What are the sanctions on Russia and have they affected its economy?

The US, UK and EU have announced new sanctions on Russia, two years after its invasion of Ukraine. The measures also marked a week since the death in custody of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. President Vladimir Putin has claimed European sanctions have done Russia no harm, saying: "We have growth, and they have decline." The International Energy Agency says Russia is still exporting 8.3 million barrels of oil a day - having increased supplies to India and China.

Will the EU’s next set of sanctions make a difference to Russia?

The European Union is considering a plan to impose a twelfth set of sanctions on Russia over its war in Ukraine.

 

How EU sanctions against Russia are failing

 The EU imposed sanctions against Moscow as a response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But loopholes raise doubts about whether these are working.

There is evidence that dual-use items that can also be used for military purposes are reaching Russia – from microelectronics, to replacement parts for related industries, to cars and weapons

European Union announces sanctions on Iran |

 

Continued police violence in Iran, Canada imposes new sanctions

 

Canada says it will sanction senior members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard and ban them from entering the country. This comes as international pressure grows on Iran over its response to protests triggered by the death of a young woman in police custody.

The true impact of sanctions on Russia

As Europeans suffer high energy costs and the prospect of a rough winter, some have begun to ask if Western sanctions against Russia were in fact an own goal. On the face of it, Russia’s economy is not going through the meltdown once predicted and Moscow continues to make billions from selling its oil and gas to the world.

Study shows: Western sanctions take a heavy toll on Russia's economy | DW News

Researchers at Yale University say the Russian economy is suffering massive damage due to Western sanctions, despite Moscow downplaying the effect. The authors claim their work casts doubt on Moscow's claims that the economy remains robust and that the West is suffering more through "a war of economic attrition."

How isolated is the Russian President?

Western sanctions on Russia have hit its overall economy hard – but are also targeting members of President Vladimir Putin's inner circle.

War in Ukraine: are sanctions working? | The Economist

 

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted an unprecedented response from the West: economic warfare. Our experts, Patrick Foulis and Matthew Valencia, weigh in on whether sanctions will be enough to stop further aggression from Russia.

Waging economic war on Russia | Start Here

 

Western countries have hit Russia with punishing sanctions for invading Ukraine — even targeting Russia’s central bank.

EU imposes new sanctions on Belarus as migrant crisis escalates

 

The European Union is to impose more sanctions on Belarus, aimed at everyone involved in facilitating the transport of people to the country's border with Poland.

China responds to UK sanctions over Xinjiang with sanctions

 British Secretary of State Dominic Raab rejected sanctions imposed on UK individuals by China: An apparent bit of tit-for-tat after Britain, along with the European Union, the US and Canada sanctioned several Chinese over allegations of human rights abuses in the Muslim-majority Xinjiang region.

China sanctions EU officials in response to Uyghur row | DW News

 Politicians around Europe condemned China's retaliatory sanctionsafter the EU moved against several top officials in China on Monday.

EU agrees to sanction China for human rights abuses against Uighurs | DW News

 

The European Union agreed on Monday to sanction China for human rights abuses against the Uighurs, according to press reports from inside the foreign ministers meeting Monday in Brussels.

US Sanctions against Germany: How Dangerous Is Nord Stream 2?

The US is threatening Germany with crushing sanctions if it continues with the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. How bad are relations between the two sides?

Trump ends Hong Kong privileges, China vows retaliation

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order ending Hong Kong's special trade privileges. Trump also announced sanctions against officials and banks involved in Beijing's crackdown on civil rights there. The move is part of Trump's confronting China over Hong Kong, the South China Sea, trade and the coronavirus. Beijing meanwhile has condemned the move and says it will impose sanctions on US citizens in turn.

North Korea - All the dictator's men | DW Documentary

This documentary looks at how, and introduces the men who have helped Kim Jong Un keep his dreams of reaching nuclear power status alive. North Korea has not reined in its nuclear program, despite a number of UN resolutions that have tried to force it to do so. So how has the isolated country kept the program going despite sanctions? Every year Pyongyang sends millions of North Korean workers abroad, selling their services to over 40 countries around the world. And their salaries flow directly into Kim’s treasury. The only ones who know exactly how the system works are the men who have helped the North Korean government carry through the program for years. A film team spent years researching these men and their secrets - from bankers and diplomats to the laborers and specialists who worked abroad and whose wages flowed into the regime's coffers. Come and meet all the dictator’s men.

Panama Papers: Briton Set-Up Shell Company So North Korea Could Sell Weapons

North Korea is widely known to be one of biggest sellers of methamphetamines (meth), market in high end fake luxury items and the manufacture of counterfeit U.S. currency.  As with any secretive repressive government with a large standing army large sums of money are needed to support the military apparatus keeping you in power.  Who do you turn too? A British banker who lived in Pyongyang for two decades.  Even though the UN   and numerous countries have placed severe sanctions on North Korea Nigel Cowie was there to help set-up a front company ensuring Pyongyang's quest for nuclear weapons would be funded through illegal arms sales.

A British banker who spent two decades living in communist North Korea set up a secret offshore finance company allegedly used by the Pyongyang regime to help sell arms and expand its nuclear weapons programme.

Nigel Cowie – a fluent Korean and Chinese speaker, who studied at Edinburgh University – was behind a Pyongyang front company, DCB Finance Limited, registered in the British Virgin Islands, papers show.

He says DCB Finance was used forLEGITIMATE BUSINESS and that he was unaware of any unlawful transactions.

Cowie moved to North Korea in 1995 when Kim Jong-il was in power, and went on to become head of its first foreign bank, Daedong Credit Bank. Initially operating out of a ramshackle PyongyangHOTEL with a staff of three, Cowie led a consortium that in 2006 bought a 70% stake in the bank.

He was unaware that the shell company he help create was being used to get around the embargo on the sale of military equipment by North Korea. Unaware because he's now been implicated in a blatantly illegal scheme to circumvent the sanctions placed on North Korea,

      

Pondering Pyongyang: Beijing's problem child

One of the biggest questions involving North Korea is China and its relationship with Pyongyang.  Following the North's testing of long range missiles and a nuclear device China finally agreed to sanctions being imposed on North Korea.  Those sanctions don't have a lot of teeth as they are not vigorously by Chinese authorities.  So, why agree to them and show lack of enforcement?   Literally fear of the vary out come if those sanctions were in forced to the letter as written.

Were China to sever its economic life line to Kim Jong-un's government how long would it before a real crisis ensued.   China fears a collapse of the North's government for these reasons:  Large numbers of refugees crossing into China,  a war that would end with the country reunified under a pro-western government and the sharing of a border with a U.S. ally.

"If you talk to officials at the border, there's no change," says Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, the North Asian head of the International Crisis Group.
 "And a lot of that trade is conducted by government trading companies especially on the North Korean side," adds the Los Angeles Times' Beijing Bureau Chief Barbara Demick. "There's a lot more China could do that it has chosen not to."

 And there's something else holding Beijing back -- the historic and symbolic relationship with Pyongyang that is hard to give up."The Chinese Communist Party thinks of North Korea as this small state that is in its own image," says Demick. "The structure of the North Korean government is very similar to the Chinese government and, in a way, it's the pure Communist state.

U.S. and China propose sanctions against North Korea

China has viewed North Korea reluctantly as an Allie believing that long term support of that country leads to a more stabilized Northeast Asia.  It's reasoning is this: Collapse of the current government would result in reunification of the two Korea's while the that may seem igneous for the Communist party they see the potential stationing of American military personnel already in the South near their border as destabilizing.  Further a mass exodus of North Koreans into China could in the governments mind cause economic hardship as well as adding to the already sizable ethnic-Korean .population in China.

Thus, it's quite a surprise to see the Chinese government working in tandem with the U.S. to impose even tougher sanctions on North Korea.


The UN security council is considering imposing some of the toughest sanctions yet conceived against North Korea as senior diplomats from the 15 council member nations began discussions on a draft resolution framed by the US and China that would seek to deflect Pyongyang from its belligerent nuclear path.


In a statement delivered to the security council, Rice said the sanctions would target the "illicit activities of North Korean diplomatic personnel, North Korean banking relationships, illicit transfers of bulk cash and new travel restrictions". She said the sanctions would "significantly impede North Korea's ability to develop further its illicit nuclear and ballistic missile programs … and demonstrate clearly to North Korea the continued costs of its provocations."