want that punishment to continue to hurt, probably beyond the withdrawal, to deter them from thinking they can do it again there or elsewhere.

But a policy of vengeance is subject to the sunk costs fallacy... It doesn't necessarily help the situation going forward to focus on the hurts of the past.

Read my next response.

It's not up to us.

Europe views this as a Europe problem.  Which is what some of us have been begging for all along.

Nobody over there is going to allow another Hitler to stick around.  Pressuring the Russian people via sanctions is the only way to try to enact change, without open war.  And I expect it to continue.

Americans don't understand-- can't possibly understand-- the deep wounds within the European psyche, associated with World Wars on their own soil.

This is precisely why the word "nazi" is still so heavily loaded over there.  And now Russia is viewed across the entire continent as the new nazis, and dickface putin is the new Hitler.  They're not about to let Poland happen again.  

As Mdot has said, sanctions don't often do a very good job of "forcing" regime change.

And it has the chance to cause the Russians to blame US for their problems rather than Putin. Which I'm sure their state media will continually highlight and propagandize.

I realize everyone wants to punish Russia for invading Ukraine... I certainly do. And we want that punishment to continue to hurt, probably beyond the withdrawal, to deter them from thinking they can do it again there or elsewhere.

But a policy of vengeance is subject to the sunk costs fallacy... It doesn't necessarily help the situation going forward to focus on the hurts of the past.

The goal of sanctions is to signal the worlds disapproval of Russia's actions and to give incentive to end the war

It really doesnt matter whether the Russian people blame Putin or anyone else as long as they realize that stopping the war will make the sanctions go away