On June 25, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe voted overwhelmingly to fully reinstate Russia to the human rights body, lifting an important European sanction on Moscow in the process. Supporters of Ukraine saw it as a capitulation and defeat.
But elsewhere, sanctions on Russia appear to be more reliable, at least for now. On June 27, the European Union extended a package of economic sanctions against Russia by six months and, on June 20, extended its ban on investments into occupied Crimea for another year.
In March, the United States prolonged its sanctions on Russia for a year. Other major economies such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan still join the EU and U.S. in sanctioning Russia.
While some governments remain committed to these punitive measures, many lawmakers would have them lifted, and expert opinions are divided on how effective they are at reigning in Russian aggression in the first place.
Sanctions — including the exclusion of Russia from international forums and restrictions on major financial institutions, industrial sectors and individuals with ties to the Kremlin — have been in play since 2014. They aim to change Russia’s decision-making and aggressive foreign policy, especially in countries like Ukraine, by ostracizing Moscow and causing economic damage.
“The sum effect of the sanctions regime is that it has robbed Russia’s ability to export capital and use positive financial inducements to buy friends across the region and the world,” says Yuval Weber, an associate professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Daniel Morgan Graduate School of National Security in Washington.
“And that’s the big take-away: sanctions are devastating to Russia’s great power aspirations, but they’re not fatal to Russia or to Putin’s hold on power.”
However, five years after Russia illegally occupied Ukrainian Crimea and launched a war in the country’s eastern Donbas region, the death toll in that conflict rises without foreseeable change, and sanctions do not appear to be changing the Kremlin strategy there.
Sanctions effective?
As Russia’s war against Ukraine drags on into its sixth year, the list of EU and US-imposed sanctions on Russia has grown modestly, even if some experts argue they are still not enough.
In 2014, Russia was expelled from the Group of 8 (G8), a forum of the some of the most advanced world economies, and had its voting rights suspended in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, an institution which shaped Europe’s human rights charter and oversees the European Court of Human Rights.
Some individuals and entities “responsible for action against Ukraine’s territorial integrity” have been subject to asset-freezes and travel bans, with a special focus on businesses in annexed Crimea. Many others have managed to avoid the sanctions, such as by doing business through friends and proxies.
On a more macro-scale, the U.S. and EU have imposed extensive restrictions on some major Russian financial institutions, as well as the energy and hydrocarbon sector, and trade and commerce.
But have these sanctions been effective? The answer to that question is complicated.
Jeff Sahadeo, director of the Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, is not particularly optimistic about sanctions’ effectiveness. He notes that the war in Donbas and the occupation of Crimea have continued unabated.
According to Sahadeo, sanctions may also lend support to a common narrative pushed by both Russian politicians and state-controlled media: that there is widespread “western antagonism” against Russia and its people.
“It’s a very narrow path to tread, and in terms of actually doing what the sanctions are supposed to do, which is to modify Russian behaviour, particularly in Ukraine, they haven’t really done a lot – if anything,” he told the Kyiv Post.
Since 2014, Russia’s geopolitical desires have not changed, says Seva Gunitsky, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. It still wants to reassert Russian dominance — albeit with a newly imposed cost.
“There are two drivers of Russian foreign policy,” says Gunitsky. “One is the desire to be seen as a great power, derzhavnost” — a term that roughly translates to great-powerness — “and the other is to achieve a state of primacy (superiority) in its immediate neighbourhood.”
Gunitsky emphasizes the importance of considering the greater geopolitical environment within which Russia operates when assessing its foreign policy motives. He believes Russia’s actions abroad have roots that extend far beyond the leader or the internal political situation now.
“The point about geopolitical constants is that Russia and the West will continue to see their role differently in Eastern Europe, sanctions or no sanctions,” says Gunitsky. “That doesn’t mean sanctions have no effect — they do change the cost-benefit analysis. But Russia has managed to, at least in the short-term, adjust.”
Economic coercion, according to Weber, has only really worked in historical practice when the power disparity between the sender and the receiver is immense and clearly linked: “here is the objectionable behaviour, here is the pain that we’re going to impose, and here’s your way out.”
The United States is clearly the stronger player, but Russia is far from an insignificant opponent.
While sanctions constitute a “step short of war,” Russia is essentially being sanctioned on its “entire foreign policy,” Weber says.
“If those sanctions, based on an issue that the West doesn’t like, resulted in him (Putin) backing down or ceding the issue, that essentially creates a market for Russia’s foreign policy,” he says. “He can’t concede on any part of them, because that would mean that we would know what the rest of Russia’s foreign policy was actually worth.”
While Russia has seemingly managed to mitigate the effect of some Western economic sanctions in the short-term, by strongly pivoting to China as a new partner, for example, its position as a power on the world stage appears compromised.
“What’s been driving a lot of the Russian foreign policy now is how to restore the vision of being a great power when they don’t have control over a lot of these neighbouring countries,” says Sahadeo.
“The importance of Ukraine for Russia is that, in order to be taken seriously as a great power, you need subordinate allies,” says Weber. “By having Ukraine in Russia’s bloc…that would have meant that Russia would have the ability to deal with Europe on some sort of even level.”
“I think that, from the perspective of Russian officials, what they’re doing is just restoring the status quo… (the belief that) Crimea’s always been a part of Russia – that sort of rhetoric,” says Gunitsky. “Whereas the West, of course, sees it very differently… That’s a very dangerous combination.”
The further integration of countries such as Ukraine and Georgia with the West poses a critical threat to Russia’s maintenance of power and that Soviet-era “status quo.”
Subordinate allies are critical to upholding Russia’s great power status, and its grip has been slipping. But efforts to prevent these former dominions from being free and integrating with Europe has not come at a low price for Moscow.
“Through the annexation of Crimea, Putin has alienated Russia from all post-Soviet countries, from Europe and from the United States – and therefore, now he has to try to shop around the Middle East and China and India, and what not,” Anders Åslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Kyiv Post.
It gets personal
The effectiveness of sanctions imposed on prominent Russian individuals has received mixed reviews.
According to Gunitsky, there has been a shift away from broad sanctions to so-called “smart sanctions,” which target specific members of the Russian regime. They aim to impose pain on the ruling elite without harming the broader Russian population.
“And that’s effective insofar as it’s harder for people like Putin to say, ‘Look, they hate Russia, they’re going after us, after the people,’” he says.
“What this effectively does is to divide the Russian elite into Putin’s elite, that are being sanctioned and can’t go abroad, and the rest of the elite, that leave because they don’t want to be stuck with Putin in Russia,” says Åslund.
Sahadeo admits that individual sanctions pose an inconvenience to the people they are opposed upon. But he doesn’t think that “these oligarchs really have the power or desire to actually challenge Putin…”
“Something like that would wreck their entire foundation of wealth, and it’s not worth it for some inconvenience to challenge the regime openly,” he says.
Next Steps
The EU has added some additional sanctions over Russia’s seizure of three Ukrainian navy boats and 24 sailors as they attempt to pass from the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov by way of the Kerch Strait which will be in place until September 2019.
The U.S. declared in March that punitive measures against Russian individuals involved in the country’s aggression toward Ukraine would be extended into the spring of 2020.
“The question has always been how to sanction and where to sanction,” says Sahadeo. “I think it will be very difficult to see what would influence Russian behaviour.”
“We don’t know how friendly the Trump administration is to Russia, there are divisions within the EU… (and there is a need) for Russian energy in Europe, so there’s always going to be a limit on how deeply they can sanction Russia.”
And Ukraine likely saw this limit in June, when the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, or PACE, voted to restore Russia’s voting rights there, lifting an important sanction in the process.
For Russia, being reinstated to PACE was a clear victory, with Kremlin officials confidently labeling it as the beginning of the West’s recognition of “Russian Crimea.”
Gunitsky says there are tensions between the United States and Europe on the sanctions front, as well as some differences of opinion, but ultimately there is unity in the goal of making sure that Russia does not expand or become even more aggressive.
“The future of sanctions is tied to the future of the Ukrainian conflict and, given that that’s not likely to change drastically at any time in the near future, I think the sanctions aren’t likely to go away.”
For Weber, continuing on the current sanctions path is the best option.
“What are the feasible options? You can either stay the course, be nicer, or be meaner.”
If the West were to alleviate sanctions without Russia altering its behaviour, there would be no reason for Russia not to continue taking territory from Ukraine. However, if the West were to over-sanction Russia without good reason, then it would rob itself of the ability to escalate later on.
“Basically, they (the West) have come up with a sanctions regime that doesn’t dissuade Russia from the foreign policy behaviour that the West finds objectionable. But it also has buy-in across the entire EU, and from Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada,” says Weber.
“The West has basically led a policy that gets buy-in, gets approval, has substantive but not devastating effects, and there hasn’t really been a change in Russian or Ukrainian behaviour since then – so what is the argument to change anything?”
