How committed is the world to isolating Russia?
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, I find myself exasperated by the international community’s inability to agree on fully excluding Russia from the SWIFT international payment system or to dismantle the numerous disinformation channels that Putin has built up over the years.
Meanwhile, Russian embassies around the world remain undisturbed by anything more than an occasional demonstration at their gates, when they should all have been shut down and Russian diplomats and their families expelled. Russian airlines are still free to fly almost everywhere in the world except the United Kingdom and a few other countries, Russian ships continue to sail unhindered with a few exceptions. The West, apparently, is more concerned with continuing to launder the dirty money of Russian oligarchs than helping Ukraine.
The suspension of exports of technological products to Russia is only partial, while sports sanctions do not prevent Russian teams and athletes from continuing to compete on the international scene, and so on. In a hyper-connected world in which Russia has caused havoc and which now poses an even greater threat, the impression that emerges is that Moscow has the upper hand.
Incredible as it may seem, it is Russia that is threatening to censor multinational technology companies, rather than being pressured…
