How sanctions, threat of prosecution imperil Russia’s president Analysis by Foreign Affairs

The Foreign Affairs magazine has published an article claiming that it is crucial to understand how personal sanctions against Russia’s elites have affected the relative cohesion of the Putin regime. Caliber.Az reprints the article.

In March, when the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced it was issuing an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, many observers saw it as a significant step in the West’s efforts to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. But although the action against Putin is new, the effort to target individual members of Russia’s governing elite has a long history.

Since the early days of the 2022 invasion, the West has enforced sanctions against specific Russian leaders, alongside its sweeping package of sanctions against the Russian economy. In fact, this was an extension of an approach that the United States and its allies have pursued against Russian elites for many years.

In 2014, for example, after Russian troops marched into Ukraine and annexed the Crimean Peninsula, Western governments published their initial list of Russians who would be subject to individual sanctions. As in the current war, the aim was to split the Russian elite by impelling those afraid of sanctions to press Putin to reconsider his politics. But the reaction in Russia did not conform to Western expectations. In 2014, rather than seeking to evade these punitive economic measures, many members of Russia’s elite treated them as a status symbol.

Being on the list quickly became a symbol of loyalty to Putin. In 2022, though the West imposed sanctions against a much broader cross section of the Russian establishment, a similar dynamic played out. Certainly, in neither case did the individual sanctions succeed in dividing Russia’s leadership or deterring further aggression in Ukraine. The measures failed to weaken Putin. Instead, his allies rallied around him, and the regime became more isolated, more anti-Western, and more focused on personal relationships than on policy expertise.

As the West seeks new ways to pressure Russia, it is crucial to understand how personal sanctions against Russia’s elites have worked out in practice, and how they have affected the relative cohesion of the Putin regime. Almost a decade of Western sanctions have unified the Russian leadership in its desire to keep relations with the West tense. And they have helped reinforce suspicions within Russia of any member of the elite who seeks to avoid them. A larger question, then, is whether the ICC warrant against Putin for war crimes can change this dynamic. Certainly, it sets a precedent that could implicate other Russian elites, and many within the government are nervously eyeing the exit.

Do I stay or do I go?

Over the past decade, individual sanctions have affected Russia’s governing class in several ways. In 2014, many of those who disagreed with Putin’s aggression chose to wait it out, hoping that his expansionist policy would not last. Russians who were subject to sanctions—the initial list included just a handful of top officials and heads of state companies—lost access to all the assets and interests that they owned in the West. Travel to the United States and Europe also became difficult, and any companies that they were involved with were cut off from Western financial markets.

Those who were sanctioned, including Director of the Russian Intelligence Service Sergei Naryshkin and chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin—or thought they might be soon—sought to make the best of a bad situation and presented their inclusion on the list as a badge of honor. Being personally targeted, they declared, was the ultimate proof of their loyalty to Russia and its leader, for which they were willing to make sacrifices. At the time, Putin’s most vocal supporters even tried to suggest that prominent Russians who were not on the list were somehow suspect.

In turn, Putin showed he was sympathetic to those who had been targeted. After all, they suffered because they carried out and supported his decisions, and he was in principle willing to reward those who were loyal with accelerated career advancement and increased attention.

Some Russians at the lower levels of government also hoped to be added to this exclusive list. That way, no one would be able to doubt their loyalty, and their superiors would shower them with benefits. Unfortunately for them, those days are gone. Following the 2022 invasion, the West imposed sanctions on such a broad sweep of the Russian establishment—more than 1,000 individuals and businesses are now included—that it is no longer unusual to be on the list, and any member of the elite who is not on it is suspect.

In March, for example, a guest on a popular talk show on Russian state TV criticized the members of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Europe for not being on the sanctions list. The implication was that they might have dangerous contacts with Europe and the West.

Putin’s regime has always been a coalition between the security services, the armed forces, and various technocrat economists. The final group is composed of exceptionally competent individuals and includes Alexei Kudrin, who was named best finance minister of a developing European country by the IMF’s Emerging Markets newspaper in 2006, and Elvira Nabiullina, the head of the Central Bank of Russia. The relationship between these military and civilian groups has changed over time. 

Before the annexation of Crimea, it seemed that the technocrats were on an almost equal footing with military leaders. After the invasion, however, it became clear that this was not the case. The technocrats—who had viewed Russia as part of the global and Western economy—realized that they were, in fact, employees of those who believed in the opposite.

Following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, most of the regime’s civilian economists stayed to work for the regime, although those who left in protest included Anatoly Chubais, often considered the father of Russia’s privatization, who advised Putin on sustainable development. Most of Chubais’s colleagues elected to stay.

In part, they did so out of fear. Although much of the Russian business community—and even the government bureaucracy—opposes the war, they dare not flee. The officials know that Putin’s reach extends far beyond the borders of Russia. They remember what happened to former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, who in 2018 was poisoned by Putin’s intelligence services in the unlikely setting of the English town of Salisbury. In 2022, there was a string of strange deaths among state company managers. A culture of fear has been created: of living without means, of abandoning one’s family, of being imprisoned.

Even in the face of such threats, many would be willing to take their chances were they not stopped from leaving Russia. Some senior figures with access to state secrets have had their passports confiscated by their superiors, accessible only before officially approved trips. Others, still in possession of their travel documents, know that they may be stopped at the border, as they are on the list of persons who need special clearance to travel. All know that if their attempt to leave failed, they would be locked in Russia at the mercy of Putin and his security forces.

Those who might wish to resign but stay in Russia are stopped from doing so: their resignation requires Putin’s signature. Resigning is now regarded in Russia as treasonous, and many—aware of the depth of Western hostility toward the Russian nation and its leader—do not believe that they could find a welcoming home elsewhere. Given the potential consequences, many have reasoned that perhaps it is better to stay after all.

Individual sanctions against Russians have also had some undesirable effects. Although the sanctions have failed to divide the Russian establishment, they have fractured the Russian opposition in exile. For example, some exiled Russians, including opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s deputy, Leonid Volkov, signed letters to the European Union asking it to lift sanctions against the owners of the financial services firm Alfa Group. This affair, and the subsequent attempt to cover it up, led Volkov to resign from his post at the Anti-Corruption Foundation. By early 2023, after more than a year of war, the main impact of Western sanctions had largely played out. But the situation has been changed by the ICC’s announcement of its arrest warrant against Putin.

Headed for the court?

When the ICC issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest in March 2023, it sought to sow dissent and encourage opposition within the Russian government. The international tribunal’s gamble may well work: Russia’s elites inhabit a world that is rife with paranoia and suspicion. The warrant against Putin is an invitation for the elite to rally against the president rather than around him. At the same time, any future warrants against other members of the Russian government could unintentionally cause a repeat of the situation with sanctions: some will take measures to protect themselves, whereas others will seek to become targets in the hope that being prosecuted will raise their status within the regime.

There is an important difference between the sanctions lists and the new ICC warrant. Sanctions lists have generally been constructed from the bottom up, intending to punish Russian elites but keep the lines of communication open with Putin. By contrast, international criminal justice, as represented by the ICC, aims at the very top.

Putin is unlikely to be the only target: in its March announcement, the ICC also issued a warrant against Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, commissioner for children’s rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation, who is accused of war crimes for her role in the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. The ICC chief prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan has said that other warrants will follow. This top-down approach may be better in certain circumstances for drawing a line between Putin and the key figures in his administration.

Of course, Putin will go on trial at the ICC only if he is apprehended. But Russia does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction, which means that Putin cannot be arrested unless he travels to a nation that does. Even if he were to visit a non-Western country—for example, Tajikistan or Armenia, a formal Russian ally—he will be certain to ensure that he is not arrested.

Although Putin may be beyond the ICC’s reach, at least so long as he remains in power, his associates may not be so safe. If the court decides to issue warrants against more of them, they would run a much higher risk of being detained. Western sanctions have already greatly reduced the ability of the Russian establishment to travel to the West. With an ICC warrant on their heads, traveling—even to non-Western countries—would become even riskier. Before last year, Putin—not yet sanctioned—watched what happened to those in his entourage who were. Now the entourage is watching what happens to him.

The diplomatic consequences of the ICC’s decision to go after Putin are serious. Moscow—isolated by the West—is trying to build connections to the global South. The ICC warrant will complicate these efforts by making Putin an outcast. The warrant has already led to a rebalancing between Russia and its allies. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow in March was planned long before the warrant was issued. But the ICC’s move has further isolated Putin, giving Xi even more leverage as the more powerful partner.

Now Putin looks to him for understanding, kindness, and favor. And although China—along with the Kremlin’s other largest non-Western interlocutors, India and Turkey—does not recognize the ICC, almost the whole of Africa and Latin America does, and it is there that Russia is trying to offer itself as a leader of the struggle against Western neocolonialism. Large states may be hostile or indifferent to the ICC, but small ones mostly see it as an instrument of justice for when they are wronged. In attacking the court, then, Russia risks undermining its claim to be fighting for a more just world order, under which the weak will be better protected from the excesses of the strong.

Authoritarian regimes derive much of their legitimacy from abroad. It is no coincidence that dictators have historically delighted in international visits, tours, and honors. The ICC warrant closes the door to any way back for Putin on the world stage. Closer to home, signs of the damage are already showing. In April, during a Kremlin credentials presentation ceremony for new ambassadors to Russia—most of them non-Western—a speech by Putin, to his evident surprise and for perhaps the first time ever, received no applause. It was an ominous sign.