Sentiments of disappointment emerge amongst US officials regarding the lack of "significant effects" resulting from the sanctions imposed on Russia despite expanding according to a CNN report that cited US senior officials.

The report asserted that Washington had expected that the Russian economy would be in a worse state than where it currently stands given that the anti-Russia sanctions have expanded in scope and intensity since the start of the Ukraine war.

One senior US official cited in the report argued that “We were expecting that things like SWIFT and all the blocking sanctions on Russia’s banks would totally crater the Russian economy and that basically, by now going into September, we’d be dealing with an economically much more weakened Russia than the one that we are dealing with.”

Moreover, the official explained that the initial approach towards anti-Russia sanctions led by the US  will be “a mid-to-long term sanctions regime,” adding that the reason "is because we wanted to keep pressure on Russia over the long term as it waged war on Ukraine, and we wanted to degrade Russia’s economic and industrial capabilities. So we’ve always seen this as a long-term game.”

Insufficient results emerging from anti-Russian sanctions: CNN

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Regarding the assessment of the US sanctions strategy against Russia, the US senior official told CNN that "The disconnect between early expectations and reality appears to stem from the fact that many US and western officials underestimated the sky-high revenues Russia would initially reap from rising oil prices, and the willingness of countries like China and India to continue buying Russian oil."

The US official also significantly noted that US ally,  Saudi Arabia, also bought Russian crude " for use in its power plants, freeing up its own oil to sell to other countries."

Former State Department Director of the Counterterrorism Finance and Designations Office, Jason Blazakis stated that “The United States underestimated it, and we were slow in actually starting to think about deploying sanctions against Russia's energy interests.” 

Blazakis added that "I think they [US] made that calculation that these sanctions would have heat and hurt the Russian economy very quickly, in ways they clearly misunderstood and overestimated.”

Bringing Russia to the bargaining table

Blazakis also noted, as cited in the CNN report, that despite making the Russian economy smaller "but not to the extent people had hoped. And certainly not to the point where the Russians were brought to the bargaining table.”

The report also noted a US official saying that “We had been warning Europe for years before the invasion about the need to get away from Russian energy, and they just weren’t willing to do it until it was too late" adding that Russia has moved to weaponize its gas supply and the EU is being driven into a possible recession.

The report also discussed the EU decision to put a price cap on Russian oil. While member states agreed on that earlier this month, it remains unclear which framework the EU will follow to implement it.

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