The US announced a new round of sanctions on Russian companies, banks, manufacturers and people there, targeting entities that helped Russia evade sanctions earlier in the year-old war against Ukraine.
Russia’s metals and mining sector is among those targeted in one of the US Treasury Department’s “most significant sanctions actions to date,” according to the agency.
The action, carried out in conjunction with the allies of the Group of Seven, seeks to punish 250 people and companies, placing financial blocks on banks, arms dealers and technology companies related to the production of weapons, and after sanctions alleged evaders in the countries of United Arab Emirates for Switzerland.
“Our sanctions have both short-term and long-term impacts, particularly on Russia’s struggle to replenish its weapons and its isolated economy,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a written statement. “Our actions today with our G7 partners show that we will stay with Ukraine for a long time.”
Yellen attended the G-20 finance ministers’ meeting in Bengaluru, India, this week. On Friday morning, he told senior Russian officials attending the meetings that “continuing to work for the Kremlin makes him complicit in Putin’s atrocities.”
“They are responsible for the lives and livelihoods they have taken in Ukraine and the damage they have caused globally,” he said.
The sanctions came after the White House announced earlier on Friday that the Pentagon would provide $2 billion for more ammunition and an assortment of small high-tech drones in the fight against Russia.
The Departments of State and Commerce and the Office of the US Trade Representative will also release plans on Friday to increase pressure on Russia. These measures increase tariffs on Russian products and add nearly 90 Russian and third-country companies, including from China, to the list of non-identifiable sanctions.
Named in the sanctions package are twelve financial institutions, including the largest non-state public bank in Russia, importers of microelectronics and producers of carbon fiber, a key material for defense systems.
The package names more than 30 people and companies allegedly linked to efforts to evade Russian sanctions. Among them: the Swiss-Italian businessman Walter Moretti and his business; Nurmurad Kurbanov, a Russian-Turkmen arms dealer who allegedly represents Russian and Belarusian defense companies abroad; and Russian businessman Aleksandr Yevgenyevich Udodov, former brother-in-law of Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.
More than 30 countries representing more than half of the world’s economy have imposed unprecedented sanctions on the Russian economy, making it the most sanctioned country in the world.
They have imposed price caps on Russian oil and diesel, frozen Russian Central Bank funds and restricted access to SWIFT, the dominant system for global financial transactions.
The West has immediately sanctioned approximately 2,500 Russian companies, government officials, oligarchs and their families. The sanctions reduce access to American bank accounts and financial markets, prevent business with Americans and travel to the US, and more.
After a year, export controls and Western financial sanctions appear to be slowly eroding Russia’s industrial capacity, although oil and other energy exports in the past year have allowed it to keep financing its catastrophic war.
At the G-20 meeting on Friday, Britain’s chief of the treasury, Jeremy Hunt said, “We don’t think the job is done.”
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Marie, at the G-20 press conference said, “our sanctions are strong, efficient, and reduce and reduce all Russian profits.”
“They’re not regulating Russian industry, they’re undermining the war effort,” he said. “Sanctions are effective and will be more effective in the long run.”
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