WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Western sanctions damage the Russian economy, but do not work as a political tool, former Russian finance minister Alexei Kudrin said on Wednesday.
The sanctions imposed on the Russian economy cost the country up to 1 percent of the GDP growth every year, but they do not work as an instrument of political influence, Kudrin explained.
"The sanctions against Russia have achieved none of their political objectives," University of Kent Professor of Russian and European Politics Richard Sakwa said on Wednesday. "In fact, they may have achieved the opposite effect."
The sanctions had been justified as seeking to use economic pressures to force Moscow to modify Russian policy over Ukraine and international politics in general, including Syria, Sakwa noted.
However, they had inflicted damage on the Russian economy and hardship on ordinary people, Sakwa warned.
"They have been damaging economically, above all in further reducing foreign investment and helping depress standards of living," he explained.
The US government under President Barack Obama and his successor who will be elected on November 8 need to recognize the need to scrap the sanctions and instead seek to constructively engage the Kremlin, Sakwa advised.
"As for what would be a better way for the United States to deal with Russia, I think the only way forwards is engagement and dialogue," he said.
University of Rhode Island Political Science Professor Nicolai Petro agreed with Sakwa’s assessment.
Sakwa "is 100 percent correct," Petro told Sputnik.
Petro said US policy towards Russia under Obama had been so unsuccessful, and was so confused and counterproductive that it needed to be totally scrapped and even reversed, Petro recommended.
"My prescription for moving away from confrontation is even simpler — take every policy we have with respect to Russia, and just do the exact opposite," he said.
The United States and Russia, the two major thermonuclear military powers on earth, were sliding into a potentially highly dangerous mode of confrontation that was entirely unnecessary and that urgently needed to be reversed, Petro pointed out.
"If you want to stop moving our nations toward confrontation, you need to start moving them away from confrontation," Petro warned.
