As the Russian war in Ukraine expanded in 2022, it was made clear that the targeted sanctions directed at the power structure supporting Vladimir Putin had failed. This opened up for the question this paper attempts to answer, would more economically hurtful sanctions be more effective at stopping the Russian aggression? It is hypothesized that a resultsoriented study of the matter that eschews the formulaic restraints of the targeted vs. comprehensive sanctions debate could get to the bottom of this. Specifically, introducing GDP growth reduction as a metric for economic harm allowed for a quantitative study examining the variable’s relationship with the effectiveness of sanctions. Logistic regression returned a weak but existing relationship at the bivariate level, but as control variables were introduced to the regression this relationship softened beyond statistical significance. These findings suggest that although harsher sanctions on Russia could be a component of a strategy to dissuade continued aggression in Ukraine, as they have no demonstrated negative impact on the effectiveness of sanctions, such a strategy will need to be expanded beyond the targeting of GDP growth.