The Biden administration fired a pebble-like diplomatic warning shot across German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s bow on Tuesday when it included three German companies in new sanctions targeting Russia. A larger number of Russian companies and individuals were included in the sanctions portfolio.
These sanctions are better than nothing, but they aren’t going to alter Vladimir Putin’s strategic calculus nor significantly strengthen transatlantic security. The sanctions were imposed in response to the Russian FSB intelligence service’s August 2020 poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok-class nerve agent, the same class as was used in the Kremlin’s 2018 assassination attempt against a former British intelligence agent and his daughter (Navalny has just begun a two-year prison sentence on false charges dreamed up by Putin’s lackeys.)
