Thank you so much for your support and for your question, Mr. Bergeron.
Talking of personal sanctions, first of all it's important that Europe, for instance, and also the U.K., U.S., and Canada, took the first step. Yes, they went from sectoral economic sanctions to personalized sanctions, because unfortunately every time a round of sectoral sanctions is launched, they of course open a lot of champagne there in the Kremlin. They're just happy.
This is because foreign sanctions against the Russian economy are something they can blame everything on. Why does the income of the average household in Russia decrease for eight years in a row? It's because of the evil West, because of NATO, because of the U.S., because they are trying to kill our economy with sanctions. Such sanctions just give them an opportunity to steal more and explain everything using their propaganda machine.
Contrary to that, personal sanctions, we believe, are efficient, because propaganda can't sell them as being sanctions against Russia. They are against individuals, and these individuals are, of course, not our country and don't represent our country. It is thus very important that, for instance, the European Union adopted the European Magnitsky law for human rights violations and started to sanction some individuals.
Now, having said that, the first list of individuals was quite weak. They were mostly people such as security forces officials who, yes, are in charge and are responsible for Mr. Navalny's poisoning. Still, they don't travel abroad and they don't have assets abroad.
The idea of personal sanctions against Putin's friends and oligarchs is not to see Mr. Putin shorn of financial support. Unfortunately, he has access to enormous funds. Russia has exported oil and gas worth more than $3 trillion U.S. over the 20 years of Putin's rule, and he and his friends got hold of the majority of these funds. The idea is to build leverage against Putin and his friends, because every time Europe or the U.S. tries to build bridges, to compromise, to build a dialogue, unfortunately Putin, with his psychology, considers it to be just a sign of weakness.
He considers his Western counterparts, unfortunately, to be hypocrites. Quite reliable sources have said that his favourite TV series is House of Cards. He thinks that they are all...you know, they say the words they have to say about human rights, liberty, democracy. That's because they have to say it for their voters, but they don't really believe it. “They need my oil and and gas,” thinks Putin, “and they really need money. They will deal with me, they will work with me, whatever I do. There are no red lines, and I can do whatever I want.”
Every time President Macron or the Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz supposes that despite everything, despite all the human rights violations, they still have to compromise and so on, Putin thinks, “Ha, I have won again. They still need my oil and gas so much.”
The personal sanctions against Putin's oligarchs are important to win leverage against him, to build a strong position. Freezing his assets, and these are nominal—these are assets of his friends, but of course they're his personal assets, actually—would allow western leaders to talk to Putin from a much stronger position than they do now, because money really matters a lot for him.
That's our idea. Appeasement politics, unfortunately, has failed.