What sanctions did the West introduce against Russia, and did they work?

The United States, the European Union, and allied countries like Canada, Australia, and Japan introduced several rounds of sanctions against Russia in connection with its violation of Ukraine's sover­eignty.

The escalation of the war in the Donbas led to a second round of sanctions in July 2014, which targeted entire sectors of the Russian economy. On July 17 and 31, the United States and the European Union, respectively, blacklisted several Russian energy companies and banks with majority state ownership, as well as de­fense contractors. The United States significantly widened this list on September 11. Targeted economic sanctions restricted access to Western debt markets and technology, specifically in oil exploration and defense-related industries. On February 16, 2015, the European Union expanded its list of blacklisted Russian individuals and businesses once again.

The third round of sanctions had a notable crippling effect on the Russian economy. The flow of foreign investments ceased at once, Russian banks were cut off by Western creditors, and the ruble tumbled. But the Russian authorities appeared to hold fast, insisting that the sanctions could actually benefit their country by promoting self-sufficiency. Russia reciprocated in March 2014 with individual sanctions against some US officials, but more important was its August embargo on agricultural exports from all countries participating in the West's sanctions. This ban hurt EU members in particular.

Although the sanctions undermined the economic security of the Putin regime, public support did not wane, at least in the short run. The state media hammered home the message that the West was trying to bring Russia to its knees, thus associating economic hardships with the external threat, rather than Putin's aggressive foreign policy.

It was the declining price of oil—from US$100 a barrel to US$60 between June and December 2014—that dealt the last blow to the Russian ruble. In December the ruble went into a freefall, leading to a run on banks, panic-buyers flooding grocery stores, and the withdrawal from the Russian market of cars and other valuable commodities that Western companies did not want to sell for rubles. The government's desperate attempts to prevent an economic dis­aster coincided with the renewal of negotiations about the conflict in Ukraine that led to the second Minsk truce of February 2015.

Western leaders have indicated in their statements that a con­tinued peace in the Donbas could lead to the lifting of some sanctions. However, their full retraction, even in an optimistic sce­nario of future developments in the Donbas, is problematic because the original Western sanctions were tied to the Russian seizure of the Crimea, and President Putin has stated in the strongest terms pos­sible that he will never consider returning the peninsula to Ukraine. In March 2015 he even alluded to Russia's nuclear arms as a guar­antee of the Kremlin's newly gained control over the Crimea.¹

In the following years, the United States and their allies con­tinued extending their sanctions against Russia and imposed new ones, notably in connection with the Russian interference in the US elections of 2016, the construction of the Kerch Bridge connecting the Crimea with Russia, and the 2018 incident at the Strait of Kerch. The sanctions were a major factor in the Russian financial crisis (2014-2017) and caused systemic changes in the Russian economy, especially affecting its access to Western funding and advanced technologies. In 2019 the US sanctions derailed a major Russo- German gas pipeline project, Nord Stream 2.