Analysts assess impact of Western sanctions on heads of Caucasian regions

The sanctions imposed by Western countries on the regional heads of Northern Caucasus are of a political nature; they have no real economic impact on them, since their interests are concentrated in the Middle East, analysts believe. Sanctions imply personal responsibility, but the peculiarities of flow of funds in Chechnya do not exclude Kadyrov's and his people's access to Western assets.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that after the start of the Russia's special military operation (SMO) in Ukraine, Western countries repeatedly introduced sanctions against Russian politicians and regional heads. On February 23, it became known that the US Treasury had included Akhmed Dudaev, the Chechen Minister for Nationalities, into the sanctions list. He has stated that he is only afraid of sanctions from Ramzan Kadyrov and the Almighty.

Andrei Serenko, the head of the Analytical Centre of the Russian Society of Political Analysts, treat sanctions as more political than financial; and the likelihood of Western sanctions' impact on the behaviour of Middle East countries and China is zero. "Both in Arab countries and in China they like it when people come to them with money. They value money without any political conditions. There are many such countries," Mr Serenko has stated.

Alexei Kuzmin, Deputy Director of the International Institute for Humanitarian-Political Studies, has stated that Russian officials, including regional heads of the North Caucasian and Southern Federal Districts (NCFD and SFD), are facing a tough alternative.

"Either you have assets abroad, in countries with which Russia is in declared opposition; and then you leave the state service forever. Or you have no such assets and remain in the state service," Mr Kuzmin has explained.

In his opinion, sanctions are a sort of test for intellectual maturity of the Russian political and economic class. "If the class is intellectually mature, then it can handle it ... Sanctions are a way to separate the wheat from the chaff within the country's political class," Alexei Kuzmin has concluded.

The issue of sanctions' efficiency varies depending on the interests of those subject to them, Dmitry Oreshkin, a political analyst has pointed out. "For example, if an official's daughter or son is studying in Europe or America, and mom and dad go to visit him/her in London or Massachusetts, then sanctions are a reason for concern," he has noted.