Czcibor said:
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I'd say that Ukraine haven't cut the gas supplies not to annoy the West.
I do not mean the gas traveling *through* Ukraine, I mean Ukrainian local consumption of Russian gas. Ukrainian consumption 53 bcm, domestic production 36%, net imports 64%. At one point early this year Ukraine bought
all of its imports from Russia.
I'm not sure who exactly you'd like to support.
Off the top of my head one could go with ethnic groups, e.g. Bashkirs, Chuvashs, Armenians, Avars, Mordvins, Kazakhs, Azerbaijanis, Dargins; or go political, e.g. political opponents of Putin.
Of course there are Chechens that unsuccessfully fought for their independence (regretably my gov haven't officially recognized them when there was a chance for that), but nowadays they are effectively subdued.
Not on my list, nevertheless, see how subdued they remain with western arms and money.
Honestly speaking I don't see recent deal with China as a threat. It seems that it was an expensive political demonstration for Russia, nothing more. Of course China would help them, while demanding high price for that.
Not a threat, but an illustration that some global call for a Russian embargo would go nowhere with the Chinese
We don't need "whole world" support, just the Western sanctions on its own may be quite painful, to show that invasions are quite expensive.
Against even a vaguely democratic, pluralistic society, sure. Against a will to power, a desire to dominate the world structure, not so much. With the latter, watching the limited Russian invasion force be cut to pieces by a Ukrainian army well supplied with western arms might have been viewed as "expensive" to the invaders. Remains to be seen which way Russia falls.
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