Abstract
The regime that has emerged in Russia under President Vladimir Putin is no longer only Russia’s problem. By promoting corruption, kleptocratic practices and the violation of democratic norms in Western societies, and by using chemical weapons on their territories and carrying out assassinations abroad, Putin’s regime has become a significant domestic problem for the EU and the US. However, the preventative measures put in place by the West fall short of fundamentally influencing the regime’s behaviour. This article offers some suggestions on how to adjust existing European policy to enable it to more effectively influence the actions of the Kremlin on the international stage.
Highlights
From a political science perspective, the ruling regime in Russia today can best be described as neopatrimonial
In the US the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act has made it much harder to lift sanctions without notifying Congress and giving it the ability to veto the changes. These qualities of the existing sanctions regime led a recent report by the Russian International Affairs Council to conclude that announcements of new sanctions do not seriously affect the macroeconomic situation in Russia, nor have they led to noticeable market fluctuations (Timofeev 2021)
Most policies introduced by the West were not intended to impose serious economic hardship on Putin’s regime but were designed to put long-term pressure on the Russian economy
Summary
From a political science perspective, the ruling regime in Russia today can best be described as neopatrimonial. Western sanctions have so far done very little to seriously threaten the stream of revenues to Putin’s regime. Since September 2016, the Russian government and companies have de facto regained (limited) access to the Western financial markets (Snegovaya 2018).
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