Originally Posted by CyberSEO

If Obama was a smart guy (apparently he is not). He'd act as Navalny suggested: set personal sanctions for all those people, but did it silently. No public announcements and his fuckin' pathos speeches on how his sanctions are "effective". In this case it would work. There would be a real pressure on the bad guys here and there would be no newsbreak to be shown on Russian TV with comments like: "see people, all your problems are because of the US sanctions - Obama said they have destroyed our economics!"