Assessing the impact of Western sanctions on Russia

In 2025, the U.S. and European allies unleashed a new wave of sanctions on Russia, including extensive sanctions of shadow fleet ships by the EU and U.K. and U.S. sanctions of Russia’s two biggest oil producers, Rosneft and Lukoil.

On December 16, Brookings will host an event to take stock of the sanctions’ impact on Russia’s oil trade and economic outlook, while also assessing options for additional sanctions activity in the future.

The event will open with remarks from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I). This will be followed by a keynote address on lessons learned from four years of Russia sanctions by Simon Johnson, the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) professor of entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management and winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics. Craig Kennedy, an associate at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, will then give a presentation on what can be done to crack down on the shadow fleet in the Baltic.

Following their remarks, Ben Harris, vice president and director of Economic Studies at Brookings, will moderate a discussion on this year’s wave of EU and U.K. sanctions on Russia between Jovita Neliupšienė, ambassador of the European Union to the U.S.; Gediminas Varvuolis, ambassador of Lithuania to the U.S.; Urban Ahlin, ambassador of Sweden to the U.S.; and Lucy Ferguson, acting deputy head of mission at the British Embassy to the U.S.

Online viewers can pose questions in advance by emailing [email protected].