Sanctions Regime Research Articles

Foreign economic cooperation between St. Petersburg and Denmark in the 21st century: Main trends, problems, prospects

Russian-Danish economic cooperation has a long and rich history, in which St. Petersburg, due to its geographical location, has always played an important role. The study of the role of large megacities in national foreign economic policy is now of great scientific and practical importance. The authors of this article attempt to examine the economic sphere of paradiplomacy based on the example of St. Petersburg. The article analyzes the legal framework for economic cooperation between St. Petersburg and Denmark, trade and investment cooperation, determines the place of St. Petersburg in the total trade turnover of Russia with Denmark, and the importance of Danish exports and imports for St. Petersburg’s economy. Special attention is paid to the period 2014–2020, namely, the impact of the sanctions regime on Danish and St. Petersburg economic cooperation, as well as the new role of the Danish autonomous regions — the Faroe Islands and Greenland. The authors determine that there were no drastic changes in the economic interaction between St. Petersburg and Denmark after the introduction of sanctions. Although the counter-sanctions reduced the supply of Danish food products, the export of St. Petersburg goods to Denmark increased. The vacuum created by the reduction in the supply of Danish products was filled by enterprising residents of the Faroe Islands, who are not members of the European Union (EU). St. Petersburg has become one of the key centers of consumption of Faroese fish and seafood. The main obstacles to the development of economic cooperation between St. Petersburg and Denmark remain: value differences between the Russian Federation and the EU, the sanctions regime, an outdated regulatory framework, and a high degree of distrust between partners, which is beginning to affect the pragmatic sphere of the economy. The global economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic also has a negative impact on economic cooperation between St. Petersburg and Denmark. However, the epidemic opens up new opportunities for cooperation in areas that were on the periphery of Danish-Russian economic relations: digitalization of the economy and education, urbanism and the implementation of the ideas of a “smart city”, cooperation in the field of pharmaceuticals and medical technologies, and cybersecurity.

Формирование доктрины и законодательства о правовых режимах банковской деятельности

Introduction: the article presents the results of a critical analysis of the current state of theory and legislation on the legal regimes of banking. Objectives: to build a competitive legal framework for the operation of Russian credit institutions in ordinary and extraordinary legal regimes; to increase the availability of banking services in the Republic of Crimea and the federal city of Sevastopol; to develop the theory of legal regimes of entrepreneurial activities and banking. Methods: the methodological framework of this study is a set of scientific methods where the main ones are the methods of analysis, synthesis, generalization, induction and deduction, classification, interpretation, historical, comparative, statistical methods, logical methods of determining the scope and content of concepts; interpretation of law. Results: the author offers ideas contributing to the emerging doctrine of legal regimes of entrepreneurial activities in general and banking in particular: the paper provides arguments in favor of abandoning the category ‘general legal regime of entrepreneurial activities’; it substantiates the differentiation of legal regimes based on their legal properties into ordinary and extraordinary, with their further differentiation by business areas (or business entities), objectives and the initiator of introducing, regime quality completeness, voluntary or compulsory involvement of business entities, the impact on the business legal capacity, the territory of the legal regime and its validity. There are made numerous proposals aiming to improve the regulatory windows of the basic legal regime of banking and superstructural legal regimes – experimental, sanction and high-alert regimes. Conclusions: the theory of banking legal regimes has not yet been developed, which prevents creating an appropriate, efficient legislative system; active theoretical conceptualization and legislative improvement of all banking legal regimes are required.

Возможна ли верификация снятия санкций как гарантия иранской ядерной сделки?

One of Iran’s key demands before its full return to the 2015 nuclear agreement is that the United States should go beyond just removing sanctions restored by Donald Trump in violation of the deal and guarantee the effectiveness of such measures for the revival of the Iranian economy. In contrast to the IAEA inspections mechanism, there is no sanctions removal verification mechanism or international guidelines on this matter. Having studied publications by experts from Iran and other countries, the authors offer general contours of sanctions removal verification model that consists of three parts: measures by the United States to ease the sanctions regime; list of factors that affect the result of sanctions removal; and economic indicators that can help measure the effect of sanctions removal.

COVID-19 als Herausforderung für die internationale Solidarität: Rechtliches Regime und Anwendung unilateraler Sanktionen im Rahmen der Pandemie

The COVID-19 pandemic, as an emergency situation, challenges the existing system of international relations and institutes additional threats to every individual around the world. This article provides an overview of threats from the pandemic within the United Nations’ concept of international solidarity, demonstrates developments of sanctions regimes imposed by individual states and regional organisations without or beyond authorisation of the United Nations Security Council, and assesses their impact on the enjoyment of different categories of human rights as well as the efficacy of humanitarian exemptions and availability of humanitarian aid.

Concealing Conflict Markets: How Rebels and Firms Use State Institutions to Launder Wartime Trade

AbstractAlthough rebel groups are players on the international stage, little is known about their financial strategies at this scale. Existing research suggests that rebels succeed in cross-border trade by using informal networks that evade state authority. Yet rebels face a critical challenge: they operate in a normative environment that values state recognition and penalizes their illegitimate status. New evidence reveals that rebels can overcome this barrier and better connect to global economies not by evading the state but by infiltrating its institutions. Drawing on unprecedented data—the internal records of armed groups and their trading partners—I examine how rebels use state agencies in conflict zones to manufacture a legal cover for wartime trade. By using state agencies to provide false certification, rebels can place the stamp of state on their trade deals. This strategy of legal appropriation is a fundamentally different model of how conflict markets skirt sanctions and connect to global buyers. I develop a framework for how this strategy works that traces how international sovereignty norms and sanctions regimes create incentives for rebels, firms, and bureaucrats to coordinate around this legal veneer across the supply chain. The framework and evidence contribute theoretical and policy understandings for rebel governance, state building and fragmentation, and illicit global markets.

The Economic Effects of International Sanctions: An Event Study

Although international sanctions are a widely used instrument of coercion, their economic effects are still not well-understood. This study uses a novel dataset and an event study approach to evaluate the economic consequences of international sanctions, thereby visualizing pre-treatment and treatment dynamics in countries subject to sanctions. Our analysis focuses on the effects of sanctions on GDP growth as well as on various transmission channels through which sanctions suppress economic activity. We document a significant negative effect of sanctions on the growth rate of GDP and its components (consumption and investment) as well as on trade and foreign direct investment. Given that sanctions exert their adverse effect over the first years of a sanction episode and that sanctioned countries fail to recover during or immediately after the episode, we demonstrate the usefulness of sanctions as a political instrument of coercion. Long-lasting sanctions regimes, however, may not provide the political incentives needed to force additional concessions.

Media Consumption and Media Behavior of Contemporary Russian Youth as Constructs of Protest Identity

The relevance of the study topic is not only due to the very fact of the unauthorized gatherings in Russia on 24 and 31 January and 2 February, in which many young people, including minors, took part. The protests were inspired by the "Western mentors" of the Russian non-systemic opposition. It is equally important to understand the underlying reasons for the high involvement of young people in the protests in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Western sanctions regime that has been running for seven years. The objective of the study is to analyze the causes, anatomy, technologies, and forms of protest representations of contemporary youth in Russia. The authors focus on the behavioral patterns of young people, the mechanism and content of which are now forming in the Internet space with the help of social networks. The means of recognizing social reality, markers of evaluation and its interpretation by the youth audience, and an algorithm for action are set by the Internet and social networks. Today, in many ways, Western digital giants determine the media consumption patterns, media behavior, and social practices of Russian youth. In this situation, it is important for the Russian state not to restrict access to the Internet but rather to shape a high political media culture among modern youth.

Crisis formation in Russia’s relations with the European Union and the Western community: Prospects for changes

The article analyzes the current crisis in relations between Russia and the European Union (EU) which is part of a more global crisis in the relations between Russia and the Western community that can be analyzed in terms of the Russian-Western “cool war” concept. Firstly, the main trends in relations between Russia and the EU since the early 1990s are analyzed within three main dimensions of their interactions (economic interdependence; political values and institutions; foreign policy dimension) in the context of relations between Russia and the Western community. The article then examines how the current crisis and its key factors (relations between Russia and the EU in their common neighborhood; mutual sanctions regimes established by Moscow and Brussels against each other; transformation of the relations between Russia, the EU and its member states as a result of the crisis) are analyzed and discussed by the Western and Russian academic and expert communities. Specific attention is paid to the issues and problems that are prioritized by Russian and Western scholars, how they have been studied, how the scholars and experts reveal the causes and consequences of the relevant aspects of the current crisis in the EU-Russia relations in the context of a more global confrontational stagnation in the relations between Russia and the Western community. Conclusions are made regarding prospects for any changes in the current crisis of EU-Russia relations, and the factors that could stimulate or limit these changes are outlined.

Bußgeldrecht in der europäischen bankenaufsicht

The imposition of sanctions within the framework of European banking supervision is essentially intended to ensure that the European Union’s policy in the banking sector is implemented effectively to ensure financial stability within the Euro area. The law on fines under banking supervisory derives its authorization from the European Banking Union created in 2014 in general and the so-called Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) in particular. In terms of banking supervision, the supervisory sanctions regime of the EU addresses credit institutions as legal entities. This article demonstrates how corporate groups, being a combination of several legal entities, are nevertheless subject to supervision of the ECB and the national supervisory authorities, and therefore subject to sanctions. For this purpose, in addition to the division of responsibilities between the ECB and national supervisory authorities, this article also deals with the supervisory sanction regime set out in Art. 18 SSM-VO and its norm and sanctions addressees.

The risk of doing business abroad - How to deal with contradictory extraterritorial sanction regimes?

The risk of doing business abroad - How to deal with contradictory extraterritorial sanction regimes?

ПРОБЛЕМИ НОРМАТИВНО-ПРАВОВОГО РЕГУЛЮВАННЯ САНКЦІЙ В УКРАЇНІ В КОНТЕКСТІ МІЖНАРОДНОГО ДОСВІДУ

The article examines the problems of determining the nature and types of international sanctions and their relationship with countermeasures. The term "coercive measures" covers both "sanctions" and "countermeasures", although these concepts are not equivalent. By their nature, sanctions are not a form of international responsibility, but a means of its implementation, as the goal is not to punish, but to restore violated rights. It has been established that sanctions refer to coercive measures that can be applied only by international organizations, and states can take countermeasures to protect and restore their violated rights. Coercive measures that can be used as sanctions or countermeasures are very similar and involve mostly means of economic and political influence. The main difference is in the scale of application and the subjects. Improper use of terms by representatives of states, which denote coercive measures applied to other states, leads to the substitution of concepts and negatively affects the legal regulation of their application. Based on the above and analysis of foreign experience in the legal regulation of sanctions, the following shortcomings of the Law of Ukraine "On Sanctions" were revealed: there is no clear mechanism for introducing international sanctions and national countermeasures, a system of effective monitoring of these sanctions and bringing to responsibility for their violation, a debatable circle of subjects, against which sanctions are imposed. In order to eliminate these shortcomings, it is proposed to legally differentiate between international legal sanctions applied by international organizations and autonomous countermeasures in response to violations of the rights and legitimate interests of the state. Taking this into account, an appropriate structure in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should be established to monitor the implementation of sanctions decisions, as well as involve relevant ministries under the general supervision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. A separate problem is the procedure for bringing to justice those guilty of violating the sanctions. Responsibility for violating the sanctions regime is not provided either by the Law of Ukraine "On Sanctions" or by sectoral codes.

Политика экономических санкций КНР: правовое регулирование и правоприменительная практика

This article aims at analyzing the People’s Republic of China’s sanctions policy. The authors put special emphasis on the review of the current Chinese legislation on countering foreign unilateral measures targeting China. The emergence of a legal anti-sanctions framework in China is a development of 2020–2021, driven by the growing number of sanctions against China imposed by the U.S. and its allies against the background of trade war and global strategic competition. At the official level, Beijing remains vocal in condemning unilateral and extraterritorial sanctions by certain countries as violations of international law. Despite that, even before the current large-scale confrontation with the U.S, Chinese policymakers have used restrictive measures against third countries, though they have been traditionally adopted in an informal and opaque manner. Those measures have mostly been used as retaliation for certain acts of other states viewed by China as threats to its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and they have been specifically refined to maximize the impact on the target country while minimizing the damage to the domestic economy. The growing number of anti-China sanctions by the U.S. and its allies based on special legal instruments prompted the PRC to follow suit and create its own framework for introducing countermeasures and blocking mechanisms, although their implementation procedures still largely remain intransparent. China’s first steps were to officially introduce individual restrictions, but the persisting confrontational trends in PRC’s relations with the West might bring about formal or informal broadening of Chinese restrictions to transnational corporations and sectors of economy and promote further formalization of sanctions regimes.

Trading with Pariahs: International Trade and North Korean Sanctions

For decades, the international community has targeted North Korea with economic sanctions, seeking not only to keep the nuclear bomb out of North Korean hands but also to potentially bring about regime change and weaken its military. However, many in the academic and policy communities have labeled the North Korean sanctions regime a failure as none of these goals have been achieved. Why has North Korea been able to evade the pressure of international sanctions more effectively than other targets, such as Iran and Myanmar? Recent scholarship argues that the answer is largely that North Korean elites are insulated from domestic pressures brought on by economic sanctions. We argue that the failure of North Korean sanctions is the result of North Korea’s network of trading partners that prevents the West from weaponizing its interdependence. In this study, we explore trade and sanctions-busting trends using UN Comtrade sectoral data from 1990 to the present to show how this network of trade has allowed North Korea to evade the pain of economic sanctions. We argue that economic sanctions limit the ability of the US and its allies from incorporating North Korea into their trade networks and in doing so, undermine the coercive power of economic sanctions.

ПЕРСПЕКТИВЫ РАЗВИТИЯ РОССИЙСКО-НОРВЕЖСКИХ ОТНОШЕНИЙ ПОСЛЕ ПАРЛАМЕНТСКИХ ВЫБОРОВ В НОРВЕГИИ 2021 Г.

Norway’s foreign policy towards Russia is built on two pillars. The first is to ensure and maintain national security. For Norway, this is NATO membership and close integration with European states. The second pillar is cooperation with Russia. Norway’s main challenge is to balance these pillars in a changing global environment. After the parliamentary elections in 2021 in Norway, a left-wing coalition came to power, as a result of which there was a change of government. In his statements, the new Prime Minister of Norway J.G. Støre notes the particular importance of an open and constructive dialogue with Russia and the intensification of cooperation between the two countries. Despite the mutual sanctions regime after 2014, Norway and Russia need to establish a constructive dialogue and strengthen relations in areas that meet the national interests of both states, namely cooperation in the North, environmental protection, climate change prevention, nuclear safety, fishing, etc. Recent developments in bilateral relations give some hope that the dialogue between the two countries will be conducted in a more open and trusting manner. At the same time, however, it should be borne in mind that Norway, as a NATO member, will continue to adhere to the general principles of security policy characteristic of the alliance, which may entail significant disagreements on a number of issues, including those related to the prospects for cooperation in the Arctic.

Signaling, Constraining and Coercing in US sanctions policy towards Russia in the context of the Ukraine crisis

The development of the US foreign policy tools in the 20th century resulted in sanctions becoming one of the most convenient means for achieving administration’s goals on the international arena, as well as a useful tool in domestic politics. Institutionally established within the scope of the executive branch, buttressed by the US dominance in the world economy and viewed as a “humane” way of influencing foreign elites, it does not demand significant political capital and, as a result, can be implemented without deep strategic thinking. Current US policy towards Russia is constrained by the framework of the sanctions regime, created by Barak Obama Administration in 2014. This regime is inherently inert and is likely to determine the scope and methods of the US policy towards Russia for the foreseeable future regardless of the priorities of the country’s leadership. This article seeks to study the creation of the regime and explain the logic of decision-making process regarding this issue. Utilizing the approach of Francesco Giumelli, who developed a system of factors to explain the logic of a sanctions policy, the author shows that the US sanction policy towards Russia was framed by the desire to demonstrate the ability to mobilize international community and reaffirm its commitments to the security of the Eastern Europe. Low profile of the Ukraine issue on the US foreign policy agenda as well as low political cost of the escalation towards Russia resulted in sanctions becoming a substitute for a foreign policy strategy and were not accompanied by the analysis of the situation, determination of goals and the parameters for evaluating the success of the policy. The deficiency of such an approach is accentuated by the comparison with the European Union who paid a higher price for its sanctions and, despite a popular in Russia notion of a unified “West”, not only resisted the will of the US, but acted as a deterrent for its actions.

Central Bank Responsibility Area taking Russian Example: Exchange Rate as the Financial Stability Indicator

The paper raises two main questions: the definition of a Central Bank’s responsibility and the need of the exchange rate regulation for the countries with developing, emerging and post-transformed national economies. We also investigate this issue for Russian practice within the period of 1990s till nowadays. The paper provides an overview of the Central bank history, highlighting the stages of its evolution and the corresponding changes in the goal-setting for its activities and tasks. The goals and policy of the Bank of Russia are considered and evaluated in the context of modern international practice and efficiency of achieving the necessary level of financial stability and national economy development, preserving and strengthening economic sovereignty. Generally we use the Bank for international settlements (BIS) survey data processing, the comparative cross-country analysis of BIS statistics and econometric analysis of the data provided by Bank of Russia including exchange rate and investments (FDI, portfolio and other). We alsoanalyzed the main directions of the unified state monetary policy in the Russian Federation and the consequences of its implementation. The authors concluded that the countries of the representative group are more vulnerable to the negative impact of external factors on their national economy under the conditions of free-float exchange rates. The policy of the Russian Central Bank focused mainly on inflation targeting with the freely floating exchange rate of the ruble, is recognized as ineffective for solving internal problems of the national economy and confronting external threats and challenges, including current sanctions regime against Russia.

Sanctions in U.S. - Russia Relations

Given America’s leading position in the global economy, the U.S. government has frequently leveraged that power to punish “rogue states”, discourage nuclear proliferation, promote democratization, and create pressure for regime change. Washington relied on economic incentives in relations with Russia after 1991, but since 2012 the United States has utilized a broad range of economic sanctions against Russian side, leading to a significant deterioration in what was already a troubled relationship. In contrast to earlier comprehensive sanctions like those imposed on Iraq and Haiti, the U.S. is now crafting “smart” or targeted sanctions designed to exert maximum pressure on selected Russian elites and firms. Rather than evaluating the effectiveness of these measures on changing Russian behavior, the author explores the neglected domestic dimension of the U.S. sanctions process to improve understanding of U.S. foreign policy. This article draws on primary sources in the form of Congressional legislation, executive orders, and official statements to analyze U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia, and develops three brief case studies - the Magnitsky Act, post-Ukraine sanctions, and the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act - to explicate the main issues and actors driving U.S. sanctions. The author argues that domestic factors, including Congressional pressures and interest group activity, are critical to understanding U.S. sanctions regimes. While President Donald Trump has frequently resisted congressionally imposed sanctions, expectations for a more conciliatory approach towards Russia under the Trump administration have not materialized.

Fighting Cyber-Attacks With Sanctions: New Threats, Old Responses

This paper contributes to the understanding of why states resort to ‘good old’ sanctions to meet the relatively new threat of cyber intrusions and whether this type of response is a forced measure or an effective tool to halt, prevent and punish attacking states. The tools of analysis used in this paper are legal positivism, and political and economic theories, including Mancur Olson’s theory of groups, Francesco Giumelli’s analytical framework for sanction assessment, cost-benefit analysis and game theory. The authors address the effectiveness of sanctions as a reaction to cyber-enabled activities through the lens of regulation introduced in the US and the EU, which are the most developed counter-cyber sanction regimes, analyzing publicly known cases of cyber-related sanctions.

The Proposed EU Human Rights Sanctions Regime

The initiative for a European Union (EU) human rights sanctions regime that targets individual human rights offenders builds upon an interesting trend set by the United States’ Magnitsky Act. It has the potential to contribute to the development of international law and allow states and the EU to take on a more progressive attitude in relation to gross human rights violations committed worldwide. As an EU-wide initiative, it also has the opportunity to break with the muddled past and set a positive example. To do so, there are several important factors to consider related to the conceptual aim of the regime, its demarcation and potential effectiveness in practice.

From Pariah Image to Partner and Back Again: The EU’s Complicated Relationship with Myanmar

To make sense of the EU’s rocky relationship with Myanmar, we need to consider how Myanmar’s political leadership is imagined in Europe. For decades, this image was bifurcated: on the one hand a military junta with its disdain for democracy and human rights. On the other hand, Aung San Suu Kyi (ASSK), ‘our’ saint-like Burmese ‘Nelson Mandela’, detained but still fighting for democracy and human rights. As a result, Brussels implemented a tough sanction regime and essentially assigned Myanmar pariah status. When Suu Kyi re-joined the formal political process in 2012 and won the 2015 elections, Myanmar rapidly transitioned from pariah to partner. Fast forward to 2017 and relations between the EU and Myanmar had soured again because of the Rohingya crisis and Suu Kyi’s ‘deafening silence’ on the issue. The article argues that to understand this rollercoaster ride of EU–Myanmar relations one must turn to the imagery of Suu Kyi in Europe. The strong cognitive dissonances, created by the widening gap between the imagined ‘saint’ ASSK and the realpolitik ‘sinner’, have impacted on the EU’s relations with Myanmar and can help us make sense of the recent turbulences in the relationship.