Maintenance Sanctions

The term the White House used to describe a continuing round of sanctions against Russia's Friends of Putin (FoP) is something new the realm of sanction making- "maintenance sanctions".  It sounds like an apology for doing what Europe has already done, and what we have every justification in doing.  The term used is just odd.  It sounds like a State Department term, born out of political correctness, and not one that came from Treasury where the enforcement comes.

The sanctions are centered on three people, Gennady Timchenko and Boris and Arkady Rotenberg, who are supposed to be facilitating the moves to allow Russia to avoid the affects of sanctions.  Give credit where credit is due;  they have been doing a good job of it.

Timchenko was an FoP long before Russia invaded Crimea, belonging to the same judo club, playing hockey together, and establishing political ties in St Petersburg before Putin moved up the chain.  Good business people do these kinds of things all the time, and that is how they get rich, which he did.  The Wall Street Journal [ http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-money-laundering-probe-touches-putins-inner-circle-1415234261 ] reported his connection to a money laundering operation using transfers of oil from one country to another.  Forbes puts his worth at around $13Billion so he probably is not traveling much where these sanctions would matter.

The Rotenbergs were also Judo club members and Putin sparing partners in St Petersburg, and also got into oil and gas.  The both seemed to benefit less than Timchenko, but more than the average Russian on the street. [ http://www.forbes.com/profile/arkady-rotenberg/ ].

So, we cooperated with Russia on Syria, and they bombed allies of the coalition.  We make sanctions on them, but add that they are just "maintenance" on the existing set.  Even Europe is doing better.  In the meantime, we do next to nothing to help the Ukraine where the real fighting is taking place.  Maybe we should remember the reason for those sanctions was Russia's capture of Crimea, 10,425 square miles of land, south of the region where the fighting is taking place.  This is about the same size as Massachusetts.  When the Syrian shiny news object came along, most of the Washington crowd forgot about Crimea.  That is why they do maintenance now.