Economist: Western sanctions have no effect on Russia, Ukraine’s hopes are in vain
Kyiv, June 20 (Navigator, Vladimir Mikhailov) Economic sanctions do not bring the desired results in relation to authoritarian states and the EU will not go against its interests, Oleg Ustenko believes.
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One of the main reasons why Western economic sanctions have not had an impact on Russia is the absence or weakness of democratic institutions in that country. This opinion was expressed at a press conference in Kyiv by Oleg Ustenko, director of the Center for World Economy and International Relations of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
“If the regime is authoritarian or insufficiently democratic, or the institutions of society are insufficiently developed, then sanctions against the regime do not result in its change. Economic sanctions, if extended, will not bring the desired result, because the institutions of civil society in the Russian Federation are not sufficiently developed,” the expert believes.
Ustenko believes that sanctions only lead to the concentration of people around the current government.
On the other hand, the EU is quite dependent on the Russian Federation. Europe is heterogeneous. There are small countries that agree to sacrifice their interests - the Baltic countries, there are large countries that agree to sacrifice some of their interests in order to support democratic transformations in Ukraine, for example, Poland. But there are a number of countries that are not ready for this. More than half of their banking system depends on Russia.” An example of such countries is Austria, which invested quite actively in the Russian Federation.
“The Austrian banking sector may suffer. They don't want to lose money. We must understand that in international relations there are no asymmetric measures, only symmetric ones,” says the expert.
In addition to the banking sector, industry will suffer as it will lose the Russian market. “Nobody wants to lose the opportunity to make a profit. Politics and economics are strongly connected. The agenda of business can be radically different from the agenda of ordinary ordinary ideologically savvy representatives of political parties.”
According to Oleg Ustenko, Ukraine should not seriously count on Western help at all. “We must reconsider our role in geopolitics; we do not have serious points of support. Relying on someone else for our strategy is wrong. The right thing to do is to try to be independent,” he believes.
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