Sanctions may not hurt Russia much

Kremlin has prepared for consequences of Ukraine invasion if Putin gives OK

U.S. President Joe Biden says planned sanctions if Russia invades Ukraine would have “a devastating impact” on its economy. But after the Kremlin spent the last eight years preparing for more penalties, economists say the pain may not be as bad as some fear.

The measures under consideration, which include limits on big banks’ ability to use dollars and euros, as well as restrictions on government debt and access to U.S. technology, would be the most severe since the first wave of limits slapped on Russia in 2014 following the annexation of Crimea, according to U.S. and European officials.

Back then, Russia spiraled into a financial crisis. The ruble lost half its value as the central bank saw its reserves plunge by $130 billion and the economy swung into a recession.

This time around, economists say, the moves under discussion by the U.S. and its allies would hit the currency, fuel inflation and send investors fleeing, but might not be enough to trigger the same kind of turmoil. In addition to Kremlin preparations, a big difference is that prices for oil, Russia’s main export, are rising now, not plunging as they did in 2014.

“Russia is much better prepared for sanctions than it was in 2014 at least on its macro-indicators,” said Natalia Lavrova, chief economist at BCS Financial Group in Moscow. “The state sector is ready and the financial cushion is big,” she said. In all but the most extreme of scenarios, the economy would continue growing, though at a slower rate and with higher inflation, she said.

Russian officials say they have no plan to invade, but Moscow has rejected western demands that it reverse a buildup of more than 130,000 troops on the border with Ukraine. With President Vladimir Putin expressing hope this past week of a diplomatic solution, investors have started cautiously moving back into Russian assets.

Publicly, the Kremlin says it’s concerned about the risk of sanctions and has taken steps to limit their impact. Putin has vowed that the threat of new restrictions won’t change his foreign policy. For the moment, the Kremlin seems confident that limits hitting Russia’s energy sector or other key exports would be too disruptive to global markets to be a realistic threat.

Still, western officials say the risk of sanctions remains. Just what the response would look like if Russia moved on Ukraine in a less dramatic way than an all-out invasion isn’t clear.

At $634 billion, central bank reserves are close to a record, thanks to policies that saved much of the oil windfall in a rainy-day fund. The budget ran a surplus of 0.4% of GDP last year and government debt at 18% of GDP is among the lowest of major economies. Moscow has reduced dependence on the dollar for trade and transactions and is building up its own alternatives to U.S.-dominated payment systems.

Thanks in part to those defenses, economists say that the likely sanctions would knock the ruble as much as 20% lower against the dollar, fuel already-high inflation and thus require more interest-rate increases by the Bank of Russia, as well as possibly intervention to support financial markets and sanctioned banks.

“Assuming there isn’t an outright ban on exports, an increase in sanctions pressure will have an indirect effect on the economy, since significant financial restrictions have been in place since 2014,” said Sova Capital economist Artem Zaigrin. That could shave a bit more off annual growth than the roughly 0.2 percentage points he estimates the 2014 sanctions did.