Dem Rep. Sherman: Sanctioning Putin Directly Is an Ineffective P.R. Move, We Won’t Boot Russia from SWIFT Because We Want Their Oil

During an interview with MSNBC on Saturday, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) stated that the personal sanctions the Biden administration has levied against Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials are a P.R. move that won’t make a difference in Russia’s actions, are “actually rather modest” compared to the 2014 sanctions against Iran, “not near the kind of sanctions that would really hit” Russia’s economy, and that we haven’t kicked Russia out of the SWIFT international banking system “because both the United States, but particularly Europe, want to keep buying Russian oil and natural gas, and want to keep paying for it.”

Host Yasmin Vossoughian asked, “[W]hat do you make of these sanctions? Do you think they’ll make any difference, when it comes to Putin’s movements inside Ukraine?”

Sherman responded, “Not really. This is — Putin undertook this expecting at least hundreds and hundreds of casualties. These sanctions are actually rather modest compared to what we did to Iran back in 2014. We have not used the SWIFT system to cut them out of international banking. And the reason we didn’t, is because both the United States, but particularly Europe, want to keep buying Russian oil and natural gas, and want to keep paying for it. And of course, you need a banking system to pay for it. So, I think the sanction against Putin, personally, is an — a public relations action. He’ll take it as a slap in the face, but it’s not near the kind of sanctions that would really hit the Russian economy.”

He added that kicking Russia out of SWIFT would mean “oil prices are going up. We’d have to make it plain to the Saudis that they’d have to turn the spigot on during this time of international crisis, and we have to discuss this with the American and European population. Because, it’s easy to talk about how we’re going to sanction them. It’s a little bit more difficult to say, what costs are we, as a society, willing to bear in order to help the Ukrainian people? This is — we can’t do much for free.”

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