The USA and the Russian Federation: What's Next in the Post-Sanctions Era? 1

After the onset of the Ukrainian crisis, the Russian Federation was faced with a series of international sanctions aimed to change its foreign policy towards Ukraine. Three years after the start of this major geo-political event, this research aims to present its impact on the relationship between the USA and the Russian Federation (in terms of trade and capital flows) but also to critically assess whether these sanctions proved effective. It should be mentioned that even before the Ukrainian crisis, the bilateral relation was a tensioned one, a series of other sanctions being imposed by the USA to the Russian Federation, most of them related to human rights infringement. The main goal of this paper is to assess the effects of the mutual economic sanctions imposed after the Ukrainian crisis. The used methodology is based on the most relevant theoretical approaches related to international sanctions, but also on a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the bilateral economic relations before and after the Ukrainian crisis, emphasizing the impact of the change brought by the President Donald Trump election as concerning the future of the two countries relationship. The main finding of the research is that economic sanctions are costly for both countries with little or none result in restoring the former status-quo in Ukraine and achieving a change of the Russian Federation’s foreign policy.