The West's Economic Power Can Isolate Putin's Russia

The battle for control of Ukraine continues to rage. Western pressure on Russia has been ramped up.

A humanitarian catastrophe looms. And the stakes were raised even more dramatically yesterday, when President Putin put Russia’s nuclear deterrent on high alert.

In the midst of such chaos, it is hard to think strategically about the long-term consequences of Russia’s actions on its relationship with the rest of the world. So far, the response of the west has been tactical. There has been the tightening up of sanctions on Russia, most recently the exclusion of some Russian banks from the Swift international payments network.

There has also, at last, been the welcome shift by Germany on the issue of exporting arms to Ukraine, something that it previously refused to do. There will be massive humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian people, and as this newspaper argued yesterday, there is a profound need for Britain to provide sanctuary for refugees.