Punishing the Wrong People
The US and many other countries have activated numerous sanctions against Russia. The people who are being hurt by those sanctions are not the oligarchs or Vladimir Putin. They all have their money well hidden. The general population of Russia is taking the brunt of these actions. When I was in Russia in 1993, the exchange rate was 1250 to 1. That meant that one American dollar bought 1250 rubles. The impact was visible when we walked into grocery stores and saw one loaf of bread and one box of cereal on bare shelves. People on the street were doing whatever they could just to get enough food to eat. Some had set up makeshift grills on street corners and were selling who knows what. Others were selling vodka by the shot from a bottle they had somehow gotten. When we flew into the airport in Rostov after midnight, we were surrounded by people who had cars who wanted us to "rent" them to take us to our destination. Our delegation had rented a bus to take us to our ho