The West has sanctioned Russia's rich. But is that really punishing Putin and helping Ukraine?

VERONA, Italy (AP) — Sitting on a terrace in Verona as the bells toll at a nearby medieval church, Igor Makarov sips coffee as he describes his life as a billionaire under Western sanctions.

Most of his fortune earned doing business in Russia and the former Soviet Union is frozen, and his plans to develop his energy businesses are currently shelved. His yacht is seized and his two private jets are grounded, so he flew commercial from Cyprus to Italy on budget carrier EasyJet.

“I ask the question, what is the meaning of these sanctions against me? What do they achieve? They don’t help Ukraine,” Makarov said in a rare interview, blinking in the Italian sunshine.

Western governments have sanctioned scores of billionaires in order to isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin, choke off financial support for his war and turn them against him. They wanted the tycoons to “feel the consequences” of doing business with Putin unless they show “a change in behavior,” said Peter Stano, the European Commission’s Foreign Affairs spokesperson.

In April 2022, the White House also announced a proposal to seize the targeted tycoons' assets in some circumstances and “enable the proceeds to flow to Ukraine."

In the 21 months since then, however, few of the sanctioned businessmen have criticized Putin and just $5.4 million of an estimated $58 billion in frozen private assets has gone to Kyiv. Some of the wealthy businessmen are now fighting back in court, calling the sanctions process opaque, illegal and unfair.

While sanctions have made life difficult for the tycoons, “it’s not in the short term benefiting Ukraine,” said Nigel Gould-Davies, a former British ambassador to Belarus and senior fellow for Russia & Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

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