March 29, 2024 5:29 AM
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Opinion: Biden’s Russia Policy Is Too Little and Too Late – Inside Sources

War is an ugly thing. Sustained war depletes a country’s resources and typically their resolve. However, because of President Biden’s continued weakness, Russia is growing stronger, economically and in perceived strength.

Russian President Vladimir Putin hoped his invasion of Ukraine would be over in a few days or weeks. When his forces could not prevail in the skies and streets of Ukraine, they took to slaughtering whole towns like Bucha, etching its name into the horrors of history alongside Aleppo and Srebrenica. But thanks to the bravery and fortitude of the Ukrainian people, and with the generous support of America, Ukraine has not only survived, but it has made significant gains to take back its territory and expel Russian invaders.

Russia’s military is much weaker today than a year ago. Half of all Russian tanks have now been destroyed or captured by Ukraine. They are down 300 aircraft and more than 100,000 soldiers. That’s the good news.

Here’s the bad news. If we keep at the status-quo policies, Ukraine will lose. It will be forced into ceding territory to Putin — a result that could embolden him to try this deadly gambit again some years from now. Time is not on Ukraine’s side.

At nearly every turn, the United States has delayed or denied Ukrainian requests for advanced weaponry, restricted the capabilities of the systems they do send, and fought to decrease our military spending needed to replenish our stocks, sustain our forces and prevent the next war with China. As Russia devotes every ounce of strength to crush Ukraine, the only hope for a Ukrainian victory is that U.S. sanctions change the calculation and put time back on our side.

But the administration and our allies have watered down the sanctions against Russia so badly that they aren’t accomplishing that mission. Dozens of sanctions proposals have been squashed for some excuse or another. First, the line was that sanctioning Nord Stream II would antagonize Putin. These dangerous appeasements emboldened Putin to invade in the first place. Now, they protect Russia from facing painful consequences for its invasion. Last February, the United States enacted sanctions the White House called “the most consequential ever levied on Russia and arguably the most consequential ever levied in history.” We wish that were true, but the results show the exact opposite.

Russia’s oil and gas sales revenue soared from $119 billion in 2021 to $180 billion in 2022. From March to October 2022, Europe bought more Russian goods than the previous year. The ruble is stronger against the dollar today than before the invasion (one dollar buys 75 rubles today, down from 78 a year ago).

In April 2022, Biden pronounced: “The steps we’re already taking are predicted to shrink Russia’s (GDP) by double-digits this year alone.” The final result has been far weaker: a mere 2.3 percent economic contraction. Shockingly, its economy is set to grow by 0.8 percent this year and 2.4 percent in 2024 — undoing the work of sanctions entirely.

Where there has been progress, it has not been enough to change Russia’s decision-making calculus or ability to wage war. Russia’s budget deficit grew to 2.3 percent in 2022, down from a small budget surplus in 2021 — but that was due to increased Russian military spending, not decreased government revenue. Russia still has little problem issuing debt and has a long fiscal runway to finance its military operations. This is precisely what U.S. sanctions were supposed to stop — and they have failed.

Russia’s economy is humming along because we’ve held back on hitting their whole economy with sanctions. We only have partial sanctions on their top three non-oil exports: precious metals, ferrous metals and coal — of which Russia exported more than $75 billion in 2021.

It gets worse. The United States has not imposed any sanctions on Russia’s other lucrative export sectors, including fertilizer ($12 billion in exports); machinery, equipment and nuclear reactors (nearly $11 billion); plastics ($6 billion); copper ($6 billion); Russia’s tech sector ($4.5 billion); or vehicles, rubber, nickel and titanium, which Russia collectively exported $10 billion of in 2021. We have sanctions on Russia’s $8 billion timber industry, but those sanctions have been easily evaded through third countries.

Another major sanctions target should be Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear enterprise, which enjoyed a record haul of $25 billion in 2022. Rosatom is also the lead partner for Iran’s construction of two nuclear reactors at the Bushehr nuclear site and has helped the Russian military’s takeover of Ukraine’s Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plants.

Each day the war continues is another day that Russian occupiers rape, pillage and slaughter hundreds of Ukrainians. It should be hard for Russians to do business while they continue their war crimes. Deep and sustained economic pain may be able to force Putin to back down.

We must sanction Russian exports of oil, gas, timber, metals, and minerals — and fast. Our diplomats need to persuade our friends in India and other Asian nations who are buying dirty Russian oil to switch to other suppliers immediately. This provides an opportunity to replace Russian resources with clean supplies — ideally made in America.

President Biden needs to change Putin’s decision-making calculus. Time should be on our side, not his. We can accomplish that by depriving Russia of earning the money it needs to fuel its war machine and by giving Ukraine the weapons it needs to kick out Russia. The Ukrainians deserve better from U.S. leadership, and so do Americans.

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