The European Union’s sanctions regime on the Russian Federation from 2014 to 2022

Abstract

This study analyses the direct impact of the European Union’s restrictive measures against the Russian Federation due to the involvement of the latter on the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine since 2014. It evaluates the development of the sanctions imposed by the EU from 2014 to 2022, exploring the motives and explaining the goals that motivated the Union to apply these measures. Observing their development and prolongation during the years, as well as explaining in a detailed manner the various sanction packages in 2022. The paper portrays the evolution of the EU sanctions regime from the starting point in 2014 as a response to the Crimean crisis, until 2022 with the ongoing military conflict in Luhansk and Donetsk. Furthermore, it evaluates the impact and direct consequences of EU restrictive measures on the Russian Federation, especially their impact on the economy, industry, and international relations. All in all, the investigation produced by the breakdown of the timeline points to pondering if the current tools used by the EU to counter the Russian Federation’s actions actually work. Becoming an analysis of how sanctions are designed, for what type of political structure and with what particular aims. Nevertheless, also conveying how the Russian Federation has been able to minimise some of the effects of these measures by being able to anticipate what sectors can be impacted, creating preventive economic mechanisms, and even expanding their scope of international relations towards different global political spheres of influence.

Keywords

• Russian Federation
• Conflict
• European Union
• Ukraine
• Sanctions
• Geopolitics