The American daily argued that disappointment is growing among member states of the alliance, which is imposing sanctions on Russia, writing that four months after the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, numerous sanctions could not stop the war or change Russia's status.
The newspaper reported that US officials vowed that Russia’s financial system would be battered if it attacked Ukraine, and President Biden boasted in March that sanctions were “crushing the Russian economy” and that “the ruble is reduced to rubble.” But Russian oil revenues have set records as crude prices surge. And after plunging in February, the ruble hit a seven-year high against the dollar this week.
“Russia’s financial system is back to business as usual after a few weeks of severe bank runs,” Elina Ribakova, deputy chief economist at the Institute of International Finance, wrote on Twitter last week, adding that those who thought “that cutting Russia from financing for a few weeks at the beginning of the war would stop the war have proven naïve,” New York Times wrote.
According to the daily, as a result of anti-Russia sanctions, energy prices have surged in the US and Europe, with regular gasoline averaging well above $5 per gallon in some states and now the Biden administration is bracing for midterm elections this fall in which Republicans are likely to capitalize on the rising cost of living.
“Sanctions are certainly not deterring Russian forces from the kind of military operation they’re carrying out,” said Alina Polyakova, president of the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Part of the problem is that the economies of the Western countries are more exposed than their governments had anticipated, said Andrew Weiss, a longtime Russia expert and vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Daleep Singh, the recent White House deputy national security adviser on international economics, said in late February, “We were deliberate to direct the pain of our sanctions toward the Russian economy, not ours,” adding, “None of our measures are designed to disrupt the flow of energy to global markets.”
Former Obama officials say those sanctions had a modest impact at best, although some argue they helped deter Putin from a larger invasion of Ukraine at the time, the newspaper reported.
A growing issue in Washington and European capitals is the potential for a strong divergence of opinions among policymakers on further sanctions. During the recent debate among the Europeans on whether to boycott Russian oil, Hungary delayed the action for weeks and forced a carve-out for its own imports.
“Overall, I think we’ve reached the political limits of sanctions,” said Gerard DiPippo, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former senior US intelligence officer on economic issues.
“New sanctions are probably not necessary and certainly not sufficient to achieve an acceptable end to the conflict. But Ukrainian victories on the battlefield probably are both necessary and sufficient. That should be the focus of US policy,” DiPippo added.
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