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Sanctions on Russia: the Crimea bridge and a bank
Summary
A look back at two sanctions measures against Russian targets announced in the days before 5 August 2018.
What did Western pressure on Russia look like on 5 August 2018? It came in two separate measures, announced in the days just before that date, one from Brussels and one from Washington.
On 31 July 2018, the European Union imposed sanctions on six Russian companies involved in building the bridge that links mainland Russia to the annexed Crimean peninsula. The measure targeted the construction effort itself rather than the wider Russian economy.
The bridge matters because of what it connects. Russia invaded Crimea, a part of Ukraine, in February and March 2014, occupied it and then annexed it after what the background describes as an illegitimate referendum. The annexation came amid the uncertainty that followed Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity. A structure tying the peninsula to the Russian mainland was therefore a direct extension of that annexation, and the EU chose to penalise the firms building it.
On 3 August 2018, the United States took a different route. It imposed sanctions on a Russian bank that had facilitated a transaction for a North Korean who was already on an American blacklist. This action concerned a sanctions-evasion channel, not Crimea or Ukraine.
Two tracks, one week
Taken together, the two announcements showed Russian entities facing penalties from both sides of the Atlantic within the same few days, though for unrelated reasons. The European step was tied to the Crimea bridge. The American step was tied to dealings with a blacklisted North Korean.
For readers in Kyiv and across the region, the European measure was the more directly relevant. It treated work on infrastructure in annexed Crimea as sanctionable. As of 5 August 2018, those two announcements were the latest entries in the sanctions picture around Russia.
