Anders Aslund: How Ukraine can use sanctions to counter Russia’s aggression
With its annexation of Crimea, Russia has become a rogue state in international affairs. Russia appears certain to cause Ukraine great suffering, well beyond the annexation of Crimea, but Ukraine can also impose significant economic damage on Russia.
Sanctions against Russia are wholly justified legally because the Crimea annexation violated the United Nations Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, the Treaty on the Dissolution of the Soviet Union of Almaty December 1991, the Budapest Memorandum on Ukraine’s denuclearization of December 1994, the Russia-Ukraine Friendship Treaty of 1997, and the Sevastopol Naval Base Treaty of 1997. The two most obvious precedents—Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait in 1990 and Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938—lead us to the right ballpark of international law. The actual state of affairs between Russian and Ukraine is war. A rethinking of how to deal with Russia economically and financially derives from that fact.