As plenty of Russians have told us, this is Putin’s war, not theirs. They were not consulted. There was no outpouring of support for it. With that in mind, what should we be attempting to accomplish with sanctions?
Obviously, the best case scenario would be a popular uprising and regime change. The government’s powers of repression make that highly unlikely. Nor is it likely that Putin will feel sufficiently threatened to change course; like Trump, he doubles down when he meets resistance for fear of looking weak. So what can we actually do?
The sanctions directed at Putin and the oligarchs should stay. Measures which make it clear to the Russian public that their country is an international pariah, and that their government is not as powerful as it claims to be, are also useful. It would be a mistake, however, to keep sanctions that impact the average Russian citizen’s ability to function at a basic level indefinitely. The Russian financial system, given time, will learn to adjust, and will no longer be vulnerable to international pressure; better to turn sanctions on and off to retain the current dependency and maximize the psychological impact to the public.