Please join the Russia and Eurasia Program at The Fletcher School for a panel discussion with experts Andrei Yakovlev, Oleg Itskhoki, and Christine Abely about the multifaceted impacts of Western economic sanctions and trade restrictions on Russia. The panelists will assess the effectiveness of sanctions from both economic and legal perspectives, exploring why certain measures have struggled to meet their intended goals and how that has influenced domestic economic dynamics within Russia.

The conversation will also address the broader implications for global markets, with a focus on labor and currency fluctuations tied to the Russia-Ukraine war, as well as the legal challenges of implementing and enforcing sanctions, especially as they pertain to third parties. In addition, the conversation will cover the evolving scope of sanctions compliance efforts, including the use of secondary sanctions and newly developed legal authorities aimed at preventing circumvention.

The conversation will be moderated by Arik Burakovsky, Assistant Director of the Fletcher Russia and Eurasia Program. The event is open to the public, and refreshments will be served following the conversation. Please make sure to register via the Google Form here to attend the event in person or virtually. If you would like to submit discussion questions for the panelists in advance, please do not hesitate to reach out to us.

	Oleg Itskhoki is a professor of economics at the Department of Economics at Harvard University. He was previously the Venu and Ana Kotamraju Endowed Chair in Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also a fellow of the Econometric Society, an NBER research associate, a CEPR research affiliate, and an associate editor of the American Economic Review. His research interests are in macroeconomics and international economics, where he studies globalization and labor markets, currencies, exchange rates, international relative prices, and other topics. He holds a B.A. in economics from Moscow State University, an M.A. in economics from the New Economic School, and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He is the 2022 John Bates Clark Medalist, a participant in the Review of Economic Studies Tour, a Sloan Research Fellow, a recipient of the Excellence Award in Global Economic Affairs from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, and was on the IMF’s list of 25 influential economists under the age of 45.
	Andrei Yakovlev is an economist whose primary research interests include state-business relations in Russia, political economy of development, industrial policy, public procurement, and incentives for bureaucracy (with a comparative study of Russia and China). From 1993 to 2023, he worked at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow as director of the Institute for Industrial and Market Studies. From 2011 to 2022, together with Timothy Frye of Columbia University, he led HSE's International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development (ICSID). From 2015 to 2019, he served as president of the Association of Russian Economic Think Tanks (ARETT). In 2017, he was awarded the Gaidar Memorial Prize in economics. From 2022 to 2023, he served as a Visiting Scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. Since November 2023, he has served as a fellow at Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg (HWK) in Germany.
	Christine Abely is an Assistant Professor of Law at New England Law in Boston, where she teaches Contracts & International Business Transactions. She is the author of The Russia Sanctions: The Economic Response to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine (2023). She is also a licensed customs broker. After graduating from law school, she worked at several Massachusetts law firms in business litigation and international trade and sanctions law. Before teaching at New England Law Boston, she was an adjunct lecturer at Boston University School of Law. Her work has appeared in numerous academic journals and in the Los Angeles Times, The Hill, Just Security, War on the Rocks, and elsewhere. She has spoken on or been quoted in Bloomberg Businessweek, Texas Public Radio, Boston Public Radio, CNN Business, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and others.
	Arik Burakovsky is Assistant Director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at The Fletcher School, which he helped establish in 2018. His research interests include Russian foreign policy and political economy, soft power, public diplomacy, and international relations forecasting. Before completing his M.A. in Law and Diplomacy at The Fletcher School, Arik interned in the Public Affairs Section at the U.S. Embassy Moscow and studied the Polish language and culture as a Boren Fellow at the University of Warsaw in Poland. He also served as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Omsk, Russia and twice as Resident Director of the ROTC Project GO intensive summer Russian language program in Narva, Estonia. His work has been published by The Conversation, TIME, The National Interest, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and elsewhere. Arik received his B.A. in Political Science and International Relations from the University of California, San Diego.