In his daily video report to the Ukrainians, recorded on February 18, President Volodymyr Zelensky, despite the obvious fatigue that marks his features and his gaze after a year of defensive war against the aggression of his Russian neighbor, nevertheless rejoiced at the anticipated results of the Munich Security Conference: “Russian aggression will have only one end, namely the defeat of the terrorist state. And we must do everything to hasten the Russian defeat. The pressure of the world must be such that Russia does not have time to find new forms of terror. »
As we mark the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview on CBS on February 18 that China plans to provide lethal support, including weapons and ammunition, to help Moscow in his war against Ukraine; While there have since been 7,199 dead civilians and more than eight million refugees dispersed in Europe according to the United Nations, it is always appropriate to ask whether the economic sanctions imposed on Russia are really effective in hastening the Russian defeat.
Let us recall at the outset that the declared objective of the sanctions is twofold: first, to weaken the Russian economy by also reducing, in a substantial way, the scope and impact of its available military forces. Second, to send a clear political and strategic message to Russia – the cohesion and firmness of Ukraine’s allies is solid. These allies speak with one voice in the face of Russian aggression against Ukraine and its people.
That said, it should also be noted that economic sanctions against a state are generally part of a medium and long-term perspective. Sanctions are not the preferred tool in the short term.
As a revealing example, let us remember that the partial sanctions adopted by the West in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 did not have the expected results; they were too weak to slow down the growth of the Russian economy in a felt and effective way.
Moreover, they did not deter Russia at all from attacking Ukraine again on the morning of February 24, 2022.
The main reason for the failure of the economic sanctions imposed in 2014 is therefore explained by their overly selective and restricted nature. Oil and gas in particular, the main export resources of the Russian economy, were then only very partially affected and without much consequence for the finances of the Putinian state.
Economic disaster for Russia?
Similarly, according to a recent article in The Economist, the severe European and American sanctions introduced in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 were supposed to isolate the Russian economy. However, with only half the world observing these measurements, the reality turned out to be notoriously more complex.
Traders from friendly countries like Turkey, Kazakhstan, India and China are now making it easier to import the restricted goods Russia needs, for a price. Thus, in September 2022, Russian imports in dollars exceeded their average monthly value of 2019. These countries also took a large part of the raw material exports that Russia once sent to Europe with, this time, a sharp reduction .
This allowed the Kremlin to avoid an economic catastrophe. Gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by just 2.2% last year, beating the forecasts of many economists who had been expecting a fall of 10% or more in the spring, which is far to be enough to cripple Putin’s war effort.
Unemployment remains low. Property prices have stopped rising, but there are no signs of collapsing. Consumer spending is weighing on the economy, but not significantly.
In 2023, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) even predicts that Russia will experience growth 0.3% higher than that of Great Britain and Germany…!
In short, this explains why the member countries of the European Union adopted, with difficulty and after close negotiations, on Friday February 24, 2023, the day of the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a tenth package of sanctions against Russia.
This new sanctions package consists in particular of a strengthening of restrictions on the export of goods for civil or military use to Russia and of measures against entities supporting Russia’s war effort and communication, as well as the delivery of drones to the Russians.
The Twenty-Seven pulled off this agreement when they only had two hours left to achieve it on this symbolic date of the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine. To achieve this result, they had to overcome the reluctance of Poland, a follower of a hard line with regard to Russia.
For the European Union, these sanctions aim to complicate the financing by Russia of its military intervention in Ukraine and to deprive its army of the technologies and equipment necessary for its war effort.
These measures also target individuals considered by Western countries to be propagandists for the Kremlin or, according to Kyiv, as those responsible for the abduction of Ukrainian children to Russia, or even those involved in the manufacture of Iranian drones deployed on the forehead.
This new sanctions package also expands the list of banks excluded from the SWIFT system of international payments, such as Alfa-Bank and Tinkoff, and reduces trade between the European Union and Russia by more than 10 billion euros. , according to the European Commission.