Will western sanctions really hurt Putin?

Boris Johnson has announced that the UK will impose personal sanctions on Vladimir Putin and his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov – and is as drawing up a ‘hit list’ of Russian oligarchs to target. ‘We have to make it deeply painful for the oligarchs that support the Putin regime,’ said foreign secretary Liz Truss. ‘There are over a hundred Russian billionaires … We will come after you.’

Will such actions actually work? For many top Russians, they are a badge of honour. ‘What? You haven’t been sanctioned yet?’ asked one Russian senator of the head of a Duma committee during a break in a Russian television show on which I was also a guest in 2019. ‘What kind of patriot are you?’

The remark was intended as a joke – but in a very real sense, being sanctioned by the West has become a kite mark of loyalty to the regime. Even before Johnson’s announcement, hundreds of Russian parliamentarians, generals, intelligence officials had already been sanctioned by the US and EU for their role in the annexation of Crimea, the destruction of a Malaysian Airlines Boeing over Ukraine, and the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, and of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.