The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Financial blocks put on banks, arms dealers, tech firms.

-

The U.S. announced a new round of sanctions on Russian firms, banks, manufactur- ers and people on Friday, aiming them at entities that helped Russia evade sanc- tions earlier in the year-old war against Ukraine.

Russia’s metals and mining sector is among those targeted in one of the U.S. Trea- sury Department’s “most significan­t sanctions actions to date,” according to the agency.

The action, taken in coordinati­on with Group of Seven allies, seeks to punish 250 people and firms; puts finan- cial blocks on banks, arms dealers and techn o logy companies tied to weapons production; and goes after alleged sanctions evaders in countries from the United Arab Emirates to Switzer- land.

“Our sanctions have had both short-term and long- term impact, seen acutely in Russia’s struggle to replenish its weapons and in its isolated economy,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement. “Our actions today with our G7 partners show that we will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

Yellen is attending the G-20 finance ministers’ meetings in Bengaluru, India, this week. On Friday morning, she told senior Russian offi- cials attending meetings that “their continued work for the Kremlin makes them complicit in Putin’s atrocities.”

“They bear responsibi­lity for the lives and livelihood­s being taken in Ukraine and the harm caused globally,” she said.

The sanctions come after the White House announced early Friday morning that the Pentagon would commit $2 billion for more rounds of ammunition and a variety of small, high-tech drones into the fight against Russia.

The State and Commerce department­s and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representa­tive also planned to issue plans Friday to increase pres- sure on Russia. These steps increase tariffs on Russian products and add nearly 90 Russian and third-country companies to a list of iden- tified sanctions evaders.

Named in Friday’s sanc- tions package are a dozen financial institutio­ns, includ- ing Russia’s largest non-state public bank, importers of microelect­ronics and producers of carbon fiber, a key material for defense systems.

The package names more than 30 people and firms allegedly connected to Russia’s sanctions eva- sion efforts. Among them: Swiss-italian businessma­n Walter Moretti and his busi- nesses; Nurmurad Kurbanov, a Russian-turkmen arms dealer who is alleged to have represente­d Russian and Belarusian defense firms abroad; and Russian businessma­n Aleksandr Yevg- enyevich Udodov, the former brother-in-law of Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.

More than 30 countries representi­ng more than half the world’s economy already have imposed u nprece- dented sanctions on the Russian economy, making it the most sanctioned nation in the world.

They have imposed price caps on Russian oil and die- sel, frozen Russian Central Bank funds and restricted access to SWIFT, the dominant system for global financial transactio­ns.

The West has directly sanctioned roughly 2,500 Russian firms, government officials, oligarchs and their families. The sanctions are depriving them of access to their American bank accounts and financial markets, preventing them from doing business with Americans and traveling to the U.S., and more.

After a year, the West’s export controls and financial sanctions appear to be gradually eroding Russia’s industrial capacity, even as its oil and other energy exports last year enabled it to keep funding a catastroph­ic war.

At the G-20 meetings on Friday, Britain’s treasury chief, Jeremy Hunt, said, “We don’t think the job is by any means done.”

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States