Ukraine
Article reserved for subscribers
Among the sanctions that could target the Russian head of state, that of penalizing him financially as well as his very wealthy cronies is a method that has already shown its flaws.
Make them pay where it hurts, at the checkout. The 27 members of the European Union announced on Friday that they had agreed to sanction Vladimir Putin and his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, “by freezing their assets” abroad. Jean-Louis Bourlanges, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee at the National Assembly, had estimated earlier, on Europe 1, that “anti-personnel sanctions” would be much more effective than the economic retaliation measures against Russia announced so far. The objective is to financially target Putin and his wealthy cronies, the famous Russian oligarchs. Which will probably be easier said than done.
The threat is indeed tempting, but it has already been implemented with very little success since the annexation of Crimea (2014), then the poisoning of Alexei Navlany (2020). Even before the invasion of Ukraine and the additional retaliation that goes with it, several hundred of these oligarchs had already been blacklisted (1). However, most continue to thrive unhindered by Western countries.
In a study by Ifri (the French Institute of International Relations), published last summer…