Member-only story
Are Sanctions Actually Helping Putin?
We welcomed sanctions in the early stages of Putin’s full-scale invasion. Along with sending Ukraine much-needed military supplies and humanitarian aid, heavy sanctions were meant to amend for the mistakes of the European Union’s economic alignment with Putin for the past two decades.
Yet, here we are, questioning whether the energy sanctions have backfired.
The five sanctions packages issued by the EU in the first 2 months of Putin’s mass invasion, were issued quickly and with some effect.
The fifth sanctions package was approved on the 44th day of the war, but it took another fifty days or so to approve the sixth package.
Putin was cut off from the SWIFT monetary system, oligarchs were stripped of their residences on EU soil, and countless companies cut ties with the Russian market.
But the true damage was meant to come from the sixth sanctions package, which would cut ties with Russian gas and oil supplies to Europe.
This was an important addition to the sanctions because, as the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) reported, the EU daily transferred $730 million to Russia, which is roughly four times as much as Russia spends daily on their military. In fact, as of May 2022, the EU had sent Russia more than $50 billion…
