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Washington(CNN)Senior US officials tell CNN they are disappointed US-led sanctions haven't had a bigger impact so far on the Russian economy and are now predicting that the harshest effects probably won't materialize until early next year at the earliest.
The hope had been that the sanctions would quickly choke off Russia's war machine in Ukraine, making it difficult for the Kremlin to sustain its efforts on the battlefield — and perhaps even turn public opinion against the invasion when day-to-day life in Russian society became uncomfortable.
But the Russian economy has proven far more resilient than many top Biden administration officials had expected when they set out to punish the country in February, thanks largely to record-setting revenues it has reaped in the spring and summer from soaring energy prices. In the first 100 days of the war, Russia earned a record 93 billion euros in revenue by exporting oil, gas and coal, according to the Finnish Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
Russia's economy still shrunk by about 4% between April and June as compared to the same period last year. But that's nowhere near the 15% decline that some had expected earlier in the year.
"We were expecting that things like SWIFT and all the blocking sanctions on Russia's banks would totally crater the Russian economy and that basically, by now going into September, we'd be dealing with an economically much more weakened Russia than the one that we are dealing with," said one senior US official, referring to the US and European decision to cut some Russian banks off from the SWIFT international banking system.
Another senior US official echoed that, telling CNN that many in the administration had hoped to see the Russian economy suffering more by now, given the unprecedented severity of the coordinated western sanctions
A separate senior administration official cautioned CNN, however, that the officials crafting the sanctions in the months leading up to the war always believed that the steepest impacts would not necessarily be immediate.
"I think we've had, from the beginning, a view that when Russia invaded Ukraine and we imposed the sanctions, they were going to be, in all likelihood, a mid-to-long term sanctions regime," the official said. "That is because we wanted to keep pressure on Russia over the long term as it waged war on Ukraine, and we wanted to degrade Russia's economic and industrial capabilities. So we've always seen this as a long term game."
The official acknowledged that while there were some "up-front shocks" to the Russian economy, like when the ruble plunged, Russia was able to rally quickly thanks to its energy revenues. Still, this official and western intelligence officials told CNN that they assess that in the long-term, Russia's economy will suffer enormously — both from the cost of the war itself and from western efforts to cut it off from global trade