There are greater sanctions the US could apply. Another level of sanctions that could be administered. For example, cutting Russia off from
SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) would likely be on the table, although this would be messy and costly for everyone (not to mention,
US can't do this unilaterally). Russia has worked on strategies and systems (namely:
SPFS) to
mitigate the effects. Debatable how effective it would be at mitigating the effects of no longer having access to SWIFT (likely not very). Cutting Russia off from SWIFT would be a severe financial consequence and would likely be an
option if Russia follows through here. This has been considered before. Medvedev said in 2019
that cutting Russia off SWIFT would effectively amount to a “declaration of war.”
I would imagine Russia would move closer to China economically if they were cut off from SWIFT. There are further ramifications here that may not be optimal so there are more things that must be considered.
Difficult to see a scenario in which NATO meets Russia on the battlefield. Ukraine is stronger militarily now than in 2014, so this wouldn't be a walk in the park for Russia (Russia would obviously be victorious at the end of it considering their military might, but the calculus has changed since 2014 in terms of cost). In fact, if this was ultimately Russia's goal, they should've done it in
2014 when Ukraine was weaker militarily. Cost of doing so would have been far less since Ukraine's military was weaker then. The fact they did not leads one to have a
reasonable idea of their motivations.
Russia needs to respect international boundaries and rules. Not much happens in a vacuum. Beijing is keeping tabs on this.
Away I go from the cesspool of the Politics subforum........