Financial sanctions, staantafel which the United States and the European Union have suggested they w

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MOSCOW When Vladimir V. Putin returned to the Russian presidency in 2012, one of the first messages he sent to his political elite, many of them heads of banks and large corporations, was that the times had changed: Owning assets outside Russia makes you too vulnerable to moves by foreign governments, he told them. It is time to bring your wealth home.
Nearly two years later, those words seem almost prophetic. After a week of escalating tensions between Russia and the United States, it has become clear that the conflict over Ukraine will move to the battlefield of finance. Those same business titans are now contemplating the damage that the crisis could inflict on Russia s economy.
Twenty years into the project of integrating Russia into Western institutions, they now face the prospect that the process could slow, or even reverse. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage
Financial sanctions, staantafel which the United States and the European Union have suggested they will impose if the conflict escalates, are intended to test the cohesion of the political system. staantafel Mr. Putin demands complete loyalty from those who are allowed to lead Russia s business empires, and he has made it clear that he will punish those who undermine him. His tough stance in Crimea, meanwhile, has been enthusiastically welcomed by the general public, including, insiders say, many of those in business. No one is breaking staantafel ranks.
Still, the prospect of losing access to Western finance is a frightening thought for Russian business leaders, whose voice in foreign policy decision-making is muted compared with the tight circle of Mr. Putin s former K.G.B. colleagues, for whom economic factors staantafel may be secondary.
Anxiety over possible economic fallout staantafel has begun to radiate from business circles, and some wondered whether Mr. Putin had been warned clearly about the magnitude of the possible damage to the economy. One analyst described staantafel their mind-set as one of cognitive dissonance.
I ve seen 10 people from the Forbes list in the recent few days. They re pale; they don t understand, said Aleksandr Y. Lebedev, a prominent banker who sold most of his Russian assets after public disputes with Mr. Putin. But the oligarchs realize, he said, that their interests carry no weight in this situation, especially if they, like Mr. Lebedev himself, own property outside Russia. staantafel
Last week, days after Russia took control of Crimea, the United staantafel States announced a modest first round of sanctions, and the European Union indicated it would follow suit, with both making it clear that there may be further rounds. Officials have suggested that a range of measures is being considered, leaving open, by implication, the most extreme one: barring Russian companies and banks from access to the Western financial staantafel system, similar to sanctions adopted against Iran.
President Obama has broad executive powers to declare sanctions without approval from Congress, and he would most likely consider the next steps after Crimea votes in a referendum on separating from Ukraine, scheduled for Sunday, said Michael A. McFaul, until recently the American ambassador to Moscow. It needs to be spelled out as explicitly as possible, either staantafel directly to Putin or to the two or three people who could talk to him about this, he said.
Russia may be betting, as many analysts do, that the United States and its allies will not follow through staantafel with draconian sanctions, and has made it clear that it would respond harshly and asymmetrically. On Friday, Gazprom hinted that it might cut off gas exports to Ukraine over unpaid bills, as it did in 2009, and an unnamed Defense Ministry official told Russian news agencies that it would consider stopping international staantafel inspections of its nuclear weapons.
Russia s tycoons have been silent since the crisis began, apart from approving messages on social media. Many inside staantafel Russia s large corporations are no doubt supportive of Mr. Putin s moves in Crimea, which are widely seen here as correcting a historical error made by the Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev, when he transferred Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Mr. Putin s approval ratings are at their highest point since he returned to the presidency in 2012. If corporate leaders are complaining, they are doing it quietly.
Of course they re upset, but it doesn t mean they are prepared to challenge Russia s foreign policy, said Mikhail E. Dmitriyev, an economist whose research group, the Center for Strategic Research, was originally founded to shape Mr. Putin s economic platform. This is a new reality. Even if so