Although the United States has sanctioned some Russian oligarchs and frozen their assets, the direct attack on Mr. Putin has been a major escalation. This puts him in the same company as Presidents Bashar al-Assad of Syria as well as Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko from Belarusboth of which were subject to personal sanctions by the US government.
Adam M. Smith, a former Treasury Department official and now a partner at the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, said the imposition of sanctions on Mr. Putin is an important message given that the United States has never taken such action against such a powerful leader. . However, he said it was unlikely that the sanctions would affect Mr. Putin’s fortunes or change his calculations in Ukraine.
“I don’t think Putin will really lose sleep after the imposition of sanctions,” Mr. Smith said.
The personal sanctions add to a growing list of restrictions the Biden administration, in cooperation with Europe, has implemented in recent weeks. The United States has imposed sanctions on major Russian financial institutions and the country’s public debt, and on Thursday moved to prevent Russia from gaining access to US technology critical to its military, aerospace and broader economy.
But the attempt to punish Mr. Putin showed the extent to which many European countries rely on Russia for energy, grain and other products. The sanctions package, described by European leaders as unprecedented in size and scope, has been difficult to reach consensus even as Russian troops approached Kievcapital of Ukraine.
The economy of Europe is closely intertwined with that of Russia, and the more the European Union leans toward Russian sanctions, the more its own members will suffer. The toughest sanctions could even derail the bloc’s tentative recovery from the recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
This is why the negotiators did not address particularly difficult elements, such as imposing sanctions on oil and gas companies or banning Russia from using SWIFT, the platform used to conduct global financial transactions in commodities, including wheat. EU officials said one of the main reasons for their reluctance to close Russia’s access to the platform was that Europe uses it to pay for gas it buys from Russia.
Experts said the approved sanctions were tough and the speed with which the European Union moved was impressive. But some have criticized the leaders for not going further.