WASHINGTON—The Biden administration is narrowing its targets for a barrage of economic sanctions against Russia if it attacks Ukraine—hitting major Russian banks, state companies and needed imports, though the strategy faces obstacles that have hindered previous pressure campaigns.
Administration officials said the planned actions are being finalized and are unparalleled in recent decades against Russia, putting teeth into President Biden’s threat to apply punishing financial and other sanctions in the event of a Russian assault.
While final decisions haven’t been made, the officials said, the potential targets include several of Russia’s largest government-owned banks, such as VTB Bank, the banning of all trade in new issues of Russian sovereign debt and the application of export controls across key sectors such as advanced microelectronics.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, meets with Andrey Kostin, president and chairman of the management board at VTB Bank, at the Kremlin in Moscow last November.
Photo: Mikhail Metzel/Zuma Press
Past U.S. efforts to wage economic warcraft have produced mixed results. Iran and North Korea, for example, have adjusted over time to broad economic embargoes over their nuclear weapons programs, though not without ongoing pain for their economies and people. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, the Obama administration went after some energy technology, sovereign debt and some government-owned banks and firms, though their narrow scope didn’t exact deep damage.
Russia is better prepared now, with deeper foreign currency reserves, less reliance on foreign debt, faster economic growth and rising prices for oil—the country’s primary revenue source. Russia’s role as a top exporter of oil and gas and its economic integration with Europe have previously deterred the U.S. from applying broad sanctions out of concern that they would upset global markets and European allies.
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Off the table, for now, are sanctions on oil and natural gas exports or disconnecting Russia from SWIFT, the basic infrastructure that facilitates financial transactions between banks across the world, said one of the officials.
Still, this time around, the administration officials said, the U.S. is doing away with the incremental approach that blunted the impact of the 2014 and other efforts—and instead is moving to prohibit a broader range of activities from the start.
“We would start high and stay high, and maximize the pain to the Kremlin,” a second official said.
(More to Come)
Write to Ian Talley at [email protected] and Brett Forrest at [email protected]
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