That was my first reaction too.

There's a sibling post (by tgv) that makes a decent case for why this is actually good and meaningful, why it actually hurts the Russian propaganda effort, why maybe it'll affect Russian morale. I hope so.

But I do understand your reaction.

The West's response has felt so underwhelming that I have been angry at its apparent impotence. All symbolic nonsense, it feels: "We're going to add Vladimir Putin's name to a list! So that, should he hypothetically want to change some numbers at one of our banks, he can't! That'll show him!"

Like, what the hell is that? Block the man's bank accounts? No, if you weren't full of shit you would "find, fix, and finish" him. Talk talk talk.

There was an interview on DW with the Polish politician Radoslaw Sikorski. DW was doing its usual hemming and hawing (which, let's be honest, I normally like; it tries not to go crazy in any way), but Mr. Sikorski simply minced no words: Germany gets about 1/3 of its gas from Russia and was going like "should we stop buying it? We don't know! It's such a hard decision!", while he, from Poland, which depends on Russia for 70% of its gas, was already going "cut off all purchases of Russian gas; I don't care if it hurts". He wasn't crude but he was blunt, and clear, and incredibly refreshing. You immediately thought: This is the sort of leader we need. Forceful and intelligent.

Poland -- fucking Poland -- had donated Stingers to Ukraine. (Like, to its credit, Britain had shipped Stingers and Javelins.) There! That is at least doing something. And meanwhile Germany, which actually has a significant arms industry, is sitting on its ass and, I don't know, investigating a steering committee.

And even on the front that merely is the shuffling of assets, the West is going, "I don't know? Should we shut off SWIFT? We still need some escalation options...". Dude, the man is rolling goddamn tanks around and killing people; cutting off SWIFT doesn't even rise to the level of proportionate response. You need to have done it yesterday.

Oh, and, if you're publicly saying "we can't do this because we need to keep some leverage", it's exactly equivalent, informationally, to you having done it and had no additional leverage; it is a public admission of impotence. Putin has already priced this shit in.

"You and what army?"

I was reminded of that "physicals vs. virtuals" essay. Yeah, I know it was sort of an apologia for -- well, first, the Ottowa truckers, who may or may not actually be the evil right-wingers Trudeau says they are (now that Putin's using it, this word "de-Nazification" takes on a different ring, no?); and by association, maybe also an apologia for the actual right-wing grifters (Trump et al) who are trying to capitalize on them(?) -- but I still thought it captured something that's been bothering me for a long time. At some point there is reality, and you cannot approach life purely as a matter of public relations and the shuffling of assets.

I found a video on YouTube of a column of Russian tanks rolling essentially-unopposed, single-file, on a bridge across the Dnieper. A few token potshots. What the hell is this? Even I know how you take out a motorcade: You ambush the lead and the tail vehicles so the rest are sandwiched, and then you deal with the rest as you're able. (Or, it's been months, why are there no charges on the bridge? Is this incompetence or some level of strategy above my pay grade: "We'll need that bridge later"?) I guess they didn't have antitank weapons? Is that not itself a failure?

And then I look at the public reaction in the West and it just sickens me. It's all "mourning" (What? The cause isn't even lost yet!!) and "oh my heart is breaking!". Ok, yes, my heart is fucking breaking because Europe is devouring itself again, but are we really so exhausted that all we can do is roll over with the blue-state version of "thoughts and prayers"?

My hope is that the Western powers are doing more than is reported. That the apparent silence is just good opsec. That they simply want to avoid attribution, when facing a nuclear power.

So, fine, sending a flood of HTTP requests might be better than nothing. But I better also start to see some high-level Russians end up mysteriously dead.