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Net effect? More like nyet effect for new White House sanctions on Russia.

The Trump administration’s ‘meaningless’ new Russia sanctions, explained.

The U.S.'s latest sanctions against Russia have been met with a resounding shrug. CREDIT: GETTY / MIKHAIL SVETLOV
The U.S.'s latest sanctions against Russia have been met with a resounding shrug. CREDIT: GETTY / MIKHAIL SVETLOV

Weeks after they were due, the Trump administration issued a new round of sanctions against Russian companies and individuals on Thursday.

Couched under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) — which was itself passed with massive support from Congress — the roster of targets includes not only Russia’s FSB and GRU, two of the country’s most prominent intelligence agencies, but also the infamous Internet Research Agency, itself targeted in a recent indictment from Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

The inclusion of the Internet Research Agency, along with financier Yevgeny Prigozhin and a number of Internet Research Agency employees, indicates that the administration is taking Mueller’s findings at face value, effectively ending any disputes about the role the organization played in Russia’s broader interference operations.

However, that seems about the only positive impact the latest round of sanctions have so far had. In addition to identifying those already targeted under Obama-era sanctions, the newest list targets neither Russian officials nor any Russian access to American financial institutions. It is, at best, incomplete — and at worse, an excuse not to do more, especially coming on the heels of the recent poisoning in Britain of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal.

ThinkProgress spoke with Michael Carpenter, the senior director of the Penn Biden Center and former deputy assistant secretary of defense with responsibility for Russia, to get his thoughts of the latest round of sanctions — as well as what the newest sanctions might portend for the future.

What was your first reaction when looking over these names sanctioned today?

When looking over the actual announcement and the specific entities and individuals, it’s pretty clear this is just a list rehashing folks already sanctioned under [the Obama administration]. I view this as a completely inconsequential move designed to show that the Trump administration is allegedly doing something — and especially in the context of the Skripal poisoning, it was something designed to show they’re moving aggressively.

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From your vantage, what are the effects of these sanctions going to be on the individuals and companies who are actually sanctioned?

All of the individuals and entities designated today — just as when they were originally designated with the Obama administration — are probably going to escape with zero consequences, in terms of either assets or mobility. And the designation of major Russian intelligence agencies is going to have absolutely no impact, mainly because they don’t do transactions in the U.S. financial system.

Even designating Prigozhin and some of his employees has zero consequences, because these folks probably weren’t planning on traveling to the U.S. anyway, and they probably have no assets here — they all depend on Kremlin contracts inside Russia. So the net effect of this is basically zero.

There’s been plenty of criticism about the content of the latest list — but there’s also the question of timing, not only because of how tardy the Trump administration was on getting this list out but also because of the recent poisoning in the U.K. Do you think the administration was pressured by these events to finally release this list today?

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Honest answer: I don’t know about the timing. These types of sanctions packages are usually put together in advance. But because they’re rehashing so many things from the Obama administration, it could have been a simple copy-paste job. I don’t want to read too much into the timing, but on the other hand someone made the decision to release the list in the context of what’s happening in the U.K.

The impression that this was a copy-paste job — this almost seems like the same approach the Trump Administration took to its so-called oligarchs list earlier this year, when it simply copy-pasted the Forbes list of wealthiest Russians, and also the list of Kremlin officials supposedly close to Putin. Is there some kind of similarity there?

It’s the same playbook. Look — the oligarchs in the report on Kremlin-linked officials were a joke, because they were, as you said, from the oligarch list that was a copy-paste job of Forbes’ richest Russians. Even the list of Kremlin-linked officials was basically lifted from the Kremlin directory. Now, I should say that I have heard that there is a classified version of these reports that has a lot more meat, so there could be additional information in the classified realm. But the question then is, well, if that’s the case, why isn’t the administration acting on that and making more designations?

Today’s list is likely not the last we’ll see of sanctions as a tool for Washington — what more should the U.S. be doing in terms of stronger sanctions?  

I think the most powerful sanctions tool the U.S., and generally speaking NATO allies, have against Russia is financial sanctions. The sanctions against Russia in the financial sector so far have been extremely weak, just debt and equity financing restrictions — but without imposing any full blocking sanctions on any Russian institutions aside from Bank Rossiya, which Obama designated for sanctions after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But Bank Rossiya wasn’t even one of the largest banks in Russia — we still haven’t gone after any top Russian banks. We could also impose blocking sanctions on Rostec, or any of the Russian energy companies, large or small. We’ve also targeted specific types of transactions in the energy sector, including unconventional offshore Arctic exploration, but we haven’t targeted the companies themselves.

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You don’t have to toss the book at Russia in one go, but with these sanctions you could have a significant, in fact chilling, effect.

Is there any reason to think the blowback and criticism today will convince the administration to reexamine its approach to CAATSA, or to add more names to the list?

I think it’s entirely unlikely something like that will happen. I think the administration probably has, and I’m speculating, but I suspect they have a game plan of selectively putting forward incremental additional sanctions of the type we saw today, so as to somewhat stem the demand from Congress that CAATSA be implemented. These are small, meaningless steps to prove they’re actually doing something, but the totality of the moves are essentially meaningless.

The only other thing I’d add is I think there has to be very strong and swift response to the Skripal poisoning in the U.K., because this is just an egregious violation of international norms. I’m glad that at least France, Germany, the U.S., and the U.K. have come out and fingered Russia as the culprit — that is good, quick work to attribute it to the Kremlin. But now there needs to be a significant response. And it’s a vital policy issue that the U.S. needs to help take the lead on.