Stricter sanctions against Russia

[Karpatsky]

Travel bans for ordinary nationals is counterproductive, as in my experience, Russians who spend time in the West tend to shake off fairly quickly the government narratives. This would be a good way to close off one of the best ways the West has to introduce democratic values to Russia.

Honestly, at this point what we really need is to get it together to maintain the sanctions we already have, as there is significant political pressure to remove them. Just last month Senate Republicans allowed sanctions to be lifted on Oleg Deripaska, one of the sleaziest Russian oligarchic enablers of Putin's government. If we don't even have the political unity to maintain sanctions on him of all people, we don't have much hope of imposing more painful sanctions.

This said, I read a story recently about a hotel in Prague which required Russian visitors to affirm that Crimea was Ukrainian territory before being allowed to stay. I would love it if more private establishments, and perhaps even museums and such imposed such requirements.

[Karpatsky]

I don't really get it.

First people like Proto downplay Russia's power (in countless threads before, posting songs with verses like "Oh you stupid Russian"), but then they claim they had the power to singlehandedly swing an election in a country of 300+ Million Inhabitants...

So, which is it, are they weak, or all-powerful?

They are conventionally pathetic, but have pioneered a style of asymmetric information warfare which is extremely cheap and extremely effective against their democratic adversaries.

And by the way, no one is claiming that they swung 300 million people - the only reason this is so big a deal is because the US' unique election system allowed the election to be swung on an incredibly small number, ~50k votes in three states. It is quite plausible that Russian info ops contributed to lower turnout or a few thousand votes going the other way.

...which is why the best defense against such influence ops in the future is to have electoral reform to diffuse these efforts out, but I digress.

[Karpatsky]

There was no collusion and there is no reason to impose stricter sanctions on Russia. We should work towards normalizing relations between the West and Russia.

you can't 'normalize relations' with an actor unwilling to deal in good faith