(Bloomberg) As Russian-backed separatists advance in southeastern Ukraine, the U.S. and European Union are still searching for a sanction that can force Vladimir Putin to stop and think again. More than 1,000 of the Russian president’s troops are operating inside Ukraine, manning sophisticated weaponry and advising local separatists, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said yesterday. The escalation, denied by Russia, prompted a warning of “consequences” from U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said EU leaders would discuss new sanctions this weekend. Map: Tracking the Ukrainian Conflict […]
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The existing sanctions have cut about $1 billion from Russia’s economy, Vladimir Popov, who advises the Department of Economic and Social Affairs at the United Nations, has estimated. Retaliatory sanctions by Russia, he’s said, will have roughly 10 times that effect on the Eurozone.
Still, the U.S. and EU are deluding themselves if they think sanctions will ever force Putin to back down, said Samuel Charap, a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the Washington branch of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based policy group. “It’s second to national survival in the hierarchy of national security priorities,” Charap said. “It’s kind of hard for us to imagine how important it is” to Putin.
