U.S., E.U. SANCTIONS ON RUSSIANS AMID UKRAINE CRISIS HAVE
LITTLE IMPACT ON THE GROUND.
“No one will stop
buying oil or gas because of these sanctions”
Russia declines
started before any sanctions were announced.
Targeted
officials receiving rewards for their black-list status
By Michael Birnbaum.
[Here only extracts]
MOSCOW — The sanctions on Russian
President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle were supposed to roll back the chaos
besetting eastern Ukraine. But here in Russia’s blossoming capital, such a
retreat is nowhere to be seen.
Some targets of the sanctions are
sitting down for softball interviews on Kremlin-controlled TV channels.
Moscow’s stock market rebounded Tuesday for the second day in a row after the latest round of sanctions turned out to be
weaker than expected. Chaos is spiraling in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian
separatists stormed a regional government building in the
roiling city of Luhansk on Tuesday. And tens of thousands of Russian troops
remain arrayed on Ukraine’s border.
Russian officials have acknowledged that the sanctions will
affect the economy, particularly the technology and defense sectors. But some
of the targets have rolled their eyes, saying the United States and Europe are
only inflicting wounds on themselves.
Obama administration officials say that Putin may be
hesitant about a full-blown invasion of eastern Ukraine because of the threat
of wide-ranging freezes targeting the banking and energy sectors, which would
wreak havoc on Russia’s economy.
“We believe that [sanctions] can
affect Russia’s calculus over time,” a senior administration official told
reporters in a background conference call this week. The Moscow stock market is
down 13.2 percent for the year, and the ruble is down 7.6 percent against the
dollar — but those declines started before any sanctions were announced.
In Moscow, life continues largely as before…. Ahead of a long holiday that begins May 1 and
for many Russians will extend until after Victory Day on May 9, news channels have
given as much weight to packed tourist flights heading to the newly
Russian-controlled Crimea — an autonomous Ukrainian region until last month —
as they have to the sanctions.
“The gravity of these measures is absolutely
obvious to us,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Tuesday in
an interview with Gazeta.ru, a news Web site. He said they were a “revival” of
a Cold War sanctions regime in which “countries of the West effectively dropped
the Iron Curtain on deliveries of high-technology products to the Soviet
Union.”
Some targeted officials, meanwhile, appear to be receiving
rewards for their black-list status. Gennady Timchenko, who sold his stake in
the Swiss-based oil trader Gunvor last month hours before being hit by U.S.
sanctions, was appointed head of the Russian half of the Russian-Chinese
Business Council on Tuesday, the Izvestia newspaper reported.
Administration officials must also contend with the risk
that sanctions that hurt the Russian economy will also affect those of Europe
and the United States, yet another limit on the speed and power of the effort.
The Monday listing of Igor Sechin, the head of oil giant Rosneft, will
complicate his company’s business relationship with Exxon Mobil, which is
exploring the Arctic region with the Russian company.
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