Slowly, then all at once.

I actually read up on sanctions. Cliff's Notes: they're the only lasting legacy of the League of Nations as prior to that the idea of economic warfare against noncombatants was considered beastly and inhuman, and 60% of the time, they work 100% of the time, but if you don't try 100% of the time they'll work 0% of the time.

The global question with sanctions against Russia is "how much will the oligarchs put up with." We thought the global question was "how much will the Russian people put up with" but that's outmoded neoliberal thinking that presumes Russia had some semblance of free-market, democratic DNA. I maintain that the State Department has pretty much decided it's time to push Russia over, the only remaining question is how long it will take. The minute we authorized the Defense Production Act for Ukraine it was all over but the waiting. That's pretty much a capitalist declaration of extinction against the Russian regime.

Russia's got a million troops, two million with reserves. Yet they're scraping up "volunteer" battalions of 15,000 retirees and convicts to go steal toilets with Mosin-Nagants. It says something about (1) the flexibility (2) the applicability of the modern Russian military that the Ukrainian invasion has been so loss-averse yet so loss-stricken. Grandpa Joe says the quiet part out loud sometimes.

I guess it comes down to your definition of "crush."