I think one of the purposes for targeted sanctions against the people around Putin, the political operatives and the economic elite who are helping him implement his current agenda, should be to give such people pause and lead them to the conclusion that there is no future in following Putin.
In my view, if the sanctions are tough enough, there will be splits within the Russian elite. That is when the Putin system will begin to come unstuck. I don't know how fast that will take. It's inevitable, in my view, that a lot of the leadership will seek to protect themselves and will be very concerned when sanctions start hitting them. A lot of Russians have enormous wealth here in the United States as well as in Europe. A lot of the Ukrainian money was in Europe. When you start hitting those people and that money, and you start hitting the key institutions, then I think the divisions will begin to grow.
There is one further thing. I think helping Europe and helping Ukraine diversify energy resources will become critically important. This will take time, but we have liquefied natural gas that could be made available. It may take a couple of years, but we have to begin the process now and to signal right now that we're going to do this. Even if we can't implement it immediately, by sending the signal that we're going to give licences to companies to develop the necessary ports and infrastructure for the delivery of this natural gas, I think it would send a very powerful signal to Russia.
All of those things I think are important and will have political consequences.