Hardly a day goes by without 'sanctions' being mentioned in the news. Some sanctions lifted, other sanctions sanctioned, and yet others considered. It's like some political-media circus marketed as a righteous response to some injustice, human rights violations, cruel regime or whatever lobbyists and PR companies come up with. As with most marketing, it bears little-to-no relation to the truth.

US sanctions
© Latuff
It takes only a quick look to see that all those countries the US has unilaterally slapped sanctions on have been countries portrayed as 'enemies' of the US and where regime change has been either attempted or is strongly desired - Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Libya, Cuba, Ukraine, Russia, Syria, China, etc. All are countries that the US happens to be losing control over, hence sanctions were put in place. Places such as Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar, Bahrain etc. are never considered for sanctions. Neither by the US nor by the EU. The EU for the simple reason that it has no voice of its own and just follows the dictates of Uncle Sam.

You might well object and say that Ukraine has no sanctions despite the questionable extent of US control, and you'd be right. But remember back just a couple of years ago and the Empire of Chaos was very much considering regime change sanctions against Ukraine:
The US Senate has threatened to impose political sanctions on Ukraine over the jailing of former Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, urging Kiev to immediately release the opposition leader.

The Senate adopted a resolution on Saturday that stressed that the Tymoshenko trial was "politically motivated" and urged her immediate release citing her poor health condition.
Tymoshenko
The West were ready to slap sanctions on Ukraine in order to get a jail break for a psychopathic thief, but doesn't think war crimes are a cause for sanctions!
Yes, there's no doubt the pitiful 'gas queen' is sick, but that's probably more due to being a pathological deviant. The US Senate was lining up sanctions but this was just foreplay to the regime change that took place a year later with the help of CIA-affiliated 'Non-Governmental Organizations'. Tymoshenko had been committing massive fraud, for which she was imprisoned. She did not become a billionaire through honest work.
Given all the talk that later charges against Tymoshenko were trumped up or falsified in the Ukraine, it's probably important to know that her ally Lazarenko was prosecuted in the United States, where he was convicted and imprisoned for money laundering and other crimes. Tymoshenko was not charged in that case and she has denied wrongdoing, but she was named explicitly as part of the conspiracy detailed in the indictment.
Lazarenko was prime minister at the time and Tymoshenko was energy minister:
She served as energy minister in the government of Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko. During that two-year period, £120 billion, according to the United Nations, was looted from Ukraine. Mr Lazarenko is now serving a nine-year prison sentence in America for money-laundering, wire fraud and extortion.

According to court documents, Mr Lazarenko allocated Mrs Tymoshenko concessions which gave her a third of Ukraine's gas industry - and about a fifth of its GDP.
£120 billion - $188 billion - is an incredible amount of money! With psychopathic leaders like that, no wonder Ukraine is bankrupt. A psychopath's traits - lying, lack of conscience and spellbinding - and everything always only about themselves, take them far in this corrupted world. It's also no wonder that people morally capable of looting hundreds of billions of dollars become darlings of Western vulture capitalists and Washington's "reality-creators."

Ukraine in December 2014 has the full backing of such types: the Ukrainian military is engaging in "a punitive operation" - a war - against its own people, killing thousands of unarmed civilians with such prohibited weapons as cluster bombs and phosphorous bombs, leading to the destruction of key civilian infrastructure. Oh, and torturing people too.

WAR CRIMES have been committed, as defined by the Nuremburg Trials, and as documented by Russia and the UN, so you ask yourself: where are the sanctions against Ukraine?

Sanctions have not even been considered. Instead Ukraine's US-approved "democratically-(s)elected" leaders have been supported 100% by 'righteous' Western leaders. They have been given lethal and non-lethal aid, tactical support and advice, and have even been handed an EU Association agreement and NATO membership in all but name. They have been encouraged to step up the conflict rather than seek a diplomatic solution. Their leaders have been hanging out with Western leaders and CIA chiefs almost continuously since well before the violent protests started in November last year, when the democratically elected president decided that he needed more time before signing an EU Association agreement.

Sanctions in this conflict have instead been slapped on Russia, which, according to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and even a Ukrainian general, has no troops in Ukraine. And which, despite the Western media's continued propaganda, didn't annex Crimea nor shoot down Flight MH 17. Various US officials have openly stated that Russia is a target for regime change. Once one understands that sanctions are just part of the Empire of Chaos tool-kit to force such an outcome, the sanctions paradox becomes clear.