Russian Sanctions Will Take Years to Bare Teeth, EBRD Says

Russian sanctions will take years to gain traction in crippling the economy as oil and gas revenues are buoyed, trade is reconfigured and policy makers in Moscow react to the shifts, a top economist said.

Beata Javorcik, the chief economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, said predictions that a barrage of punitive measures against the Kremlin in response to its invasion of Ukraine would trigger an economic shock were misplaced.

Beata Javorcik

Photographer: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg

“That was unrealistic,” Javorcik said in an interview at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. “Sanctions work through this invisible channel …