In the six months since Russian forces started bombarding Ukrainian cities with artillery and missile strikes, the United States and its European allies have stuck with a two-pronged strategy against Russia: provide Kyiv with the military equipment it needs to stall and potentially reverse Russian military advances on the ground, and enact a series of punishing economic sanctions to degrade Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war machine. Multiple sanctions packages have been passed in both Washington and Brussels, the latest being a July 21 measure by the European Union barring the import of Russian gold.
Russia is now the most sanctioned country on the planet — half its foreign reserves are inaccessible, more than 1,000 companies have wound down operations or exited the Russian market entirely, and export bans have grated on Russia’s defense industrial supply chain.
Yet the West is learning that those same sanctions aren’t risk-free, either to itself or to countries that have chosen to take a position of neutrality in the war. There is a critical lesson to be learned, one we ignore at our own peril: No tool, however justified its use may be to punish an aggressor, is without its costs.
