I’m not saying the sanctions haven’t hurt, rather that when the war was at its decisive point (the first few days) they did not exist/were immaterial. Now they’re just doing more damage in an already damaging (and unwinnable) situation.
The biggest sanctions were adopted after the war started (and then the West kept piling up new sanctions every few months).
Are you suggesting the West should have put these harsh sanctions before the war? My recollection of Dec 2021 and Jan/Feb 2022 were that the West was trying to avoid inciting the crazy Russian dictator: Biden had two tele conferences with Putin in December, there were three meetings in Jan (OSCE - Russia, NATO - Russia, Lavrov - Blinken)
And I do not think the situation is unwinnable for the West (it is probably unwinnable for Ukraine as it will not be able to get its territory back). Russia is getting weaker with every man it loses, every tank is destroyed, every young man/woman who decides to leave. I would be surprised if Western Europe will want to do business with Russia for a generation - which basically makes Russia China's vassal for the same period of time.
Russia will be in bad shape for decades. The West will be just fine.
The West should have put boots on the ground in Ukraine before Russia invaded. That was the one thing that would have prevented the war. Hell, they should have had EU peacekeepers along the line of contact back in 2015.
The kind of sanctions that we've seen since then seem to be mostly about appearances, with EU trying to pretend that it "really cares" despite this epic failure of foreign policy.
I have seen no serious analysis saying that Russia losing the war has been basically inevitable since the first few weeks of the war. Russia is fighting a war of attrition now and has been for most of the war. Most analysis still assess Russia can attrite it's way to victory. Sanctions are important because even if Putin is willing to throw wave after wave of his own men to the slaughter (a million Russian casualties and counting), if they run out of vehicles or artillery barrels, they are kind of screwed.
Russia is hollowing out its male population which was already under severe strain.
Even if Russia ‘wins’ the Ukraine war (takes all Ukrainian territory), it’s even more fucked than when it started demographically.
It’s also spent pretty much all of it’s currency reserves and destroyed it’s normal economy destroying all that ‘new’ land in a way it will be incredibly hostile to productive use for a generation+. Not counting insurgencies and rebellions.
The well is solidly poisoned, regardless of who ends up owning it.
