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Still Vulnerable

But Mr. Putin may not have anticipated the harshest measures now under discussion.

“The sanctions on the table right now, namely full blocking sanctions on the largest Russian banks, are multiple orders of magnitude stronger than those even contemplated in 2014,” said Edward Fishman, a top sanctions policy official in the Obama administration.

Under such restrictions, even with Russia’s currency reserves, “actually spending those reserves to support the ruble and maintain Russian standards of living becomes challenging,” George Pearkes, an analyst for Bespoke Investment Group, an investment firm, wrote this week.

President Biden’s threat to block Russian banks from dollar-based transactions altogether would, if executed, curb banks’ ability to do business abroad at all.

“Importers would fail to pay their suppliers. Exporters would receive no new revenues. Meeting normal levels of demand for basic staples would become impossible,” Mr. Pearkes wrote, comparing the effect on Russian civilians to that of a wartime bombing campaign.

“There’s just nothing that Russia could do to protect itself from that,” Mr. Fishman said.

Separately, Washington’s threat to block high-tech exports appears to have taken Mr. Putin by surprise, said Mr. Gabuev, the Moscow-based analyst.

The move would stifle Russia’s ability to produce advanced industrial or military hardware. It might also bar Russians from purchasing smartphones or similar consumer electronics, depending on how it is implemented.