Russia sanctions at a crossroads as US commitment wavers

Western sanctions against Russia remain consequential but are under growing strain, with American enforcement inconsistencies undermining a regime that has cost Moscow hundreds of billions of dollars since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022.

That was the central message of a press briefing held on Tuesday by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), held to coincide with the publication of a new report by Mihkel Märtens. The briefing also featured Benjamin Schmitt, a senior fellow at CEPA and the University of Pennsylvania who last week testified before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on sanctions and subsea sabotage.

The report, titled Transatlantic Action: Sanctioning Third-Country Enablers of Russia’s War Economy, warns that “the West faces a pivotal moment: the fate of negotiations over Ukraine relies heavily on transatlantic commitment to sanctions and the leverage that comes with them.” Despite sanctions that have, by one estimate, denied Russia access to more than $450 billion since 2022, Russia has exported more than $1 trillion worth of fossil fuels during the same period and, the report notes, “continues to have access to critical goods and technology necessary for sustaining the war effort.”

Märtens described the sanctions landscape as a constant cat-and-mouse dynamic. “Sanctions policy is not a static field. It’s like a constant game of Whack a Mole,” he said. “Russia is constantly evolving and adapting. If sanctions are kept static, they are pretty much doomed to fail in the long term.”

Schmitt was blunt about the Trump administration’s decision to issue general licences allowing the continued sale of Russian oil, noting that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant had stated publicly, three days before the licences were extended, that they would not be. “These sort of signals are really bad in terms of making sure we hold the Kremlin to account,” he said. “It’s giving Putin a windfall at a time that he’s effectively on the ropes economically. This is a dream for Putin.”

On enforcement capacity, Schmitt warned that the sanctions regime was the largest ever deployed in history in terms of economic scale and geographic scope, but was being administered by a workforce far too small for the task. “We don’t have enough people actually doing enforcement,” he said, noting that OFAC, which administers US sanctions for the entire planet across all regimes, employs only a few hundred people. “That’s the secret sauce, where you can actually have it work.”

The report identifies the financial sector as a critical choke point that has not been targeted with sufficient ambition, and argues that sanctions should be paired with diplomatic outreach and off-ramps for those who change behaviour. “Imposing sanctions is not the ultimate goal by itself, but rather a tool to reach a favoured outcome,” it states.

Both speakers concluded with the same message. The EU, Märtens said, had stepped up considerably. “Perhaps it would also be time for Washington to step up as well.”