Biden’s sanctions send a warning to Putin

It’s not easy to frame sanctions, these days. They occupy that huge, hazy diplomatic no man’s land between sternly-worded but essentially vacuous expressions of concern – grave concern, if you really want to pretend you’re serious – and sending a gunboat. When it comes to trying to make an impression on Vladimir Putin, who has no qualms about causing the West concerns – and has a good few gunboats of his own – this is a doubly-difficult challenge.

The latest US sanctions are a case in point, a mix of the cosmetic and the consequential that are more about political signalling than anything else. This is President Biden reassuring the hawkish wing of his party that he’s tough on Russia, while warning Putin that he could have gone much further. One of the problems for the administration is they are trying to formulate responses to a whole host of what it is now fashionable to call ‘malign activities.