Wirtschaftssanktionen gegen Russland

Oleg Itskhoki and Elina Ribakova join host [Steven Davis](https://www.hoover.org/profiles/steven-j-davis) to discuss two big questions about contemporary economic statecraft: How have economic and financial sanctions on Russia affected its economy and its war-fighting capabilities? More broadly, when are sanctions likely to be effective, ineffective, or downright counterproductive?

From the conversation:

>Oleg Itskhoki: What we do in the paper is really separately look at the 2014 sanctions and 2022 onward sanctions. And one can make a case in retrospect that 2014 sanctions were successful in really buying the time, right?

>They were a warning sign, they were quite impactful. They were mostly financial sanctions. Russia was very integrated in the international financial market at the time. They gave time both to Russia and to the West. Russia did use that time to wean itself of the integration into the Western financial sanctions.

>Europe and the US to a lesser extent, took advantage of the time. And in particular, Europe didn’t wean itself from its reliance on energy purchased from Russia, right? But if you in retrospect see it as buying time, those sanctions were successful. 2022 was very different, that’s already full scale invasion.

>And these are sanctions that are much larger in their scope and much more costly as well for the Western countries that impose that. And they’ve been more of a mix bag exactly for those reasons.

Ribakova also notes how the “US has the dominance of the dollar and the dollar-based payment system” and explains the unique leverage that this position provides.

Do you think economic statecraft such as sanctions will play an important role in US policy toward Russia going forward?