Ever since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we’ve been hearing about the “crushing” sanctions imposed not only on the Russian government but also on many individuals. These wealthy Russians, known as “oligarchs,” have supposedly seen their assets frozen or seized and their business interests have faced significant limitations. (I really need to figure out how one gets a position as an oligarch one of these days.) So what sort of real-world impact are the sanctions having on these people and are these actions of economic warfare moving the ball at all in terms of pushing Vladimir Putin to abandon the invasion? The Associated Press tracked down one of the oligarchs, an industrialist named Igor Makarov, and interviewed him to find out.

Sitting on a terrace in Verona as the bells toll at a nearby medieval church, Igor Makarov sips coffee as he describes his life as a billionaire under Western sanctions.

Most of his fortune earned doing business in Russia and the former Soviet Union is frozen, and his plans to develop his energy businesses are currently shelved. His yacht is seized and his two private jets are grounded, so he flew commercial from Cyprus to Italy on budget carrier EasyJet.

“I ask the question, what is the meaning of these sanctions against me? What do they achieve? They don’t help Ukraine,” Makarov said in a rare interview, blinking in the Italian sunshine.

I have to give the AP credit for taking the time to do this. It’s an interesting interview and definitely worth the time to read. But listening to Makarov speak, I don’t get the impression that the sanctions have exactly ruined his life or changed his personal position. First of all, they’re interviewing him at an Italian villa in Verona. “Most” of his personal fortune has been frozen, but clearly not all of it and he’s a billionaire. His yacht was seized and his two private jets were “grounded,” but he’s still sunning himself on the Riviera. It sounds as if the biggest inconvenience had to suffer was flying to Italy on a commercial flight. I’m sure most of us could handle a couple of weeks of this type of “suffering.”

In some ways, Makarov brought these problems on himself because of his lack of foresight. If he had taken the time to give a few million dollars and a sports car to Hunter Biden the way Yelena Baturina did, he wouldn’t be under any sanctions right now. But as they say, hindsight is 20-20.

So the sanctions may have “made life difficult” for some of the oligarchs, at least compared to the lifestyles of the rich and famous they were living previously. But have they produced the originally desired results? The two goals stated by the White House when the sanctions were imposed were to put pressure on Putin to end the war and to divert the assets of these billionaires to “help the people of Ukraine.” So how is that working out?

Thus far, virtually none of the oligarchs have publicly spoken out against Putin, and the few who have did so from very, very far away. They’re not stupid. Making an enemy of Putin is not conducive to a long and happy life. (Just ask Yevgeny Prigozhin.) As to sending their money to help the people of Ukraine, the AP reports that of an estimated $58 billion in frozen assets targeted under the sanctions, a grand total of $5.4 million has made it to Kyiv.

I’m not advocating for lifting the sanctions immediately, of course. Putin is evil and I have no sympathy for his rich corrupt friends. But the main point here is that the sanctions are not delivering as originally promised. It’s really not even close. It’s looking more and more as if the White House and NATO vastly overplayed their hands and overestimated Ukraine’s military capabilities in a similarly spectacular fashion. If we want an end to the war in Ukraine, it will clearly need to be a negotiated peace. Ukraine cannot completely “defeat” Russia militarily. And if we stick with this approach “for as long as it takes,” by the time the sanctions have any significant impact, there may not be any Ukrainians left alive to help.