On December 20, the Valdai Club hosted an expert discussion in Moscow, titled “Sanctions Against Russia: A Look to 2025”. Ivan Timofeev, the discussion moderator, described the situation with unilateral restrictive measures applied to Russia as “creeping escalation”. Unlike 2022, the restrictions are expanding step by step, relatively slowly. In turn, the Russian market in 2024 actually adapted to the current state of affairs, and the sanctions factor became secondary for market movements as a whole. The problems are now more related to secondary sanctions against businesses from friendly countries, which have seriously intensified this year.
“The avalanche of sanctions that fell on us in 2022 did not lead to a total economic blockade of Russia,” said Dmitry Timofeev, Director of the Department for External Restrictions Control of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. The reason for this is Russia’s role on world markets, specifically commodities markets. Unfriendly countries faced a dilemma, choosing between the political goals of strategically isolating Russia and the negative consequences for themselves. As a result, the West was forced to tolerate Russian exports and introduce sanctions gradually, which made it possible to adapt to them. Pressure on Russia’s partners using secondary sanctions is also only applicable to a limited extent. If it becomes too harsh, it can cause retaliatory measures.
“If the West goes too far, it will isolate itself from the rest of the world,” Timofeev explained. “Therefore, intimidation is more important here than the implementation of threats.” Speaking about Russia’s retaliatory actions, he divided them into three groups: measures aimed at reducing the negative impact of sanctions, measures signalling to unfriendly countries about the futility of introducing new sanctions, and measures aimed at economic development.
Anastasia Likhacheva, Dean of the Faculty of World Politics and World Economy at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, noted that Russia lives without sanctions shocks, having accepted living “in a seismically active zone.” She highlighted the trend toward “sanction parasitism,” – the American sanctions programme finds new incentives by weakening European allies, effectively introducing discriminatory unilateral measures against them. The second important trend that Likhacheva pointed out is the introduction of sanctions by dates, which means a possible new “sanctions salute” in the second half of January. Another consistent trend, which is expected to continue in the future, is the design of sanctions programmes aimed at increasing the costs of any activity that the sanctioning countries consider undesirable – that is, in fact, the costs of normal work.
Arnaud Dubien, Director of the Observo Analytical Centre, analysed the 15th package of EU sanctions. He admitted that the adoption of this package during Hungary’s presidency of the European Union was unexpected and looked like revenge by the European Commission and some EU member states against Viktor Orban. Among the characteristic features of the new sanctions, he named the absence of additional measures against Russian LNG, against Rosatom and against the import to Russia and joint production of seeds, but the presence of measures against the “shadow fleet”, against the circumvention of sanctions and against information activity. According to Dubien, the effect of these sanctions will be very limited, but such limitations will only push the introduction of the next package under the Polish presidency, which will hit not so much Russia as the European businesses cooperating with it.
