Moscow Fried Chicken, Atomic Turkey Prove Biden’s Sanctions Scheme Is a Bust

While President Biden these days seems to have trouble remembering what country he was just visiting, President Putin is nimbly making a mockery of Mr. Biden’s tough talk on sanctions. Economic measures Washington took against Russia to punish the Kremlin for its invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago are having only a limited impact on some sectors of the Russian economy, as two disparate developments in and around Moscow show. The first involves fowl; the second may leave some at Washington crying foul. Earlier this week, an outlet of the Russian-rebranded version of the American fast food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken, better known as KFC, opened to rave reviews on Moscow’s busy Tverskaya-Yamskaya Street, just a couple miles from the Kremlin. It is called Rostic’s and according to Russian news agency Tass, the menu assortment “remains the same as in the KFC network: desserts, coffee, potatoes, delicious chicken, spicy wings, beer.”KFC, along with McDonald’s and Starbucks, left Russia last year in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine. Yum! Brands, of which KFC is a subsidiary, had by the end of last April completed the sale of its local assets to a Russian group of companies that had been its franchisees since 2011. A similar dynamic unfolded earlier with McDonald’s in Russia, when a Siberian coal baron who used to license 25 of the iconic burger joints scooped up all 850 Russian locations. These now operate under the name Vkusno I Tochka, which translates as “Delicious, that’s all.”As with those de-arched McDonald’s, the new Rostic’s appeared to be an instant hit among Muscovites. The Moscow Times reported that at the restaurant’s opening on Tuesday the food “was served in wrapping and cartons bearing the traditional KFC brand colors, red and white.” It was also packed. The paper reported that after trying the Rostic’s chicken wings one diner said, “The meat is spicy and crunchy, just like it used to be.”Obviously life in Russia is not exactly like it used to be. Even if no one is starving, the retail and dining options are undeniably diminished following Western sanctions that have targeted virtually every sector of the Russian economy. Yet Russia is a vast country, and something of an autarky. Russians are self-reliant by nature because they have centuries under their collective belts of learning how to get by with less than, say, the French. Consuming large quantities of locally sourced vodka doubtless helps lift spirits when circumstances are less than celebratory. Russians also know how to sell their big money maker, oil and gas, to major customers when Europe, ostensibly out of moral considerations, turns up its collective nose at the goods. It does not bother Moscow much. China and India cannot seem to buy enough Russian oil, and Pakistan is just the latest non-aligned nation to lap up Russian crude oil at a discounted price.Implementing sanctions, most in Washington would argue, is the correct thing to do ethically and morally. Yet as an overall strategy, they are reductive by nature and can come at a political cost that Mr. Biden, or those who advise him, failed to calculate. Consider that presidents Putin and Erdogan have just unveiled a nuclear power plant in Turkey built by Russian state nuclear firm Rosatom. As the Sun has reported, the $20 billion Akkuyu plant in southern Turkey will eventually supply a tenth of Turkey’s electricity. That process started on Thursday with the first of four planned nuclear reactors taking its initial load of fuel. Mr. Putin, not surprisingly, was pleased. “This is a flagship project and it brings both mutual economic benefits and, of course, helps to strengthen the multifaceted partnership between our two states,” the Russian strongman gushed at a virtual unveiling ceremony at which Mr. Erdogan was also present. The Turkish leader said, “Our country has risen to the league of nations with nuclear power, albeit after a 60-year delay.”If the reality of Russia and Turkey’s deepening commercial and energy ties does not scream “multipolar world,” perhaps nothing does — and, as with the plethora of fast-food options at Moscow, it shows the limited utility, if not outright futility, of sanctions because they are ultimately a reactive, not a take-charge tool. The question of why America could not be the first to help Turkey, which is at least on paper a fellow member of NATO, to build out its nuclear power infrastructure may be a question for another day, but it does appear to be beyond the current president’s ken. Final word for the French, who will happily gobble American hamburgers on the Champs-Élysées while apparently leaving room for Russian uranium. The trade in uranium between Paris and Moscow remains brisk. Only the Seversk plant in Siberia is capable of reprocessing the spent uranium that comes from France’s 56 nuclear reactors, and that plant is owned by Rosatom.Greenpeace reports that since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, France has tripled its imports of enriched uranium from Russia. That does not mean France is wholly dependent on Russia to run its nuclear power plants, but the links run deep and would no doubt be costly to cut. Could that explain some of President Macron’s quizzical coziness toward Mr. Putin these past several months?Russia also has a virtual lock on the transportation of uranium from neighboring Kazakhstan as well as Uzbekistan. All of these places and developments are very far from Washington — but the fact that the latter are happening at a good clip despite the White House’s much-touted sanctions against Russia points to a simplistic approach and failure of creative thinking. The strategic implications of that failure are already coming into sharp focus.

Moscow Fried Chicken, Atomic Turkey Prove Biden’s Sanctions Scheme Is a Bust

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