Three years after Western nations imposed the most comprehensive sanctions regime in modern history, Ukraine’s energy infrastructure burns under nightly bombardment, millions remain displaced, and no credible pathway to peace has emerged. The disconnect between the scale of economic pressure applied and the absence of meaningful policy change in Moscow demands serious examination of whether sanctions are not working as intended, or whether they function primarily as political theatre divorced from strategic outcomes.
The Humanitarian Cost of Policy Failure
The stated objectives of the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 were explicit: to make Russia cease its destabilising actions in Ukraine and to avoid interfering with Ukrainian sovereignty and independence. Measured against these aims, the results are catastrophic. According to Ian Proud, a former British diplomat who personally authorised approximately half of Britain’s sanctions against Russia, since 2022 alone, 5.9 million people have fled Ukraine, 3.7 million have been internally displaced, and 1.3 million people—including children—have been killed or injured.
Ukraine remains entirely dependent on approximately £50 billion annually in Western aid, its economy shattered and its infrastructure under sustained assault. These outcomes represent precisely what sanctions were meant to prevent. The question of why sanctions on Russia have failed to achieve any of their stated objectives cannot be dismissed as premature assessment. Three years provides sufficient evidence for serious policy reassessment.
Economic Pressure Without Strategic Effect
Defenders of the current approach point to measurable economic impacts. Russia’s energy revenues have declined, inflation has increased, and access to Western technology has been restricted. Yet these economic indicators, whilst real, have not translated into policy change. Rebecca Harding, CEO of the Centre for Economic Security, emphasised this crucial distinction during recent policy debates. Whilst Russia’s energy revenues declined by 19% year-on-year, “Russia continues to fight its war” with no indication of strategic retreat.
The impact of sanctions on Russia must be measured against their intended political objectives, not merely their economic effects. Economic pressure that fails to produce behavioural change represents wasted leverage. Worse, it may produce counterproductive outcomes. Harding characterised Russia’s domestic messaging effectively: “If it were up to us you’d have guns and butter. But they have guns pointed at us, and you can’t get butter because the West is stopping you through sanctions.” This framing transforms economic hardship into validation of the government’s anti-Western narrative.
Are Russian Sanctions Working? The Evidence Says No
The question of whether are Russian sanctions working confronts a fundamental problem: the asymmetry between collective Western decision-making and autocratic efficiency. Proud described this structural disadvantage vividly: “Despite NATO having 27 times economically greater weight than Russia, collectively we can’t decide anything quick enough to affect decisive action. Putin sits across a chessboard looking at 32 people squabbling loudly for months on end, only to decide not to take the most optimal move.”
This observation exposes why economic advantage fails to translate into strategic leverage. Sanctions function as economic warfare by committee—a process that prioritises consensus over effectiveness and produces measures that arrive too late and too incrementally to alter Moscow’s calculations. Each new sanctions package demonstrates Western resolve whilst simultaneously proving Western inability to impose costs rapidly enough to matter.
The Symbolic Gesture Problem
Proud revealed that 92% of individual travel restriction sanctions targeted Russian citizens who had never visited the UK and never intended to. This statistic encapsulates the gap between sanctions as foreign policy tool and sanctions as political performance. When the overwhelming majority of measures impose no actual restrictions on their targets, the regime functions primarily to signal domestic audiences that action is being taken, regardless of whether that action achieves its stated objectives.
Europe’s Self-Inflicted Wounds
Analysis published in UnHerd characterises Europe’s sanctions strategy as fundamentally misconceived, noting that the continent has endured three consecutive years of industrial stagnation whilst Russia successfully redirected trade flows to Asia. Germany has lost 125,000 industrial jobs in recent weeks—a figure that represents not temporary adjustment but structural deindustrialisation.
Meanwhile, Europe pays premium prices for Russian oil through circuitous routes. India and Turkey import Russian crude, refine it, and sell petroleum products back to European markets at significant markup. According to estimates, the EU and Turkey imported 2.4 million tonnes of petroleum products from India during the first six months of 2025, with two-thirds originating from Russian crude. Europe thus pays more for the same oil whilst claiming to have isolated the Russian economy—an outcome that suggests self-deception rather than strategic success.
The Legal Quagmire
Beyond immediate economic costs, EU sanctions have created potentially enormous legal liabilities. Analysis by Valérie Hanoun, a lawyer at the Paris Bar, highlights how provisions in the EU’s 18th sanctions package prohibiting recognition of arbitration awards may violate bilateral investment treaties. Pending arbitration cases total billions of euros, with Nordgold seeking €5 billion from France, Rosatom pursuing €3 billion from Finland, and Rosneft claiming €2 billion from Germany.
The precedent from Bank Melli and Bank Saderat versus Bahrain—where Iranian banks won over $240 million after Bahrain liquidated their joint venture to comply with Western sanctions—suggests European governments may face substantial liability. Hanoun warns that successful arbitrations could impose not only compensation for lost investments but “aggravated damages” for the EU’s retaliatory stance, potentially reaching hundreds of billions. European taxpayers may thus fund both Ukraine’s defence and, through arbitration awards, Russian companies the sanctions meant to pressure.
Strategic Alternatives or Continued Failure?
Legal commentary in the Solicitors Journal connects sanctions policy to broader constitutional concerns about the erosion of judicial oversight and the concentration of executive power. The Supreme Court judgment in Shvidler v FCDO exposed how international sanctions can operate without meaningful judicial scrutiny, imposing “serious invasion of liberty” on individuals based on what Lord Leggatt’s dissent characterised as “flimsy reasons.”
These observations matter because they expose sanctions as tools that wound their wielders whilst failing to achieve strategic objectives. Proud’s conclusion was stark: “Sanctions are our foreign policy and our foreign policy has failed.”
Three years of comprehensive sanctions have not brought peace to Ukraine. They have demonstrated the limits of economic coercion when divorced from diplomatic strategy, military deterrence, and realistic assessment of the adversary’s political culture. Western governments face a choice: acknowledge this failure and develop alternatives that might actually influence Russian behaviour, or continue down the current path, accumulating costs without achieving objectives. The latter course ensures only that the war continues whilst Europe weakens itself economically and legally. That outcome serves neither Ukrainian interests nor European security—only the pretence that action equals effectiveness.
