Western media is greeting the Biden administration’s Russian sanctions as “signaling a tougher stance on Russia than under former President Donald Trump.” Vladimir Putin likely thinks otherwise.
It looks as if the Biden administration has blinked on Putin’s key foreign policy objective — the completion and operation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, delivering Russian gas to Europe. The sanctioning of a few Kremlin officials is petty change compared to the decade-long profitable effects of Russian pipeline politics.
