The boycotts impacted many consumer goods, entertainment, education, technology, and sporting organisations. Following sanctions and criticisms of their relations with Russian business, a boycott movement began and many companies and organisations chose to exit Russian or Belarusian markets voluntarily.
This novel term provoked some confusion as to what exactly was changing, but US officials declared it generally "escalatory".
On 27 February, Putin responded to the sanctions, and to what he called "aggressive statements" by Western governments, by ordering the country's "deterrence forces"-generally understood to include its nuclear forces-to be put on a "special regime of combat duty". Upon his arrival for the NATO extraordinary summit in Brussels on 24 March, Biden indicated that further economic sanctions would be placed against Russia, including restrictions on the Russian Central Bank's use of gold in transactions and a new round of sanctions that targeted defense companies, the head of Russia's largest bank, and more than 300 members of the Russian State Duma. The industrial competitiveness of Germany in the past substantially relied on cheap gas imports from Russia, but Germany's industry associations applauded the move to reduce the use of natural gas, and to replace Russian imports with liquified gas from the Middle East. Germany had to deal with its first export deficit in over 30 years due to escalating energy prices. This change from a policy of appeasement to brinkmanship has been called a new epoch in German policy by The Economist. Germany also increased defence expenditures by approximately $100 billion, by some estimates making it the third largest military spender in the world. In addition, Germany provided arms shipments to Ukraine, the first time that it provided arms to a country at war since the end of World War II. In response to the invasion, Germany's new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, decided to suspend the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and announced a new policy of energy independence from Russia, admitting that Ostpolitik was a failure. Since 1969, Germany had maintained a policy called Ostpolitik, choosing dependence on Russian energy to maintain peaceful relations with Russia and to integrate it in to Europe, while allowing defence spending to fall. Some countries also applied sanctions to Belarusian organisations and individuals, such as President Alexander Lukashenko, because of Belarus' involvement in the invasion. Several countries that are historically neutral, such as Switzerland and Singapore, have agreed to sanctions. Multinational companies have disengaged from Russia to comply with sanctions and trade restrictions imposed by home states, but also on their own accord, beyond what was required by law, to avoid the economic and reputational risks associated with maintaining commercial ties with Russia. Ukrainian and Western governments have explicitly urged the global private sector to help uphold international law, and the EU, UK and Australia have also called on global digital platforms to remove pro-Russian propaganda.
Major multinational companies, including Apple, IKEA, ExxonMobil, and General Motors, have decided themselves to apply sanctions to Russia, acting as international law enforcers on behalf of states. By 1 March, the total amount of Russian assets being frozen by sanctions amounted to $1 trillion. Sanctions also included asset freezes on the Russian Central Bank, which holds $630 billion in foreign-exchange reserves, to prevent it from offsetting the impact of sanctions and implicated the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The sanctions included cutting off major Russian banks from SWIFT, the global messaging network for international payments, although there would still be limited accessibility to ensure the continued ability to pay for gas shipments. The sanctions were wide-ranging, targeting individuals, banks, businesses, monetary exchanges, bank transfers, exports, and imports. With the commencement of attacks on 24 February, a large number of other countries began applying sanctions with the aim of crippling the Russian economy. Western countries and others imposed limited sanctions on Russia when it recognised the independence of Donbas. US president Joe Biden's statements and a short question and answer session on 24 February 2022