Sanctions still don’t work

Pierre Aury explains why sanctioning Russia is not delivering results. 

In January 2023, just after the European Union enacted its ninth sanctions package against Russia, we wrote: “This clearly confirms the fact that sanctions tend not to work to disrupt military operations.”

After nine packages of sanctions, there was no sign of these sanctions having any impact.

Fast forward to May 2025, and the EU has just enacted its 17th sanctions package. 17 packages in 27 months – that is a package every month and a half. 

Being so inefficient so consistently over such a long period of time cannot be by chance; it must be by design.

Now, why bring this sanction topic back to the forefront now? It is not only for the pleasure of having fun at the expense of the EU commission but it is because this 17th package is a shipping package. All the others had direct or indirect shipping implications, but this one is targeted mainly at shipping. Shipping appeared first in an EU sanctions package against Russia in the 14^th package which created a blacklist of 27 vessels involved in helping Russia to wage war against Ukraine.

In the 17^th package, the number of ships on that list has grown to 342 after adding 189 new ships on the list. That list is basically the now infamous shadow fleet. Why is it that all these sanctions packages seem not to work in stopping or even slowing down Russia’s military operation in Ukraine? The answer is multiple-fold. 

One reason is to be found in the fact that the EU and the US still think that they are the world when they are not anymore. The vast majority of countries in the world are not interested in sanctioning Russia just because the West is telling them to do so. Only 45 countries are sanctioning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine out of a total of 195 in the world. These 45 countries are exclusively in Europe and North America, with the exception of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan in Asia. 

The second reason is probably linked to the complete lack of a user guide accompanying the sanctions packages, leaving people willing to abide in the dark as to how practically to follow the EU rules and giving people not willing to abide the excuse that they don’t know practically how to comply. 

Another reason can be found in the complete lack of logic of these sanctions. Two examples in shipping: it is perfectly legal to carry Russian oil sold above the price cap from Sakhalin 2 to Japan, the so-called Sakhalin exemption and it is perfectly legal to carry Russian LNG to a European port connected to the European natural gas grid. The reason behind these two exceptions? The inconvenience of having to dispense with Sakhalin oil for Japan and Russian LNG for the EU. Russian nuclear fuel is not covered by any sanctions either. The EU is already working on its next sanctions package – more of the same, expecting a different result.