“It is not a sanction-proof economy, but it is a sanction-resistant economy,” Daniel Drezner, an international politics professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, said of the Russian economy. “The sanctions that would legitimately hurt the Russian economy would also legitimately hurt the global economy.”
The United States and its allies realize they need to significantly ratchet up the penalties compared to those put in place after Putin ordered the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 if they are to have a deterrent effect. Officials have said they’re working with European allies on “high-impact” sanctions that would impose “severe economic costs” on Russia for a Ukraine invasion.
One target would be Russia’s financial system. Those measures could include freezing US assets of large Russian banks, blocking Russia’s ability to use the US dollar, the dominant currency for international…
