Are Sanctions Necessary? International Community in the Face of War in Ukraine

Abstract

Crisis resulting from the refusal to sign association agreement between the European Union and Ukraine by Viktor Yanukovych’s government was one of the most unpredictable events in the history of this country. The agreement was to be a symbolic confirmation of the development direction of Ukraine: economic modernisation and political democratisation. As a result of lengthy discussions over the content and validity of the understanding, a crisis arose that turned into an armed conflict. International community did not approve of this situation and imposed sanctions on the Russian Federation. A number of financial sanctions was imposed, assets were frozen, acquisition of financial funds was limited, embargo was imposed on a number of industrial and energy products and the Russian authorities were forbidden to cross the EU borders. The aim of this article is to present the outcomes of the sanctions and assessment of their effectiveness. For this purpose, the most adequate method was used namely institutional and legal analysis. Therefore, the subject of the research is a set of selected legal sources (notes, framework documents, research reports) concerning the regulation of sanctions towards Russia.