Meghan L. O'Sullivan, Columnist

Russia Oil Sanctions Don’t Have to Be a Blunt Instrument

The approach used on Iran a decade ago could punish Moscow without risking the global economy.

April 14, 2022 at 6:00 AM UTC

Meghan L. O’Sullivan is a professor of international affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School and the North American chair of the Trilateral Commission, she served on the National Security Council from 2004 to 2007.

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Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, recently called payments for Russian energy “blood money,” underscoring the increasingly untenable moral position of the West. Leading global democracies express outrage over the atrocities committed by Russian forces in Ukraine but provide Moscow with hundreds of billions of dollars it can put toward its military efforts.

Bloomberg Economics estimates that, due to higher prices, Russia is on track to earn $320 billion from its energy sales in 2022, up more than a third from last year. This disconnect will become politically unsustainable, particularly given a prospective Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine likely to be jaw-dropping in its brutality.