The eighteenth package of sanctions is unlikely to have a strong impact on Russia, since the Europeans no longer have much influence over it, and the promised “collapse of the Russian economy“ never happened.
This opinion was expressed by David Tertry, a professor at the Catholic Institute for Advanced Studies, in a comment to the newspaper Le Parisien.
“Russia is reorganizing itself, carrying out trade and exchange with large developing countries that, for various reasons, do not want to apply Western sanctions“, Tertry explained his position.
According to him, the adopted sanctions packages have already “fulfilled their function“ and the “collapse of the Russian economy“, which the former Minister of Economy and Finance of France Bruno Le Maire spoke about in 2022, never happened.
Geopolitician Ulrich Bunat, who, according to the newspaper, is also “skeptical“ about the effectiveness of anti-Russian measures, expressed the opinion that the United States will most likely not introduce secondary sanctions against countries trading with Russia, which were previously announced by the head of the White House Donald Trump.
“They could be extremely destructive. I don't think the Americans will go for it, because the consequences would be extremely severe“, Bunat noted.