Razumkov Centre: About (economic) solidarity of “fraternal nations”

2023-06-14 | Expert publications, Sanctions

By Vasyl Yurchyshyn. 

Imposition of sanctions on Russia (to reduce its ability to continue and expand aggression) was an important component of the economic policy of democratic countries. The unprecedented scale of the planned measures indicated that significant complications might arise at the implementation stage. Unfortunately, some fears were justified, if we look at the efficiency of the countries’ involvement in the sanctions.

We see that the sanctions of democratic and developed countries are a sufficiently effective mechanism to influence the countries that violate or do not properly observe human rights, democratic principles and mutual respect between states. However, the efficiency of sanctions strongly depends on the willingness and ability of many countries to comply with them. If a group of countries for one or another reason is loyal to the sanctioned country, the desired result — weakening the economic capacity of such a country — turns out to be much more difficult to achieve. It should be recognized that this is the case with Russia.

In the spring of 2022 (after it became clear that the Russian blitzkrieg had failed) the IMF (World Economic Outlook, April 2022) predicted that as a result of the war, Russia’s GDP would collapse by 8.5% in 2022, due to direct losses to the Russian economy from the war and imposition of sanctions on Russian by the leading countries of the world. However, the consequences turned out to be far from expected — its economy shrank by only 2.1%, even less than in the year of coronavirus (table “Rates of economic growth in Russia”).

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