Are anti-Russian sanctions working today? The discussion about their cancellation gained new urgency before the inauguration of the newly elected US President Donald Trump.
The Western anti-Russian sanctions, although they “slowed down the offensive,” still did not have the desired effect, Patricia Cohen writes in an analytical article for the NYT. Donald Trump has previously stated that he will not aggressively use this tool. But will sanctions become a bargaining chip in ending the Ukrainian conflict and achieving peace?
Bloomberg writes that Trump’s team has begun developing a strategy for sanctions against Russia and two options are being considered. If the new administration considers that the conflict in Ukraine is nearing an end, then “good faith measures” may be made to Russian oil producers. For example, a soft scenario could mean the Department of the Treasury issuing general licenses for operations with Russian energy resources and raising the price ceiling for Russian oil from the current $60 per barrel.
However, the second approach is to build on sanctions pressure in order to influence decision-making. For example, Trump’s nominee for Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has already stated at the confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee that he would “100%” support sanctions against Russian oil companies “to a level that would bring Russia to the negotiating table.” Bloomberg called Bessent’s words one of the harshest statements from future members of Trump’s cabinet regarding sanctions against Moscow. By the way, Bessent considers the anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the Biden administration to be ” not fulsome enough.”
It is unclear which of these options Trump himself is leaning towards, the agency notes. Although in July 2024, Trump said in an interview with the same Bloomberg agency that he did not like sanctions. “With sanctions, we force everyone to leave us, so I don’t like them,” he said. At the same time, the agency wrote that the Republican was “cool” about the idea of “punishing” Russia for conducting military operations. Trump also hinted that he generally wants to “use sanctions as little as possible.”
Perhaps something will become clearer in mid-March, when the general license of the US Treasury for the purchase of Russian energy resources expires. However, the course towards a truce and partial lifting of sanctions is becoming clearer. Experts from the Japanese newspaper Daily Shincho write that Russia is in a strong and stable position today. Its economy was expected to collapse under the pressure of Western sanctions, but it is more than resilient. This year, unlike in the United States, Russia is not expected to have a budget deficit, and the ratio of public debt to GDP will remain at a low level – about 20%. Trump’s incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz said on ABC that a telephone conversation between the presidents of the United States and Russia would take place in the coming days or weeks. Trump has previously reported on the ongoing preparations for talks with Vladimir Putin.
In short, the mood for negotiations and a truce is becoming more and more obvious, but the ways to achieve it, according to the Daily Shincho, are still unknown. The policy of containing Russia is deeply ingrained in American foreign policy, and easing sanctions can become a tool of the diplomatic game, while Congress is able to limit the president’s actions while maintaining the rigidity of the overall US policy towards Russia. Meanwhile, the leadership of the European Union is very afraid that Trump, after taking office, will immediately begin to cancel all the decrees of the current US President Joe Biden. Including the decrees that imposed sanctions against Russia, the British newspaper The Financial Times writes. According to it, there is a real panic in Brussels right now. European bureaucrats are urgently reviewing all of Biden’s decrees. The lifting of sanctions worries the European Commission even more than Trump’s hints about the possibility of a military takeover (or purchase?) of Greenland.
“Europe is punishing itself,” said Alexander Mercouris, a British military analyst. On The Duran YouTube channel, he said that Europe had done a “very, very good job of punishing” itself. The analyst mentioned at the same time that every anti-Russian sanction imposed by Europe “punishes Europe more” than Russia.
Trump’s special Envoy for Ukraine, Kellogg, faces difficult decisions to resolve the conflict, former British diplomat Ian Proud writes in his article for Responsible Statecraft. The diplomat, who worked in Moscow at his time and knows the situation very well, considers it necessary to admit Ukraine’s defeat, exclude any its possible membership in NATO, force Zelensky to hold elections and leave office, resume negotiations and diplomatic relations with Russia and, of course, lift about 20,000 non-working anti-Russian sanctions.
In addition, for example, China, according to American analysts, is now carefully studying Russian methods of evasion of Western sanctions, writes The Wall Street Journal. In particular, according to the newspaper’s sources, Beijing has long created a special interdepartmental group that studies the impact of sanctions on Russia and regularly prepares reports for the Chinese leadership. The purpose is to study the Russian experience of mitigation Western restrictions. In particular, for this purpose, Chinese officials allegedly periodically travel to Moscow, where they meet with representatives of the Russian Central Bank, the Ministry of Finance and other departments. Russia’s “initiatives to develop domestic production” in the face of sanctions pressure are also interesting for China, one of the newspaper’s interlocutors said.
Sanctions against Russia are generally contrary to international law, so they should be lifted immediately, said Oskar Lafontaine, the former head of the Left Party of Germany. At the congress of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, he called for the immediate lifting of anti-Russian sanctions and the launch of Europe’s most important Nord Stream pipeline, which he accused the United States of blowing off.
Finally, in turn, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has already stated that with the arrival of Trump, a new era begins and it’s time for the European Union to “throw sanctions out the window” and establish relations with Russia without them.
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