Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Alex | Email Max DALEEP SINGH was preparing to do his third MSNBC hit in less than 24 hours when the situation in Ukraine began to deteriorate Wednesday evening. Three people with knowledge of the situation told West Wing Playbook that Singh abruptly pulled out of a scheduled appearance during the 9 p.m. ET hour normally occupied by RACHEL MADDOW as it became clear that Russia was preparing to launch a full-scale invasion of its neighbor. A relatively unknown figure — at least among people who do not closely follow Federal Reserve interest rates — Singh has quickly become a vital official in the White House and the unlikely tip of the spear in the administration’s economic battle with Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN. Singh made his first appearance at the White House press podium earlier this month, and was back for his second appearance less than a week later. On Thursday, he joined press secretary JEN PSAKI for a third time. "Back by popular demand,” Psaki said by way of introduction. “If he decides he's not going to be an economics expert anymore, he might have a future in our business." And while Singh hasn’t gotten much press beyond a few short profiles in primarily Indian news publications, in recent days the administration has offered him up to multiple news organizations to talk about sanctions. In addition to those MSNBC hits, he has sat for interviews on CNN, and talked in detail about the administration’s financial and economic pressure campaign against Russia in a stream on Yahoo Finance. A former Obama Treasury official whose gold-plated resume includes Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, and an Ivy League education, Singh has also become a key author of the White House’s rolling sanctions scheme, which was designed to serve as both a deterrent and now a punishment for Putin’s actions in Ukraine. His ascension in Biden World has happened publicly and privately. He’s appeared in the media and huddled with the inner circle that Biden convened Thursday morning in the Oval Office to discuss sanctions as the Russian invasion intensified. Singh’s influence on the administration’s sanctions strategy is easy to find. During a 2018 Senate Banking Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, he reflected on his experience implementing sanctions on Russia following its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. In addition to testifying about how those sanctions were executed, Singh outlined how the U.S. could implement a broader sanctions campaign against Russia in the future. “Looking back, I draw three main conclusions from the experience,” he said then, according to his written testimony. “One: Sanctions ‘do their job’ if they are carefully designed and embedded into a coherent foreign policy. Two: The signaling of future sanctions is at least as potent as the actions themselves (like any weapon, the best sanctions are never used). And three: sanctions aren’t enough to change behavior.” He then listed five conditions for another, hypothetical round of sanctions against Russia or another major adversary. Sanctions against a country like Russia, he said, should demonstrate U.S. resolve and capacity to impose overwhelming costs; limit contagion through the U.S. and global financial system; avoid the appearance of punishing the Russian civilian population; increase the chance of partnering with international allies; and preserve the scope for escalation or de-escalation. Over the past several weeks, Biden has been following Singh’s strategy to the letter. In his 2018 testimony, Singh recommended that the U.S. stop the purchase of new Russian sovereign debt, noting that in 2014 he was “more cautious about the unpredictable spillover effects” from that action, but he now saw “no credible argument why U.S. public pension funds and savings vehicles should indirectly fund the Russian government while the latter continues to sponsor violations of U.S. sovereignty.” On Wednesday, Biden announced that the U.S. would no longer allow Russia to raise money or trade new debt on U.S. or European markets. The White House also heeded Singh’s argument that part of the power of sanctions was their impact on market expectations. Russia’s stock market tanked on Thursday. The strategy is not without political risk. The White House followed Singh’s 2018 recommendation to “preserve scope for escalation” by ramping up sanctions throughout the week, and counting on the sanctions to take their toll in the long term. But Biden, who suggested today that he expects the impact of his policies to take a month to materialize, has continued to face questions from reporters, Ukrainian officials, Republicans, and even some members of his own party about why he is not hitting Putin with an even more aggressive set of sanctions immediately. That could also draw scrutiny to Singh and his calibrated approach. Thus far, however, the White House has privately been satisfied with his public performance. “He’s always been very well put together, really well spoken, precise. He’s like ‘The Economist’ personified,” one administration official quipped. TEXT US — Are you LINDSAY HAMILTON, associate administrator for public affairs at the Environmental Protection Agency? We want to hear from you and we’ll keep you anonymous. Or if you think we missed something in today’s edition, let us know and we may include it tomorrow. 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