Podcast: The Russia sanctions
Christine Abely on the "sweeping, historic" response to war in Ukraine
February 2024 will mark the tenth anniversary of Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian territory in Crimea and the Donbas and two years since its full-scale invasion.
While military assistance from Ukraine’s allies has been gradual and cautious, economic retaliation has been impressive. "The sanctions imposed against Russia beginning in late winter 2022 were sweeping, historic and rolled out with stunning rapidity,” writes Christine Abely in The Russia Sanctions: The Economic Response to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
Yet, until now at least, most Russians have been insulated from their effects. As the war reaches an attritional stalemate and Putin waits for NATO's resolve to fracture, the sanctions and their lagged effects are taking on critical importance. In this interview, Christine Abely - an assistant professor at New England Law in Boston and an expert on sanctions law - talks about the history, practice, and dangers of this increasingly sophisticated weapon of economic warfare.
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Before she joined NEL, Christine Abely taught at Boston University School of Law after a career at Massachusetts firms specialising in business litigation, and international trade and sanctions law. While she has published papers on sanctions, food and sports law, The Russia Sanctions is her first book.
For my Writers’ Writers tip sheet, she chose Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against US Interests by Agathe Demarais (Columbia University Press, 2022) and The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson (Princeton University Press, second edition 2016).