I fight because I fight: why Ukraine's approach to sanctions needs change
Kyiv • UNN
Sanctions as an incentive system
War is not only a confrontation of armies on the battlefield, it is also a rivalry of economies and financial systems. Therefore, weakening the economic potential of the enemy is one of the key tasks for any warring party, writes UNN.
In this matter, international economic isolation of russia through sanctions is critical for Ukraine. The accession of as many countries as possible to the sanctions against russia shows the solidarity of the world in supporting Ukraine in its opposition to russian aggression.
The various sanctions against russia as a state entity are designed to limit russia's access to global financial markets, the ability to use its foreign assets, financial revenues to the budget from exports, and to block the supply of components for weapons production to russia.
At the same time, the personal sanctions against representatives of russia's political and financial elite, according to the plan, were primarily intended to be of a more image-oriented nature, so that, at the very least, representatives of this very elite, having refused to support russia's aggression, could keep their assets in European and American banks and carelessly enjoy life in the West.
The Yermak-McFaul Group has done a Herculean job in its almost two years of activity in developing recommendations for the imposition of various sanctions restrictions on russia and its citizens.
As for the sanctions against russia, no one hoped for a quick effect. But the fact that russia buys weapons from its few allies and spends more money to import components for its weapons through third countries will gradually yield results, as its budget is not a rubber budget.
More interesting is the story of personal sanctions, which, as it was supposed, should have had a certain economic effect for Ukraine in the short term. To be more precise, it is not the personal sanctions themselves, but their non-imposition.
"By Day X, an individual may be removed from the sanctions list if - depending on the Category - he/she publicly and credibly condemns putin's war and kremlin policies, suspends payment of taxes to the russian government until the invasion is completed, commits to donating a significant portion of his/her personal wealth to the newly created Ukraine Reconstruction Fund," the Yermak-McFaul Group's Individual Sanctions Roadmap reads.
Let us draw attention to two points: first, according to the same document, the sanctions are not punitive but a coercive measure, and second, there is a clearly stated mechanism that provides opportunities not only to avoid being placed on the sanctions lists but also to benefit Ukraine.
And here, in fact, several questions arise: how many of the people under personal sanctions could actually help Ukraine financially, did they have any influence on the russian autocrat or any relation to russian aggression, was there any communication work with these people before the sanctions were imposed, and is there now?
The paradox of the situation is that, in principle, the rather flexible mechanism of introducing individual economic restrictions, which, in theory, was designed to create a system of incentives, in principle, turned into a system of repression.
Also, we should not forget that we are not talking about Ukrainian sanctions, but primarily about the EU and US sanctions, which are imposed on the basis of the Ukrainian lists.
And on the way out we already have a situation when the European Union recently lifted sanctions on the co-founder of the russian company Yandex.
