The US "Bloomberg" agency said that Russia has become the most punished country in the world, overtaking Iran and Syria within 10 days, as a result of the successive packages of sanctions imposed by the major Western powers after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war on February 24.

And the US Agency indicated, based on statistics from a global site specialized in tracking sanctions, that Washington and its allies imposed 2,778 new sanctions on Russia, bringing the number of sanctions against it to more than 5,553.

With these sanctions, Russia, the largest country in the world in terms of area and second largest military power, has surpassed Iran (3,616 penalties), Syria (2608) and North Korea (2077), to become the most countries in the world that have imposed sanctions, as Tehran imposed 3,616 penalties on Western powers during the ten years. The latter because of its nuclear program, and because of accusations of sponsoring "terrorism".

Western companies

The unprecedented and successive package of sanctions on Russia led to the announcement of major Western companies in various sectors to withdraw or suspend their investments or services in Russia, for fear that their activities would be exposed to Western sanctions or based on a decision by those companies to increase pressure on Moscow.


Bloomberg Agency quoted former US Treasury (Finance) official Peter Pyattsky as saying that the recent Western sanctions against Russia are "a financial nuclear weapon and the largest package of sanctions in history," adding that Russia moved within two weeks of being part of the global economy to the country most exposed to sanctions.

Looking at the details of the sanctions against Russia published on the platform of the site “castellum.ai”, the United States leads the countries that have imposed sanctions on Moscow since 2014 (the date of the annexation of the Ukrainian Crimea by the Russian authorities), with 1,194 penalties, followed by Canada with 908, Switzerland with 824, the European Union (766), France (760), Australia (633) and the United Kingdom (271).

Depending on the nature of the parties to which sanctions were imposed in Russia, the overwhelming majority of Western sanctions targeted individuals (2,427 penalties), then entities (343).

Repercussions of sanctions

Western sanctions imposed on Russia after it launched a war on Ukraine led to the freezing of the vast majority of the reserves of the Russian Central Bank in the world, and a significant decline in the value of the Russian currency, the ruble against the dollar, and Russian citizens rushed to withdraw their money from automated teller machines.

A queue in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg waits to withdraw money from an automated teller machine (Reuters)

The largest Russian airline, Aeroflot, also stopped operating its international flights (except to Belarus) 3 days ago, and the Russian automaker AvtoVAZ announced on March 3 the suspension of its activities due to the lack of electronics due to Penalties.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the sanctions on his country are similar to declaring war on Russia, and it was striking that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on the second of this month in an interview with Al Jazeera that US President Joe Biden said that there is no alternative to sanctions against Russia except a global war.

The Kremlin pledged to respond to Western sanctions "in an appropriate manner and in line with Russia's interests," adding that these sanctions were "strong and painful, but Moscow has the ability to compensate for the damage."