The gift of sanctions: an analysis of assessments of the Russian economy, 2022–2023

This essay analyzes a few prominent Western assessments, both official and private, of the effect of sanctions on the Russian economy and war effort during the first 18 months after February 2022. It seeks to understand the main goals of sanctions, alongside the facts and causal inferences behind the consensus view that sanctions were highly effective. Such understanding may then help to clarify the relationship between claims made by economist-observers outside Russia and those emerging from Russian sources – notably economists associated with the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) – which drew sharply different inferences from the same facts. We conclude that when applied to a large, resource-rich, technically proficient economy, after a period of shock and adjustments, sanctions are isomorphic to a strict policy of trade protection, industrial policy and capital controls. These are policies that the Russian government could not plausibly have implemented, even in 2022, on its own initiative. Sanctions were, in this sense, a gift to the Russian state and war effort.