Russia is the world’s most heavily sanctioned country, but the measures have failed to deliver the economic ‘knock out’ Western nations hoped for.
One month into the Ukraine invasion last year, President Joe Biden stood in the courtyard of a grand Polish castle and laid out the punishing economic costs the US and its allies were inflicting on Vladimir Putin’s Russia, declaring that the rouble is almost immediately “reduced to rubble”.
The West’s export controls and financial sanctions appear, instead, to be gradually eroding Russia’s industrial capacity, even as its oil and other energy exports last year enabled it to keep funding a catastrophic war. Biden last year called the West’s sanctions “a new kind of economic statecraft with the power to inflict damage that rivals military might.”
Beyond targeting key institutions and economic sectors, the West has directly sanctioned roughly 2000 Russian firms, government officials, oligarchs and their families. The sanctions are depriving them of access to their American bank accounts and financial markets, preventing them from doing business with Americans and travelling to the US, and more.
The US and its allies devoted billions to provide Ukraine with weapons, munitions and other military aid.While there has largely been unity among Western governments on the necessity to punish Russia, there have been differences in the lengths to which countries are willing to go. “Anyone who expects massive sanctions on Monday, and on Tuesday the Russian regime would fall is not reasonable,” Firestone said. “It’s a large economy that has large reserves. It has a large variety of trading partners. What we’re seeing and what the government is saying is they’re on track and it’s seriously curtailed Russia’s ability to operate.”AP
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