While the UN has worked in recent decades to strengthen the legal framework governing sanctions programs adopted by the Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the widespread practice of unilateral international sanctions – imposed by states rather than institutions of global governance – remains largely under-regulated and subject to few commonly acknowledged legal restraints,Footnote 1 except perhaps as regards basic humanitarian exceptions. In a context where unilateral sanctions, often referred to in UN terminology as “unilateral coercive measures” (UCMs),Footnote 2 are increasingly resorted to by certain states as legitimate foreign policy tools – most often to compel a change in policy of another state – the present chapter attempts a broad overview of some of the most pressing legal issues raised by the practice of unilateral sanctions.
First, it will revisit the issue of the legal validity of coercive measures, using as a starting point the principle according to which the targeting state is seemingly entitled to sever economic relations with the target. Assuming that this principle adequately reflects present-day international law, it remains that applicable treaty obligations or other customary law or general principles of international law (such as the principles of nonintervention and self-determination) may restrict such freedom to impose sanctions. Economic coercive measures may however be legally justified where they constitute countermeasures, in the meaning of the 2001 draft articles of the International Law Commission (ILC) on the responsibility of states.
Second, this chapter will review certain cases where unilateral sanctions have actually been subjected to legal challenges. This will encompass a range of claimants (either the targeted state itself, or a third state affected by the sanctions, or private parties, such as individuals or corporations), and a variety of dispute settlement mechanisms, including judicial (or quasi-judicial) interstate dispute settlement options, such as the ICJ; as well as options open to private parties (international arbitration, regional jurisdictions such as the European Court of Justice (ECJ) or European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), and human rights treaty bodies). The chapter will finally address another, nonjudicial, mechanism, that of countermeasures adopted by targeted states in reaction to unilateral sanctions perceived as unlawful.
The Issue of Legal Justification of Unilateral Sanctions
Unilateral Sanctions and Economic Coercion
The issue of whether unilateral sanctions are admissible under international law has attracted much attention, even before the UN Charter was adopted in 1945. During the nineteenth century, in the context of the rise of global trade and what was labeled the “first globalization” (i.e., approximately the period between 1870 and 1914), much discussion surrounded the issue of whether states had the right to close themselves to, or insulate themselves from, foreign trade.Footnote 3 During that period, some influential voices asserted that an international legal rule mandating free trade was emerging, but this trend was challenged by both World Wars, which witnessed a massive use by most belligerents of coercive measures aiming at the blocking of economic interaction with enemy nations, extending to measures impacting third states, including neutrals.Footnote 4
The concept of economic coercion was again the focus of attention in the early years of the UN in various fora. Thus, during the final phase of the drafting of the UN Charter (May 1945), a proposal was made by Brazil to include economic measures within the realm of measures prohibited under the draft provision that was to become Article 2(4) of the Charter, embodying the prohibition of the threat or use of force.Footnote 5 The ultimate rejection of the Brazilian proposal was inconclusive as to the willingness of the negotiators of the San Francisco Conference to exclude economic coercion from the ambit of the prohibition in Article 2(4).Footnote 6 Later on, in 1950, the ILC, in the course of its work on the Draft Code of Offences against the Peace and Security of Mankind, was called to consider as an international crime “the fact of a State applying measures of psychological or economic coercion in respect of another State.”Footnote 7
The 1960s and 1970s also saw discussion and proposals along these lines. During the discussion at the UN Conference on the Law of Treaties of Article 49 of the ILC Commission’s draft (on “treaties concluded under threat or use of force”), some countries had proposed an amendment which would have made a treaty void if its conclusion had been procured by the threat or use of force, including economic or political pressure in violation of the principles of the Charter of the UN.Footnote 8
Economic coercion was also discussed in the framework of the UN Special Committee on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States. Arguments for and against the inclusion of political, economic, and other pressures within the meaning of force as per Article 2(4) of the UN Charter were exchanged.Footnote 9 In 1970, the prohibition of economic coercion found its way into the so-called Friendly Relations Declaration.Footnote 10
In recent decades, the UNGA has time and again adopted resolutions condemning the use of unilateral economic measures and economic coercion with clear majority votes, but also with the persistent opposition of certain countries.Footnote 11 Another recurrent series of resolutions has addressed the specific case of the embargo on Cuba, stressing its unlawfulness under international law and calling for its immediate lifting.Footnote 12 Resolution 78/135 (2023)
[u]rges the international community to adopt urgent and effective measures to eliminate the use of unilateral economic, financial or trade measures that are not authorized by relevant organs of the United Nations, that are inconsistent with the principles of international law or the Charter of the United Nations or that contravene the basic principles of the multilateral trading system and that affect, in particular, but not exclusively, developing countries.Footnote 13
Also in December 2023, the UNGA adopted the latest (to date) of a long series of resolutions on “Human rights and unilateral coercive measures,” whereby all states are urged
to cease adopting or implementing any unilateral measures not in accordance with international law, international humanitarian law, the Charter of the United Nations and the norms and principles governing peaceful relations among States, in particular those of a coercive nature, with all their extraterritorial effects, which create obstacles to trade relations among States, thus impeding the full realization of the rights set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments, in particular the right of individuals and peoples to development.Footnote 14
Some have asserted that the support, expressed repeatedly for decades, by an impressive majority of states in the UNGA, for the legal position that unilateral sanctions are intrinsically unlawful, is indicative of the emergence of a customary norm prohibiting unilateral sanctions.Footnote 15 This argument has been criticized by Hofer, who argues in substance that “[i]n spite of frequent calls for the cessation of such practice, a prohibition of UCM has not crystalized.”Footnote 16 It has also been asserted in this context that some countries opposing the use of unilateral economic sanctions as a matter of principle have recourse to such measures in certain instances, relying on the invocation of the necessity to defend certain values.Footnote 17
It seems, however, that there is a strong indication that, at the very least, extraterritorial, secondary sanctions, that is to say, those measures that are designed and intended to impede (trade or other) relations between the targeted state and third states, may be considered inadmissible under international law. It is widely acknowledged that such measures disregard basic principles of jurisdiction under international law, and that these “disproportionately impact third states because they unjustifiably infringe upon their rights to trade and to conduct their foreign policy freely, thereby interfering in their external affairs in a manner that is incompatible with the principle of non-intervention.”Footnote 18 Thus, extraterritorial (secondary) sanctions are inadmissible to the extent that these entail jurisdictional claims “to regulate the activities of aliens outside the territory of the legislating State.”Footnote 19 It has also been suggested that a consensus exists among a vast majority of states to condemn and resist the extraterritorial application of unilateral sanctions.Footnote 20
Unilateral Sanctions, the Freedom of States, and Economic Coercion
It has been observed by Joyner that, consistent with the Lotus principle of international law, “as a general proposition, and in the absence of positive legal obligations to the contrary, it is certainly correct that a State has the legal discretion to choose with which other States it pleases to have, and to allow the legal and natural persons subject to its jurisdiction to have, economic/financial dealings.”Footnote 21
This implies that unilateral sanctions measures may be legally permissible if these fit into the concept of “retorsion.” Retorsion in international law is a concept that refers to “unfriendly” conduct by a state, which is not a priori inconsistent with any international obligation of the state engaging in it (even though it may be a response to an internationally wrongful act of the target state).Footnote 22 Acts of retorsion may include the prohibition of or limitations upon normal diplomatic relations or other contacts, embargoes of various kinds, or withdrawal of voluntary aid programs. Whatever their motivation, so long as such acts are not incompatible with the international obligations of the states taking them towards the target state, they do not qualify as countermeasures,Footnote 23 which would have to meet other legal requirements.
To the extent that these measures are not prohibited by any positive rule or obligation of international law, retorsions are lawful to maintain.Footnote 24 Thus, retorsion is “widely regarded as a freedom (as opposed to a right to which certain limitations may apply) and is accordingly largely unregulated by international law.”Footnote 25
The ICJ in the Nicaragua case reaffirmed the principle of the discretion of states when it found that “[a] State is not bound to continue particular trade relations longer than it sees fit to do so, in the absence of a treaty commitment or other specific legal obligation.”Footnote 26 This meant that in the absence of specific legal obligations to engage in trade with another state, a general trade embargo may be a lawful measure. However, it happened that, in the particular circumstances of that case, there was such a treaty obligation on the part of the US and the ICJ accordingly held the boycott unlawful on that ground.
However, as it has been observed, “there is considerable evidence that the true position on the question of the legality of economic warfare under customary international law is rather less categorical than this brief statement by the Court would lead one to believe.”Footnote 27
Neff has indeed rightly pointed to the hesitation on the part of modern international lawyers “to accept that any form of patently hostile conduct (economic or otherwise) directed by one State against another could be wholly and completely lawful.”Footnote 28 He referred in that context to the case of the Arab boycott of Israel, whose defenders, he noted, “tend to justify its legality not on the basis that boycotting is lawful per se, but rather on more narrow and specific grounds such as self-defence, the exercising of belligerents’ rights, the promotion of the human rights of the Palestinian people and so forth.”Footnote 29 Similarly, in most contemporary instances of uses of unilateral sanctions the targeting state(s) invoke legal grounds to support the lawfulness of their actions. For instance, the EU implements a wide range of autonomous (unilateral) sanctions programs, these sanctions being portrayed as “one of the European Union’s tools to promote the objectives of the [EU Common Foreign and Security Policy]: peace, democracy and the respect for the rule of law, human rights and international law.”Footnote 30
Thus, it appears that the exercise of economic pressure, even in the absence of specific international (treaty or other) obligations, must not exceed a certain limit, lest it constitute a violation of the customary principle of nonintervention.Footnote 31 Accordingly, economic measures not otherwise prohibited by international law would arguably become unlawful if their real aim is to coerce the target state in respect of matters which each state has the right to decide freely, such as the choice of a political, economic, social, and cultural system.Footnote 32
Unilateral Sanctions and the Law of Countermeasures
A state imposing unilateral sanctions may arguably be able to justify its measures as non-precluded countermeasures, in the meaning of the ILC’s Articles on State Responsibility, which are widely considered as codification of customary international law.Footnote 33 Under this framework, the conduct of a state in violation of international obligations is not wrongful when it is employed as a proportionate response to a previous internationally wrongful act having injured the acting state, subject to certain conditions, both substantive and procedural.Footnote 34 Countermeasures may thus be taken against a responsible state to induce it to comply with its obligations to cease the internationally wrongful conduct. Countermeasures are supposed to be temporary measures, and to be subject to the principle of proportionality.Footnote 35 Countermeasures are generally understood as operating in a bilateral setting. This means that the legality of third-party countermeasures, that is to say, taken by a state other than the state affected by the wrongful act, and of collective countermeasures or countermeasures “in the common interest,” remains a matter of controversy.Footnote 36
A number of instances of unilateral economic measures in the contemporary period have been tentatively justified by the acting state(s) as a response to some perceived violation on the part of the targets. This was the case, for example, of the Arab oil boycott in the 1970s against states supporting Israel, of the measures against the USSR for its intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and of the Greek embargo against the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in the early 1990s. It has been observed that: “[m]any of these measures, such as also the ongoing comprehensive US embargo against Cuba, are of dubious legality under the law of countermeasures, partly because of the operation of the principle of proportionality, and partly because of the jurisdictional claims which they entail to regulate the activities of aliens outside the territory of the legislating State.”Footnote 37
It should be noted that the legal regime of countermeasures as devised by the ILC does not admit of the legality of countermeasures that affect the prohibition on the use of force, or that negatively impact human rights, which is arguably the case regarding (at least certain) unilateral economic sanctions that may have wide-ranging consequences for the human rights of affected populations. Article 50(1) of the ILC Articles indeed provides that countermeasures shall not affect (inter alia): “(b) obligations for the protection of fundamental human rights; […] (d) other obligations under peremptory norms of international law.”Footnote 38 Prohibited economic countermeasures involving the use of force include the imposition of a blockade of the ports or coasts of a state by the armed forces of another state. It has also been stressed that such a blockade would also constitute an act of aggression against the blockaded state, in accordance with Article 3(c) of UNGA Resolution 3314 (XXIX) of 1974 (Definition of Aggression).Footnote 39
Analysis of Some Legal Challenges to Unilateral Sanctions
The present section will review certain significant actual cases where unilateral sanctions have been subject to legal challenges. The idea is to seek to identify trends and recurring practices, as well as possible limits or gaps in the law. This evaluation will necessarily be non-exhaustive, and it will not include a consideration of cases where sanctions issues are addressed in nonjudicial mechanisms, such as negotiation, conciliation, and mediation between states. It will not address either the mechanisms of blocking legislation intended to shield one’s nationals from the effects of secondary, extraterritorial sanctions enacted by another state. Nor will this section address “unconventional” means to resist unilateral sanctions, such as techniques of avoidance of sanctions (“sanctions-busting”), and the practice, either by affected states or by affected parties or communities themselves or NGOs, of documenting and publicizing to the international community the adverse impacts of sanctions.
Unilateral Sanctions Challenged as Violations of Customary Rules
As noted in the previous section, there is a strong legal argument that, in numerous instances, unilateral sanctions may amount to violations of certain customary rules of international law. This includes the customary rule of nonintervention. However, legal actions against unilateral sanctions before international jurisdictions have in practice rarely, if at all, been based on claims of violation of customary rules, including nonintervention. It is reasonable to assume that litigant states and their counsel have generally considered that uncertainties relating to the invocation of customary norms before international judicial fora were such as to mandate the practical option to frame legal claims in terms of violations of specific treaty obligations.
To the author’s knowledge, no state has ever sought to invoke the rule of nonintervention as its main legal ground to challenge unilateral sanctions. For example, Iran, in its case brought in 2018 before the ICJ to challenge the reimposition by the US of various sanctions in the wake of the US withdrawal from the JCPOA, has chosen to strictly circumscribe its claim as based on violations of the 1955 US–Iran Treaty of Amity, whereas customary rules are referred to only as secondary sources: “The principal sources of law to be applied in resolving the dispute are the Treaty of Amity, and, as secondary sources applicable to the interpretation and application of the Treaty of Amity, rules of customary international law and general principles of law.”Footnote 40
However, it is to be noted that on various occasions, in cases where violations of the principle of nonintervention were alleged, the ICJ found that it had jurisdiction to rule on such allegations. Thus, in the Nicaragua case, the ICJ ruled that the US, “by training, arming, equipping, financing and supplying the contra forces or otherwise encouraging, supporting and aiding military and paramilitary activities in and against Nicaragua, has acted, against the Republic of Nicaragua, in breach of its obligation under customary international law not to intervene in the affairs of another State.”Footnote 41
There are many situations in international relations where violations of norms of international law are believed to have occurred, but nonetheless no concrete remedies are available because international law procedures of dispute settlement are not clearly available. In other words, while a breach of international law can reasonably be identified, such breach cannot give rise to legal remedies before an international court or tribunal, because no jurisdictional option exists that would allow the aggrieved state or other entity to seek remedies and redress against the culprit. When such a treaty-based jurisdictional option exists, it is still an uncertain and risky strategy for a claimant state to invoke the violation of customary principles of international law such as intervention. Thus, generally “there is a hesitancy to use treaties to reach beyond the core cases which obviously fall within the dispute settlement provision.”Footnote 42 States will usually seek to invoke firmer legal grounds, usually the violation of certain substantive treaty provisions in force between themselves and the targeting state(s).
Unilateral Sanctions Challenged As Violations of Treaty Commitments
Faced with the embargo implemented by some of its neighbors as of 2017, Qatar has decided to bring claims simultaneously before various judicial or quasi-judicial bodies, including the WTO’s General Council convened as a dispute settlement body and the council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).Footnote 43 In 2017 and 2018, Qatar filed several WTO claims against the countries that imposed restrictions against it.Footnote 44 It complained of “coercive economic measures,”Footnote 45 or of “written and unwritten, published and unpublished measures adopted in the context of coercive attempts at economic isolation imposed […] against Qatar.”Footnote 46 It asserted that the measures “individually and collectively affect trade in goods, trade in services and trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights,”Footnote 47 thus violating some obligations under the WTO covered agreements. Saudi Arabia took the position that the dispute was not actually a “trade dispute” but a dispute in relation to security matters. It claimed that “political and essential security disputes of this kind cannot be resolved at the WTO and should not be brought to the WTO disguised as trade disputes.”Footnote 48 Saudi Arabia accordingly relied on the security exception in Article 73(b)(iii) of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement), a provision mirroring that of Article XXI(b)(iii) of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT, 1994). The Panel found that some of the challenged measures, that is to say, measures that prevented Saudi law firms from representing a Qatari targeted entity, were actually justified as a legitimate use of a security exception under Article 73(b)(iii), to the extent that these measures “meet a minimum requirement of plausibility in relation to the proffered essential security interests, that is to say, that they are not implausible as measures protective of these interests.” Other “measures,” that is to say, the non-application of criminal procedures and penalties to a pirate broadcasting company whose activities had detrimental impact on Qatar, were not considered by the Panel as covered by a security exception, to the extent that such conduct was unrelated to the “emergency in international relations” as to make it implausible that Saudi Arabia implemented these measures for the protection of its “essential security interests.”Footnote 49 Since then, the underlying dispute has become moot as a result of the withdrawal of the restrictive measures imposed against Qatar.Footnote 50
Venezuela similarly chose the WTO route to challenge the measures implemented against it by the US. It formulated its complaint against “certain coercive and trade-restrictive measures, (i) consisting of inclusion on blacklists; and in relation to (ii) the sovereign debt market; and (iii) digital currency, imposed by the United States on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in an attempt to isolate it economically.”Footnote 51
At the time of writing (December 3, 2024), this case has not yet given rise to the establishment of a panel.
Qatar also filed a complaint before the ICAO. On June 8, 2017, Qatar requested that a special session of the ICAO Council be convened under Article 54 (n) of the 1944 Chicago Convention in order for the Council to consider the “matter of the actions of the Arab Republic of Egypt, the Kingdom of Bahrain, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to close their airspace to aircraft registered in the State of Qatar.” Bahrain, Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia subsequently filed an application before the ICJ constituting an appeal from the decision rendered by the ICAO Council on June 29, 2018. The Court rendered its judgment in July 2020, rejecting the appeal and holding that the ICAO Council has jurisdiction to entertain the application submitted to it by Qatar in 2017, and that the said application is admissible.Footnote 52 Later on, however, the dispute was settled so that the ICAO case did not go further.
Iran, as mentioned above, focused its claim against the US before the ICJ on alleged violations of several provisions of the 1955 Treaty of Amity. At the time of writing, the case is still pending, the ICJ having rejected in its judgment of February 3, 2021 the preliminary objections to its jurisdiction raised by the US.
While most of these legal challenges are still under way, the case of Qatar – in respect of which the various WTO and other claims are now moot – has shed light on the fact that jurisdictional claims are in practice primarily used as bargaining mechanisms, with Qatar reportedly conceding to cease international adjudication in exchange for the lifting of the sanctions,Footnote 53 and it is uncertain whether any of the international bodies seized of unilateral sanctions cases in recent years will accept that it has jurisdiction to rule on the merits of the dispute. More than thirty years ago, Hans van Houtte observed that: “[t]reaties are frequently invoked against sanctions. They often have prevented states from imposing sanctions. In only very few instances, however, has it been recognized that sanctions had violated treaty commitments.”Footnote 54
In light of recent cases brought against unilateral sanctions, it seems prima facie that this statement retains its relevance today.
Unilateral Sanctions Challenged As Human Rights Violations
States targeted by unilateral sanctions have also in various instances challenged these as violations of human rights. Thus, Qatar in its case against the UAE before the ICJ portrayed the restrictive measures as “discriminatory measures directed against Qataris on the basis of their national origin,” qualifying as violations of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination (ICERD).Footnote 55 In parallel, it lodged complaints before a UN human rights treaty body, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) under article 11 of the ICERD, which were the first ever uses of the interstate communication procedure provided for by the convention.Footnote 56 While the ICJ ruled on July 23, 2018 that it had prima facie jurisdiction to the extent that the dispute between the parties related to the “interpretation or application” of the CERD, and requested that the UAE take provisional measures to prevent further aggravation or extension of the dispute, it subsequently dismissed Qatar’s claims, finding that the dispute fell outside of the scope ratione materiae of the ICERD, since discrimination based on nationality did not constitute discrimination based on national origin as required under Article 1(1) of CERD.Footnote 57
Various cases claiming that sanctions had resulted in adverse human rights impacts have been brought before various relevant international courts, such as the ECtHR.Footnote 58 A significant number of legal cases have also been brought before EU courts by parties affected by sanctions decided at the EU level and implemented by EU member states, claiming that the implementation of EU unilateral sanctions did not comply with the EU’s human rights obligations as guaranteed by EU law.Footnote 59 These actions have generally led to mixed outcomes, and it is worth mentioning that the EU and its member states have a history of relisting individuals and entities after these have obtained their delisting before EU courts.
Countermeasures against Unilateral Sanctions
As noted by the ILC, a state taking countermeasures
acts at its peril, if its view of the question of wrongfulness turns out not to be well founded. A State which resorts to countermeasures based on its unilateral assessment of the situation does so at its own risk and may incur responsibility for its own wrongful conduct in the event of an incorrect assessment.Footnote 60
In other words, the lawfulness of the taking of countermeasures depends, in the first place, on the effective occurrence of the prior international wrongful act by the target state.
Thus, assuming that in a given situation measures of economic coercion are in violation of obligations of the acting state under international law and cannot be justified as countermeasures, that state could be found liable for a breach of its international obligations. Its actions could then serve as grounds for resort to countermeasures by the injured state.Footnote 61
It has been widely reported that Russia has in recent years applied de facto countermeasures, especially under the form of import restrictions, in reaction to the economic sanctions adopted against it in relation to the situation in Ukraine and the Crimea. This in particular led the EU to file a WTO complaint against Russia in 2014 over bans and restrictions of pork imports that Moscow justified as due to swine fever outbreaks but that the EU suspected “to be driven by Russia’s geopolitical stand-off with the west over Ukraine.”Footnote 62 Iran has also repeatedly asserted its right to resort to countermeasures in the face of unilateral sanctions imposed against it, and it has actually applied targeted sanctions, albeit on a limited scale, against various entities and individuals of Western states having enacted sanctions against Iran, on a basis of “reciprocity.”Footnote 63
Conclusion
The enquiry on the issue of legality of unilateral sanctions gives some weight to the opinion that economic pressure involving a sufficient degree of magnitude can, at least in certain cases, be considered unlawful as a violation of the principle of nonintervention, even in situations where it does not imply that a state has failed to meet specific international (treaty or other) obligations. In addition, I found that there is a strong legal argument for the position that unilateral economic measures claiming extraterritorial reach (and thus impact on third parties) are widely considered by the international community, in light of the consensus existing at the UNGA, as intrinsically unlawful.Footnote 64 Such wide rejection of unilateral sanctions entailing extraterritorial application is arguably strong evidence of an emerging customary prohibition of such measures.
Turning to actual legal claims against unilateral sanctions, their review allows for the formulation of several provisional findings. First, it seems there is little expectation that a legal action brought solely on grounds of violating general rules of international law such as the rule of nonintervention is likely to succeed; realistically, there may be no remedies for this in judicial settings. This may of course be considered an unfortunate situation, but this is confirmed by the practice of most states affected by sanctions.
Thus, actions framed as violations of treaty commitments may meet with more success; but that option is often subject to limitations in practice, especially when the sanctioning state withdraws from the treaty, as in the case of Iran’s claim regarding alleged violations of the 1955 Treaty of Amity; or when the sanctioning state invokes the national security clause in GATT or TRIPS; and even when these claims are fully adjudicated, experience shows that they have rarely resulted in rulings that the sanctions constituted treaty violations.
It does seem that bringing a case may in itself constitute a form of pressure that can be used to achieve an end to the sanctions, as in the case of Qatar. Indeed, whereas private actors affected by sanctions primarily bring legal claims with a view to obtain remedies and redress against the sanctions, affected states challenging sanctions before international judicial fora often do it as part of a broader strategy, along with other means of dispute settlement such as negotiation or mediation, or even countermeasures.
From an international relations perspective, it may be added that while a targeted state may resort to countermeasures where it asserts that unilateral sanctions are used wrongfully, that option may be an effective strategy for a target country with considerable economic strength (such as Russia, for which there is strong evidence that its economy has so far successfully withstood – to a large extent – the many packages of unilateral sanctions applied on it since it retook control of the Crimea in 2014, and most of all since it launched its military offensive on Ukraine in 2022),Footnote 65 but will not realistically be an option for most small or developing countries.
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