Daniela Thakor, a University of Washington expert on Russian foreign policy.

“They want to portray themselves as great, but really they want to appear a good actor trying to save the system from itself.”

That is not what the Obama administration is interested in.

“I think the United States needs a strong, stable Russia, and I think if we’re going to develop any kind of strategic partnership with Russia, it needs to be grounded in a strong Russia,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said last month.

Even Russia’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, has publicly criticized the economic sanctions.

“I cannot say that everything the West does harms the Russia-U.S. relationship,” Lavrov said at a Russian economic forum in Moscow last May. “I say that everything the West does harms the Russia-U.S. relationship,” he said at a Russian economic forum in Moscow last May.

Russia, whose economy was hurt in 2013-14 by Western sanctions that were also imposed after Moscow annexed Crimea, is also worried about what is happening with Europe.

And, of course, Ukraine is also a part of the United States. The two countries have had more direct dealings than with much of the rest of the world.

“Some are just being nice to Russia when they’re playing nice to Ukraine and then they see their Ukraine-Russia cooperation crumbling,” said Sergei Glazyev, a former deputy adviser to the Russian Defense Ministry’s chief of staff under former President Dmitry Medvedev. “We expect it and we need to keep looking at it.”

Still, even the sanctions regime does not seem to have much effect. Just a few days after Obama imposed an oil embargo on Russia, Exxon Mobil Corp. announced that it had signed an oil deal with Rosneft, the Russian state-controlled oil company. Moscow said it would buy about $3 billion worth of oil from Exxon in 2014.

The oil deal, announced Monday, was announced on the same day that Russia’s defense minister, Sergey Shoigu, declared that he wanted to start talks on a Russia-Ukraine peace settlement.

The sanctions’ critics say these steps are not enough. So far, they have not forced the Kremlin to curb Moscow’s behavior or to halt some of its most important national interests, they say.

“The biggest obstacle we face is the lack of a cohesive Russian foreign policy,”