The West’s Sanctions Against Russia Aren’t Working
A year ago this month, Russia launched its full invasion of Ukraine. Core to the West’s effort to deter President Vladimir Putin in the runup to the invasion, as well as to the immediate and subsequent responses in its aftermath, was the imposition of trade and financial sanctions. While sanctions had been imposed on Russia ever since it invaded and illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, they were paltry and limited compared to what was to come in February 2022 and thereafter, which amounted to weapons of economic warfare.
Over the past year, numerous countries, led by the U.S. and members of the European Union, have leveled an unprecedented package of severe economic sanctions on Russia. These range from freezing Russian individuals’ and entities’ bank assets, to banning imports of Russian gas and cutting Russia out of the SWIFT international transaction system. The sanctions are both comprehensive, targeting the Russian economy in general, and specific, aimed at freezing and confiscating the assets of key Russian oligarchs who support Putin.
Nearly a year into the application of these severe sanctions, a natural question arises: Are they working? Unfortunately, the answer is no. If the past year has reinforced any lesson, it is that economic coercion alone is not enough to achieve a policy goal. This lesson should already have been clear from numerous other cases of sanctions that failed to change a targeted country’s behavior, such as the long-standing U.S. embargo of Cuba. Instead, it will have to be learned again in this case. Indeed, given the comprehensive nature of these sanctions, they may well demonstrate the ultimate futility of economic coercion as a foreign policy instrument.
First, it’s not clear that the sanctions are doing as much damage to Russia as was hoped and intended. Sanctions can work as an “economic weapon” by degrading a target’s military capacity and creating economic hardship that pressures a country’s leadership to reverse course on a specific policy or general behavior. Initially, it seemed that both objectives might be achieved with regard to Russia. A widely publicized study by a group of Yale economists in July, five months into the war, characterized the sanctions’ impact as “catastrophically crippling.”
More recent reports, however, indicate that while the economic measures have posed challenges, Russia’s economy “has weathered the sanctions better than many expected.” RAND analyst Mike Mazarr noted that, while accurate economic figures for Russia are difficult to acquire, the currently available numbers are “daunting.” Russia’s trade has recovered to 2021 levels, and the International Monetary Fund projects that Russia’s economy will actually grow in 2023, though only by about 0.5 percent.
These economic figures point to the resiliency of the Russian economy, but also to the fact that the sanctions regime is far from universal. While the West is cracking down on its restrictions, key countries—most of all India and China—continue to purchase Russian energy and could well do so into the future. Moreover, other countries have sought to fill the gap in terms of supplying arms. Most notably, Iran has supplied such a substantial number of drones to the Russian war effort that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy singled out Tehran’s contributions during his speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress in December 2022.
In the case of Putin, economic losses only matter if he himself cares about such losses. He doesn’t.
Second and related, it seems that the Russian public is similarly resilient. According to a recent survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the independent Russia-based Levada survey firm, 80 percent of respondents said that the sanctions did not create serious problems for their families, of which 57 percent said that the sanctions did not create any problems at all. This is why some argue that Russians have “learned to stop worrying and love the war.” Of course, this is in part due to the sanctions not causing the economic harm intended by Western countries. But it also points to a deeper pro-war—or, at a minimum, the lack of strong anti-war—sentiment within the Russian population that will be challenging to overcome with economic pressure.
Third, Putin himself seems unphased by the economic measures. Even if sanctions fail to degrade a target’s military or induce public discontent, they can economically harm the country’s leaders themselves. That is the logic behind “smart sanctions,” which target the assets of the leader or their key supporters. This is an especially valuable instrument when sanctioning nondemocratic regimes, as the first mechanism through which sanctions are meant to change behavior—generating public pressure on the targeted government—will have little effect if the leader is impervious to expressions of the public’s discontent over any economic pain.
In the case of Putin, economic losses only matter if he himself cares about such losses. He doesn’t. Instead, he seems focused on cementing his legacy as the leader who reestablished Russia as a colonial power. He’s likened himself to Peter the Great, the 18th-century tsar who led Russia toward modernization and expanded the reach of its empire. And he is on the record as believing that the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Indeed, as the historian Mary Sarotte has pointed out based on her long study of Putin and Russian post-Cold War politics, the timing of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is no accident: It coincided with the 30th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence. For Putin, 30 years was enough, and it’s now time to reestablish the “glory” of the Russian empire. If Putin is motivated by delusions of grandeur, no financial losses will stop him.
While the sanctions will not be enough to stop Russia, they are having real consequences, just not those likely intended by the West. Russia is turning ever more toward the East and South. The irony of Putin likening himself to Peter the Great is that Peter’s major motivation was to draw Russia closer to Western Europe. Putin is doing the opposite. Western Europe, including neutral Switzerland, is unified in sanctioning Russia. The prospects of greater cooperation between the European Union and Russia are over. For Putin himself, this may not matter. But it goes against the very Russian imperial grand strategy he wishes to emulate.
Additionally, the sanctions are contributing to the trend of undoing globalization’s “Golden Age.” Regardless of how the war ultimately ends on the battlefield, one of its key legacies could be to mark the end of the post-Cold War global economy. This is not to say that Western countries were wrong to impose the sanctions they have or foolish to maintain them. They needed to do something. But the economic pain alone will not be enough to change Putin’s calculus.
In other words, it’s good that the “Free the Leopards” campaign worked, and hopefully the same will prove true for the push currently afoot to supply Ukraine with advanced fighter jets as well. Because winning the war will ultimately come down to real weapons, not economic ones.
Paul Poast is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago and a nonresident fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.