INTERNATIONAL SANCTIONS POLICY AS A RESPONSE TO THE AGGRESSION OF THE russian federation AGAINST UKRAINE

Abstract

The article is devoted to monitoring the dynamics and features of the development of international sanctions policy. We have emphasized that there was a dynamic growth in the number of sanctions and the change in their nature under the influence of increasing geopolitical competition and the struggle for economic leadership. There were 1325 episodes of sanctions in the world during the period 1950-2022, and 411 episodes or about 4600 bilateral and multilateral restrictions were known at the end of 2022. In 2021, an increase in the number of sanctions by 29.4% was recorded compared to 2020, and this was the largest annual increase in the last two decades. Also, we have recorded significant changes in the structure and nature of sanctions. The share of financial sanctions, starting from the 1950s, has doubled and is about 34% of their number; the share of restrictions on tourism and travel increased from 16% in the 1950s to 22% in 2022. We have established that the leading initiators of the introduction of sanctions are the United States and the European Union. Although the United States is the leading initiator, the application of sanctions is one of the important directions of the European Union’s foreign policy: as of April 2024, there were 36 EU restriction regimes in force by country and functional topic, 3723 individuals and 1027 legal entities were under EU sanctions. Among the «targets» of sanctions events in the global context, such countries as the russian federation, Iran, Syria, North Korea, belarus, Venezuela and Myanmar «lead». Since the beginning of russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, a powerful sanctions coalition has been created, which includes about 50 countries, primarily the most developed countries in the world. As a result, from February 24, 2022 to April 22, 2024, 18472 restrictions were imposed on it by key initiating countries. The vast majority of sanctions applied to the russian federation concerned personal restrictions on individuals, accounting for 66% of all restrictions, and more than a third of restrictions (32%) concerned restrictions on organizations and companies. Although sanctions work, they remain an underused tool in the overall strategy of deterring russia and ending the war in Ukraine. Therefore, the sanctions coalition should strengthen control over compliance with existing sanctions and introduce new, effective sanctions. The key objectives of the sanctions policy of Ukraine and partner countries towards russia are: strengthening financial sanctions and restrictions on access to technology; introducing additional personal sanctions, sanctions against russian exports; import duties on the rest of russian exports, additional sanctions against russian companies; expansion of secondary sanctions; strengthening of control over compliance with existing sanctions; preventing circumvention of sanctions; withdrawal of Western businesses from the russian market.