Hard-to-find gunpowder is hindering Europe's scramble to provide hundreds of thousands of shells for Ukraine's defensive effort against Russian invaders, with solutions only starting to emerge.
Because it is. Regardless of if there are actual abuses or not is completely missing the point, this is a pattern of abuse from the right where they'll bullshit up a reason for them to do the things they wanted to do anyway. 99.99% of the time the "abuses" are just outright fabrications. Just look at the Uighur narrative; at first the US literally pulled it out of their ass to distract from the very real fascist radicalizing they were doing in the area, and it's been slowly crumbling as more and more of the "evidence" they provided turned out to be complete and utter bullshit. It was never about the Uighurs, these same people are celebrating the decimation of Muslims in Gaza to this day.
but still banning products due to human rights abuses is a good thing.
Maybe for genuine human rights abuses (though even then they can easily do more harm than good), but not in cases like this where bad faith claims of abuse were manufactured to justify the ban in the first place.
Absolutely hilarious how western strategy of trying to fuel extremism in Xinjiang by undermining the economy is now backfiring in a spectacular fashion. Really goes to show how complex modern world is, and that seemingly unrelated events can come together resulting in dramatic consequences.
This is making me reassess Russia's prospects in an all out war with NATO. If they can't supply Ukraine alone as it is, how will they supply a war machine for an entire continent when trade is even more limited?
NATO's strength has been that the USA is in it. European countries have generally let their militaries atrophy since they could usually rely on the USA providing higher level military functions and general deterrence.
Russia would get crushed quickly in a conventional war versus an American led NATO. Russia has a decent shot at winning a war against an Americaless NATO.