The Biden Administration is now officially claiming that sanctions were never intended to hurt the Russian economy.
RT:
Mutual trade between Russia and China amounted to nearly $38.2 billion (243.03 billion yuan) in the first three months of the current year, marking substantial growth of 27.8% in yuan terms compared to the same period a year ago.
China’s exports to Russia surged 25.9% to $16.44 billion, while Russia’s sales to China grew by 31% and totaled $21.73 billion, Chinese customs spokesman Li Kuiwen said at a press conference on Wednesday.
In March, China’s total trade with Russia reportedly rose 12.8%, while the country’s total global trade increased 7.8%.
Meanwhile, China’s trade with Ukraine reportedly climbed to 29.6 billion yuan, up 10.6% in the quarter.
If the only purpose of the sanctions on Russia was to severely damage the economies of America and Europe, then this basically amounts to a hunger strike.
“We’ll starve ourselves to death until you do what we want.”
Guilt is the main purpose of a hunger strike.
If the goal of these sanctions is indeed a hunger strike to make the Russians feel guilty that Americans and Europeans are starving themselves, then that should have been announced at the outset.
Instead, the US claimed that the sanctions would destroy the Russian economy.
This will probably prevent the Russians from developing the guilt which is the goal of a hunger strike.
As the US is saying now that the goal of the sanctions was not actually to hurt the Russian economy, I guess they now have to announce that it is a hunger strike, and see if the Russians feel guilty enough to surrender to NATO.
The US can release a video of American gas prices, food prices, empty shelves, and so on – with the Tom Petty song “Don’t Do Me Like That” playing over the sad videos.
Then, upon seeing the video, Putin might say “OMG this is just so sad and pitiful. Okay, NATO can put nukes in the Ukraine and continue to use satanic neo-Nazi gangs to slaughter the people of the Donbass.”
It’s crazy enough that it just might work.