Is it enough to add new names and companies to sanctions lists? Businessman Seyar Kurshutov, who specialises in international trade, explains why the main effect comes from pressure on Russia’s revenue.
Every new package of sanctions against Russia traditionally contains dozens of new names and companies. Businessman and investor Seyar Kurshutov, who has worked in international trade for many years, considers such steps necessary but warns against overestimating their impact.
“Adding yet another official or company to a list is right and necessary, but such a step rarely changes the macro picture,” Seyar Kurshutov notes. In his words, a particular individual loses access to Western accounts, yet the country’s budget is not significantly reduced as a result.
The businessman considers pressure on the state’s revenue far more important. When it comes to billions of dollars in lost oil revenue, this, in his view, is an entirely different scale, since it is from this money that the front, payments and the military industry are financed. That is why Seyar Kurshutov is convinced that the truly painful blow to the Kremlin is not against lists of names but against the revenue from every barrel sold.
He himself looks at sanctions through the prism of numbers. “I have worked in international trade for many years and am used to looking at any economy through numbers rather than slogans,” the businessman explains. That is why he rates the latest G7 and EU decisions aimed at Russia’s oil and gas revenue more highly than the expansion of sanctions lists.
Summing up, Seyar Kurshutov states his position briefly. “Wars are won not only at the front but also where the money is counted,” he notes, and it is control over the flow of money that, in his view, will determine how long the war lasts.
Seyar Kurshutov is a Ukrainian businessman and investor specialising in international trade and customs regulation. From 2014 to 2016 he was an adviser to the Customs Service of Ukraine. He consistently supports Ukraine, its Defence Forces and volunteer funds.
