The west's objective is to limit Russia's ability to wage war, do you have another suggestion on how to do this?
If Github and other private organizations and companies want to act as proxies for the US government, NATO and the US military then they ought to expect to be treated as such.
It's hard to keep the facts in order in these days, so just saying:
The action that dev likely suffer from is from a foreign and not his/her government.
And regardless what you and I think, those (and many of the in long past years) sanctions are violating public international law.
What would be interesting thought if there are examples in human history where sanctions have stopped a war. Most of them are done without good examples nor any scientific base it seems, but what do I know?
It is. The whole internet shall be like this. Available only for members. Or as Bruce Lee put it in his movies "This park is forbidden for Chinese or dogs". But they shall not stop talking about democracy and freedom. As an () president put it: It feels good doing it.
Your devs could consider fleeing Russia. It’s gotten harder in the last month, but may still be possible, depending on their financial means. Demographic trends suggest most people that could leave did over the last few decades. That option sucks too.
If they want to blame someone, they should blame Putin.
More interesting is is the side note about GitHub enforcing the crimea sanctions from 2014 (still ongoing) that prohibit, among other things, the export of goods, technology, or services to the Crimea region of Ukraine. It seems that crimea nowadays only has two backbone providers, both routing through russia. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03100247/
Looking at how this could affect civilians in the crimea region it seems their primary problems are ethnic cleansing and oppression of opposition, not access to american services.