Relevance: Relevance is that in modern Russia, sanctions increasingly have an impact on foreign and domestic policy, the economy and the lives of ordinary citizens. To understand their nature and to identify ways to overcome them, it is necessary to trace the most significant trends in Western sanctions and explore possible sources of their tightening.

Purpose: To study the impact of Western sanctions on the current situation of Russia and Russian citizens, identify possible sources of new sanctions.

Objectives: To trace the history of sanctions impose, analyze the current political situation in the world to identify the threats of new anti-Russian sanctions.

In September 2014, economic sanctions were adopted against Russia. In assessing their effectiveness, the views of the presidents of the United States and Russia radically diverged. In December 2014, in his message to the Federal Assembly, President Vladimir Putin said that “the so-called sanctions and external restrictions are an incentive for more efficient, accelerated achievement of goals.” On the contrary, the president Obama evaluated them not only as an incentive for accelerated development Russia, but as a factor of a sharp slowdown in its development. In January 2015 in his annual message to the US Congress he stated that “Russia isolated, and its economy in tatters". During this period, it seemed to everyone that the words of the American President were a great exaggeration.

The outgoing year for Russia was largely marked by new Western sanctions. And the sanctions lists were filled up with new names every year, they began to look really serious only in April 2018. Then, for the first time, the US Department of Finance announced personal sanctions against seven Russian businessmen listed on SDN (specially designated nationals), which implies their almost complete boycott with the American parties. The giants of the Russian industry “Rusal” and “Renova”, which employs more than 100 thousand persons, also got into it. Despite all attempts to negotiate with US regulators, the further fate of both companies is still questionable.

Since the beginning of 2018, the CAATSA law has been in force in the United States, the meaning of which is to a greater extent the tightening of sanctions against Russia. Its main danger to Russian citizens and companies is the expansion of secondary sanctions, which, according to the logic of the American Ministry of Finance, extend to all foreigners.

In 2019 sanctions will continue over the Russian economy, despite the low external debt, a budget deficit, moderate inflation.

Recently Kurt Walker, the United States Special Representative for the Ukraine allowed the possibility of disconnecting Russia from the international banking system SWIFT. If the US decide to do it, SWIFT will have to obey. That was the case with Iran, for which US sanctions again came into force November 5, 2018.

The greatest risks for the Russian economy and business lie in the application of the CAATSA law, as well as in the possible adoption of two new bills   - DETER and DASKAA. On the one hand, these are toughening of sanctions against businessmen and imposing tougher restrictions like SDN against Russian state banks, on the other - ban on operations with the Russian state debt.

The likelihood has also increased for the United States to introduce fundamentally new sanctions, even without taking into account the aggravation of the Russian-Ukrainian contradictions.

Sanctions on government debt are still questionable, but it seems that new measures against businessmen and state banks cannot be avoided. Sanctions can also hurt large Russian banks.

Unlike American, European sanctions against Russia have not changed significantly since 2014. Since then, only the number of individuals and companies on the lists has changed, but no measures taken against them.

We should also consider the British sanctions against Russia. As it is known, in the end of March, the UK leaves the EU. This country has a special significance for Russian business. But after detecting Skripal case everything has changed. No matter how Britain’s exit from the European Union is formed, its sanctions policy will increasingly resemble the American one.

Based on the analysis of existing and future threats of sanctions, comparative tables can be drawn up to draw conclusions and identify ways to mitigate the effects of sanctions.

Table 1.

Imposed sanctions

The consequences of economic sanctions for Russia and Western countries:

Table 2.

Sanctions effects

In addition to the obvious consequences, the sanctions also negatively affect the economic situation of each individual citizen, and not only the entire economy of the country as a whole. However, despite the seemingly large number of negative effects of sanctions, they also have a positive effect on the Russian economy. In particular, local livestock and vegetable production and private enterprises are developing. The volume of imports has significantly reduced, while exports are growing every year due to the import substitution policy.

Conclusions: Sanctions naturally affect both the Russian economy and foreign and domestic policies. However, it’s still premature to talk about the negative or positive effects of sanctions, as they continue to work and become tougher every year. Based on the analysis, we can suggest two possible ways to develop sanctions.

Pessimistic forecast: Prerequisites for the development of a pessimistic forecast is a further neck strengthening of economic sanctions and the continued fall in oil prices. In this case, there will be a deepening of the economic isolation of Russia from the world community. Sanctions may include suspension of Visa and MasterCard systems in Russia, disconnecting Russian banks from the system SWIFT, etc. Russia will be forced to begin work on the creation of alternative system of international payments. And although the work in this direction already underway, it is difficult to expect tangible results in the near future. Under these conditions, Russia will seek allies in the face of the BRICS countries and waiting for everything in China. This will objectively create further prerequisites for move from a unipolar world to a multipolar. Any steps in this direction can lead to consequences about which many participants economic conflict in the short term do not even guess.

Optimistic forecast: Prerequisites for the development of an optimistic forecast are growth oil prices and easing economic sanctions. It will lead to to strengthen the Russian ruble, which will create great opportunities for increase imports, because it makes it cheaper. Actually this will mean a further weakening of ties with Western Europe and increased trade with countries in Asia and Latin America. Weakened economic sanctions will restore ties with Western Europe and then there will be a shift from East to West, since the share Western European goods will increase in Russian imports. This will allow to diversify commodity flows and choose as partner countries that provide the most favorable treatment friendship for Russia. However, even this optimistic forecast It has its pros and cons, since in this case the competition of imported goods with domestic ones will increase. In this case Russian manufacturers will have to work in conditions of international native competition. Unfortunately, not all of them will be to this ready. It can be assumed that in the event of the lifting of sanctions, the access of the Russian banks to international capital will gradually recover and economic relations between countries are normalizing.

With regard to solutions, Russia should continue to increase local production and private business, but not forgetting to maintain stable relations with all countries in the world, especially with the countries that most strongly influence the Russian economy.