All measures taken have a major impact, but Putin does not want to budge. Apparently it doesn't matter much to him that everyone with Russian nationality is now being duped. Because it is now a sanction against Russian people, not against Russia. It should already be clear that Putin doesn't care much about what measures are taken, he will continue to the end. On the other hand, a diplomatic solution seemed impossible, it is a difficult story. You should actually sit somewhere in the middle, banning everything and everyone seems to me more fighting evil with evil and not the solution.
All the sanctions are aimed mainly at Putin's environment. I also believe that Putin is no longer accessible to the suffering of the population and the country in general, but the oligarchs on whom Putin is also dependent. He can overthrow one or two oligarchs and put them in a penal camp in Siberia with mock trials, but he can't do that to all of them. And it is precisely these oligarchs who are very much involved in sports. If you hit them hard, sooner or later you hit Putin, and I think that's the main plan behind these (sports) sanctions.
A perverse plan to be honest. I think few people know people like Roman Abramovich or Alisher Usmanov, they owned partially or completely such unknown clubs as Chelsea, Arsenal, Monaco. This is not counting a couple more English clubs, a league below.
Of course before no one in England or in the europe knew where they got the money from, how they got it, who gave it to them. They just came up and took all money, all billions from oil.
And then suddenly everyone "saw the light" at once. Before that, it was probably not visible all this. It is not visible how the oligarchs bought superyachts in Europe and huge mansions on the coast of Nice. But of course ordinary fans should suffer, whose football was an outlet, but now they have been deprived of it. Oligarchs now travel quietly in Europe. I didn't hear that any of them were badly hurt. When everything settles down, Chelsea and other teams will buy again.
The reasoning of the UEFA and FIFA is different than you think and I must say when I read their statement it made sense to me:
They are saying that Ukraine's can't participate in sports activities right now because they have no administration and no practicing anymore because of the Russian war. None of the Ukraine sportsmen and women is to blame for the war, but they are the one's who can't participate in any competition. It would then be wrong to allow Russians to participate while their country invades another country: It is not against Russians, it is for justice between the Russians and the Ukrainians. There is some more background to that and I get their point. Also keep in mind that Russia is still be dealing with sanctions because of doping and so on. I think it is time to really take a stand against Russian practices in general. Russian sportsmen and women in the future should refuse to participate in illegal practices. I know probably everyone does, but Russia took it way beyond any acceptable limit (if there is something like an acceptable limit at all....)
