Sanctioning me, a random non-US-citizen, would have a bigger effect on the world than this.
US Sanctions Vladimir Putin
11–20 of 69 posts
Re: US Sanctions Vladimir Putin
#12Does this really do anything? I read a decently insightful article in the Economist yesterday, claiming Putin's inner circle doesn't have anything to lose, as they have all already been sanctioned by the Treasury: https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/02/19/alexander... .
I don't have a subscription unfortunately so I can't read the full article, but even if US sanctions don't do much, there are tons of other countries sanctioning them now.
The key part is as follows:
> Why then are the people around Putin not scared about possible fallout from a new round of far-reaching economic sanctions? In their eyes, the sanctions that the West imposed to punish Russia for the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas were intended largely to check Russia’s rise. America and its allies would have found a way to introduce them one way or another, they were just looking for an excuse.
> Since 2014 such views have solidified. Messrs Patrushev, Bortnikov and Naryshkin all find themselves on the US Treasury’s blacklist already, along with many other members of Mr Putin’s inner circle. There is no way back for them to the West’s creature comforts. They are destined to end their lives in Fortress Russia, with their assets and their relatives alongside them.
From: https://archive.is/rHcmU
Re: US Sanctions Vladimir Putin
#13Does this really do anything? I read a decently insightful article in the Economist yesterday, claiming Putin's inner circle doesn't have anything to lose, as they have all already been sanctioned by the Treasury: https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/02/19/alexander... .
No since all of Russia can be declared his....
he could lose access to fiat USD/EUROs but his assets are good as gold: Gazprom,Rosneft etc
Re: US Sanctions Vladimir Putin
#14Re: US Sanctions Vladimir Putin
#15Sanctioning the wealthiest person on the planet…
Re: US Sanctions Vladimir Putin
#16No post body was provided.
Re: US Sanctions Vladimir Putin
#17Quoted post unavailable.
Also tells China they can go get Taiwan without retaliation from the US.
Re: US Sanctions Vladimir Putin
#18It's a symbolic thing.
> It is extremely rare for the U.S. to sanction a sitting world leader, and the Kremlin had previously said it would consider sanctions on Putin himself to be a de facto severing of relations between the U.S. and Russia.
https://www.axios.com/putin-russia-ukraine-sanctions-82883e8...
Re: US Sanctions Vladimir Putin
#19Does this really do anything? I read a decently insightful article in the Economist yesterday, claiming Putin's inner circle doesn't have anything to lose, as they have all already been sanctioned by the Treasury: https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/02/19/alexander... .
No since all of Russia can be declared his.... he could lose access to fiat USD/EUROs but his assets are good as gold: Gazprom,Rosneft etc
Yes but if the whole country goes through enough unnecesary hardship (Russians have a tough life) and his manupulative PR apparatus stops functioning he could start fearing for his life. Any of his thugs he’s surrounded by could at some point initiate a mutiny and eventually after failed attempts it could end his reign. Putin is bluffing big time too, he knows it. At the same time he achieved so much power and wealth that he may want to go for a different glory, he seems to want to revive a broken empire, broken in the sense that at some point Russia was looked up and now he’d need to coerce friends into an involuntary hug. Russia is so broken (not defending US, which is on the verge of catastastrophe too) that nobody wants to be their friend beside getting cheap gas. Cheap gas has been one thing to keep Russia from collapsing altogether though, it’s a bargaining chip but not really the best hand in the game
Re: US Sanctions Vladimir Putin
#20It's unknown how rich Vladimir Putin is exactly. It's suspected he may be the richest person on Earth with a net worth in excess of $200 billion however.
Sanctions against Russia are completely ineffective because the US and the EU are unwilling to include things that would actually hurt Russia, namely access to the financial system (ie SWIFT), energy exports (because Germany in particular is dependent on Russian natural gas, the assets held by Russian kleptocrats).
On the security front, the EU woulld never accept Ukraine as a NATO member and the US won't put troops in Ukraine because that would put nuclear powers in direct conflict.
So given no effective sanction options and no military options, the US and the EU should've realized the only way to defuse this situation was to negotiate. Yet Biden categorically ruled out the possibility of formally refusing to admit Ukraine to NATO, something that was never going to happen anyway.
This situation bears some similarity to the US and Japan pre-WW2 actually. The US moved to block Japanese access to oil. That made war all but inevitable. I'm not saying the US was wrong there but it's just a consequence of that policy. LIkewise, leaving the door open to an anti-Russian military alliance expanding to the borders of Russia put Putin in a corner. Putin is still in the wrong here, straight up. But the options are to deescalate or World War Three. Given the invasion it's not much harder to negotiate out of this but what other option is there?
One thing I will say is that on the issue of seizing assets of Russian kleptocrats, real estate has long been a way of hiding money in developed countries. London real estate in particular is awash with Russian money. Maybe it's time we end anonymous ownership of property.