I'll perhaps generalize the point a bit more and note that the general pattern now is to impose costs on states by targeting individual entities or individual persons that will be perceived to have an impact.
To take the example of Russia, but perhaps a slightly different example, after the violence in Ukraine accelerated in early 2014, the U.S. and many of its partners in the EU and elsewhere imposed sanctions that were designed to shape the cost-benefit calculations of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The U.S. and others did so by targeting individuals who were close to him, former regime officials, and banks that played a significant role, at least putatively, in hiding regime assets, such as Bank Rossiya and others. There, the purpose was to shape Putin's thinking about the cost and benefits of continued escalation in Ukraine.
Now, the question can be raised: to what extent did Russia retaliate against the U.S. and its allies for this activity? Also, what impact did the sanctions have? One can make an argument that it's of course impossible to know for certain, because to determine the impact would require knowing the outcome of a counterfactual, which is to ask what would have happened if you had not imposed sanctions, and that's obviously impossible to say with certainty.
But there's at least a credible argument could be made that the acceleration of sanctions in the first half of 2014 in that context at least dampened the escalatory cycle in eastern Ukraine. While it may have frozen the status quo, Putin did not take the other more inflammatory actions that he could have taken.