Russia Is Now the World’s Most Sanctioned Country
CURRENT AS OF 7:30 AM ET, MARCH 7
Russia is now the single largest target of global sanctions. The crippling economic sanctions which targeted Iran were adopted over the course of 10 years. The same type of sanctions adopted against Russia have been implemented in the course of 10 days.
Russia is now subject to over 5000 different targeted sanctions, more than Iran, Venezuela, Myanmar and Cuba combined.
Designations in response to Putin’s war of choice target politicians and officials (including Putin himself), oligarchs, major corporations, financial institutions, and the military industrial complex. They are complemented by sweeping sectoral sanctions that have restricted Russian banks’ access to international markets and barred the Central Bank of Russia from accessing foreign reserves held in G7 countries.
Sectoral Sanctions Take Off
In addition to leading in terms of the number of sanctioned entities and individuals, the rapid adoption of sectoral sanctions by the G7 have had an immediate impact on the Russian economy and international markets. Coordinated sanctions block transactions involving the separatist regions were announced even before Russia’s full invasion on 24 February. Immediately after the invasion, sanctions were introduced to restrict the purchase of Russian sovereign debt.
The most severe sectoral sanctions, announced 26 February, now cut off Russia’s government from foreign reserves held abroad and restrict Russian banks’ access to the global transaction messaging system SWIFT. As a result, the government has lost access to approximately 50% of its foreign reserves.
Notably absent, are restrictions on Russian energy exports. The G7 has sought to enable continued financial transactions involving oil and gas exports from Russia. They have refrained from adopting sanctions that would cut off energy supplies to Europe. But, Brent crude prices have already jumped to over $110/barrel in the wake of the invasion and spot prices for gas on the global market rose 10x over 2021 prices. Outside the obvious argument that the spike in energy prices, in fact, funds Russia’s war, there has been little interest in buying Russian oil and gas given the potential for further sanctions.
Who Sanctioned Russia?
Three broad groups of sanctioning jurisdictions have emerged since Russia started its invasion: the expansive, the targeted, and the laggard.
The EU, Switzerland, Canada, and Australia have taken an expansive approach. These countries have all sanctioned the members of the Russian Duma, in addition to targeting oligarchs, banks, and other companies also listed by the US and UK.
The US has thus far refrained from sanctioning all Russian parliamentarians. It has also focused more efforts on specifically naming Russian banks and their affiliates in addition to government officials, Kremlin-linked oligarchs, and their respective families.
Though the UK has been in lock step with its partners vocally, the number of designations implemented by London is only 7% of total EU designations and 14% of US designations. They have even fallen behind Switzerland, which announced a shift in its historically neutral foreign policy and adopted the EU’s more aggressive approach to designations.
Individual Designations Dominate Sanctions
90% of sanctions so far have targeted individuals, with priority targets being politicians, including Vladimir Putin and top government officials, as well as oligarchs and their families. The strategy, as outlined by the US, UK, and EU, is to pressure close associates of Putin and the business elite to extract significant monetary costs for those leading or benefiting from the Kremlin’s foreign and economic policy.
Designations targeting entities have prioritized the government bodies and the financial industry, in line with associated sectoral sanctions. The US has dominated the issuance of entity sanctions since the start of the war, issuing 150 of 332 entity designations since 22 February.
Methodology
This data is updated as of 6 March 2022. Data used to create graphs pertains to designations targeting specific parties (e.g. individuals or entities). Since sectoral sanctions are not list based, they are analyzed qualitatively based on the latest announcements from sanctions issuing authorities.
Most people think about sanctions as “the US sanctions Russia” but sanctions are usually “US sanctions a Russian citizen located in China for hacking financial institutions in Ukraine.” A single action can cover multiple data points, and evaluating whether sanctions are targeted against Russia involves both a quantitative and qualitative approach. To accomplish this, we examined the thematic lists within each country’s list source. For example, Switzerland SECO is Switzerland’s sanctions issuing authority. Switzerland SECO has a sanctions list titled “Situation in Ukraine” which houses Swiss sanctions against Russia.
The data we used to compare sanctions on Russia relative to other countries is based on a list-based approach. It is composed of groupings of sanctions programs from major sanctioning jurisdictions, including Australia, Canada, EU, France, Switzerland, UK, UN, and US. We grouped the lists according to each list’s target country. This approach is appropriate for the broad comparisons in this analysis and shows the magnitude of global sanctions programs.
For example, to evaluate US Treasury OFAC sanctions against Russia, we include some, but not all entries from the following sanctions lists: CAATSA - RUSSIA, CYBER2, ELECTION-EO13848, NPWMD, RUSSIA-EO14024, PEESA, ELECTION-EO13848, UKRAINE-EO13661, UKRAINE-EO13660, UKRAINE-EO13661, GLOMAG, MAGNIT, PEESA-EO14039, UKRAINE-EO13685, SYRIA, UKRAINE-EO13662, and VENEZUELA-EO13850.
In the case of the UK, our data presents entries more clearly than the government’s database. If readers go to the UK’s sanctions search website to see how many entries are listed under the Russia list, they will see that there are over 770 entries (as of March 6). This is the UK government incorrectly presenting data. The UK actually has about 260 sanctions against Russia, but the UK’s sanctions database lists every alias as a unique entry (e.g. there are six entries for Sergey Vadimovich Abisov, even though he is only designated once).
We decided on this list-based approach instead of using location data due to the limited availability of that data across sanctioning countries’ lists. Canada does not include location data in any of its entries, for instance.
Castellum.AI obtains global sanctions information from primary sources, and then proceeds to standardize, clean and enrich the data, extracting key information like IDs and addresses from text blobs. Castellum.AI enriches as many as fifteen separate items per entry. This analysis is based on the enriched primary source data that populates our database. The database consists of over 900 watchlists, covering over 200 countries and eight different categories (sanctions, export control, law enforcement most wanted, contract debarment, politically exposed persons, regulatory enforcement, delisted, and elevated risk). Castellum.AI checks for watchlist updates every five minutes directly from issuing authorities.
