They cancelled Russia and the Russian people. Putin just gave a speech about how the Russians are done with the LeftWest.
There is literally NOTHING preventing the Russians from taking reprisals on people like Elon Musk and others who are taking on enemy combatant status with their mouths from what they think is the safety of the West.
If some of these people get rubbed out, what is the West going to do? Cancel Russia harder?
If I was in the position of the Russians, these people would have to start looking over their shoulder.
“West going to do? Cancel Russia harder?“
Exactly. Traditionally Diplomacy had no use for such upfront extremes…outside of declared war. The Mob thinks it is all powerful.
If I were the Russians I would be making a deal with Musk on ways to break sanctions, should it come to that. He is a third party player in effect.
The Russian attitude in, well, everything, seems to be reflexively zero-sum, petty and hostile. And this goes back to old Soviet attitudes, that have not varied even as the system changed. That is vastly stupid.
This may have to do (cause? effect?) with Russias failure to develop manufacturing and export industries, other than natural resource extraction.