As Russia continues to threaten Western countries and create tensions near the Ukrainian border, the US in cooperation with European countries is preparing a package of sanctions to hit Russia. Some say that the Western world does not have any leverage against Russia but recently this has been proven otherwise. According to Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, a new massive package of severe sanctions on Russian elites will be imposed if Russian forces do invade Ukraine. However, the White House does not want to put the package on the table now. The US administration intends to create vagueness to deter Russia. “Russia will be able to start mitigating the sanctions and that doesn't make any sense to us,” Nuland said, adding that “deterrence is best when there's a little bit of strategic ambiguity around exactly what we are going to do.” Notably, the West has been imposing pinpoint sanctions trying not to hurt Russian citizens. These measures were aimed only at officials and state companies involved in military aggression. Nuland noted that the Russian government “will feel the sanctions acutely, as will the Russian people in terms of their economy. It will have a crushing blow on them.”
