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Over two years after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the impact and efficacy of sanctions against Russia remain highly uncertain and contested. This uncertainty largely stems from two critical fallacies: a lack of clear terminology in addressing sanction effectiveness and the continued reliance on behavioral change as the primary measure of assessment. The Special Issue "Impact, Effectiveness and Success of Economic Sanctions: the case of Russia and Belarus" shed light on these fallacies and it contributes to introduce a novel method in six phases designed to enhance the complexity and depth of evaluations on the effectiveness of sanctions, applying this innovative approach to the case of sanctions against Russia. This Editorial introduction presents the Special Issue by offering terminological clarifications for key terms in sanction policy evaluation, such as impact, effectiveness, efficiency, utility, and success. It reviews current evidence on the impact and effectiveness of sanctions against Russia, and it outlines the analytical framework that the contributions in this special issue employ in analysing sanctions against Russia. The goal is to provide an analytical framework useful for analyzing current and future sanction policies, reflecting an increasing trend among states to use sanctions as a means to manage and respond to international crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is considerable debate on why are sanctions imposed, but little agreement so far. While the only consensus is that sanctions are aimed at changing the behaviour of a target, in fact, international sanctions can also be imposed to constrain actors or send signals. Since the creation of the Union in 1992, the EU has imposed 21 autonomous restrictive measures that are difficult to understand and compare without the proper analytical tools. The application of a tripartite taxonomy of the purpose of sanctions to the cases of the EU sanctions on Belarus, Zimbabwe and Uzbekistan is used to illustrate the differences and to set guidelines for a better understanding of international sanctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]