As of: February 22, 2024, 3:54 p.m
By: Tadhg Nagel
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The USA has introduced new sanctions against Russia - at least officially in response to Navalny's death.
But Washington is running out of options.
Washington, DC – US President Joe Biden has announced a new package of sanctions against Russia.
According to the official account, this is, at least in part, a reaction to the death of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
The US government is trying to appear powerful, although it is slowly running out of leverage.
The package of measures that is to be passed on Friday (February 23) is in fact not a short-term punishment for Navalny's death.
Rather, it has been in the works for some time and marks roughly the two-year anniversary of Russia's Ukraine war, according to US magazine
Politico
, citing three anonymous officials familiar with the process.
Although there were still discussions on Wednesday about adding new sanctions, this was rejected as being too short-term, according to one of the officials.
Joe Biden is running out of leverage against Putin.
© IMAGO/Pool/ABACA
“Devastating” consequences if Navalny dies – What can Joe Biden really do?
As early as 2021, after a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Biden threatened “devastating” consequences for Russia if the imprisoned opposition leader Navalny were to die.
Nearly three years later, the Biden administration is now well aware that it has few satisfactory and quickly implemented options for punishing Moscow.
Nevertheless, the US President announced on Tuesday that “significant sanctions” would be presented at the end of the week.
Three main options, two economic and one military, are being considered by the Biden government - but none of them are certain to be as “devastating” as announced in 2021.
This is what Politico
writes
, citing the three US officials.
Economic and military options - weapons for Ukraine as punishment for Moscow?
On the one hand, the US could both impose further sanctions on Russia and cut off the ways in which Moscow circumvents the current sanctions.
It would be possible, for example, to stop the supply of sensitive technologies to important parts of Russian industry.
Both methods would further undermine the Kremlin's ability to prosecute the war in Ukraine.
The military option would be to supply Ukraine with more advanced weapons on a large scale in order to strengthen Kiev's armed forces in the conflict against Moscow.
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More aggressive and complicated measures are also being considered, according to the three officials.
The USA could therefore restrict Russia's oil exports - also to friendly countries such as India and to enemy countries such as China.
The confiscation of frozen Russian assets to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine is also being discussed.
However, it is unlikely that this will be among the imminent measures, officials told the magazine.
Russia has already been hit with numerous sanctions - how much are they hurting Putin's economy?
However, the effectiveness of such an approach is questioned since the USA had already largely exhausted its range of sanctions after Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago.
“We have taken so many measures that it would be hard to find any, but we will tighten them up — and we should,” Jim Risch, an Idaho senator and the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in one Interview on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
At the same time, Risch admitted that the USA could not exert much more pressure.
Despite the previous sanctions, the Russian economy has proven resilient - it appears to be growing at a healthy pace, at least according to official figures.
After a recession in 2022, Russia's gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 3.6% last year.
The defense industry now accounts for 10% of the country's GDP, and the war economy appears to be in full swing.
This is what the news website DW
writes
.
It is unrealistic to assume that sanctions can bring Russia's war economy to a complete standstill, Agathe Demarais from the European Council on Foreign Relations told the website.
“The reality is that Russia is the eighth largest economy in the world and has enormous natural resources,” Demarais continued.
Nevertheless, the situation could at least be made a little more difficult for Russia.
(tpn)