Economic sanctions have been applied for a long time, but there have been no other examples in the world where all possible measures of external control were applied to any country, as in the case of the Syrian Arab Republic. The war, the loss of government control over the most fertile and oil-bearing part of the country, and economic sanctions created a particularly difficult situation for economic policy implementation. The three abovementioned factors affected all aspects of life in the country: the Syrian government had to act in conditions of a significant reduction in GDP, a depreciation of the national currency, a sharp increase in inflation, a decline in industrial production, a significant reduction in citizens’ incomes, the outflow of a large part of the population (especially young people) to other countries and the refusal of immigrants to return back. The article demonstrates how the SAR existed under the yoke of economic sanctions imposed by the EU and the US, and how the country’s authorities developed and used a strategy to adapt their national economy to the restrictions. It is shown that the approach adopted by the SAR leadership allowed the country’s economy to survive, but could not bring it out of stagnation. The new authorities of the SAR have not yet been able to demonstrate even modest successes in the socio-economic sphere, which, combined with military and political instability, is plunging the country into an even deeper crisis, from which it will be extremely difficult to get out.