Foley & Lardner LLP partner Christopher Swift is quoted in the CBS article, “U.S. issues hundreds of new Russia sanctions over Alexey Navalny’s death and war in Ukraine,” offering insight on the Biden Administration’s latest round of sanctions against Russia following the death of opposition leader Alexey Navalny.
Swift explained that while the United States has led international allies in the imposition of a barrel price cap on Russian oil, there has been widespread circumvention. Sanctions targeting the energy sector have been less effective than those on the banking sector, Swift said, though he noted that there has been significant effort from Russian oligarchs to evade sanctions.
“There’s only so many yachts that an oligarch can lose before they start finding other places to hide their money,” he commented. But that does not mean sanctions overall haven’t been effective, because they “are designed to make things harder for the adversary; they’re not designed to defeat the adversary,” Swift said.
“The sanctions that the U.S. and its allies have imposed have been highly effective in doing the things that those sanctions are designed to do, which is cut Russia off from the West,” Swift added, pointing out that Russia has simply found other markets. “What Russia has done is it’s just adapted and it’s gone to China and India and Iran.”
