White House threatens last-minute Russia sanctions
The White House is planning to impose new sanctions on Russia in the final days of President Joe Biden’s administration, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has said.
In a statement published on Monday, the senior official said the outgoing president wants to “fully utilize all funding available” to arm Kiev, and touted a “series of additional steps to strengthen Ukraine,” including $725 million in military aid and new sanctions on Russia.
“To disrupt Russia’s war machine, the United States has implemented major sanctions against Russia’s financial sector, with more sanctions to follow,” Sullivan said.
In the latest round of restrictions, the US Treasury Department last month introduced blocking sanctions against more than 50 Russian lenders, including Gazprombank, which is linked to the eponymous Russian gas giant, and six of its international subsidiaries.
The penalties effectively exclude one of Russia’s largest banks, and a key conduit for gas purchases from Russia, from the SWIFT interbank messaging system, meaning it can no longer carry out dollar-based transactions. Gazprombank’s assets in the US have also been frozen.
Apart from banks, the latest US restrictions also targeted some 40 securities registrars, and 15 financial officials.
Sullivan also noted that Biden would use every opportunity to deliver more weapons to Ukraine, and pledged to send “hundreds of thousands of additional artillery rounds, thousands of additional rockets” to Kiev in the final 50 days of his term.
While President-elect Donald Trump has claimed that he could end the Ukraine conflict in 24 hours after he is sworn in on January 20, Biden’s stated strategy has been to stand with Ukraine “for as long as it takes” to defeat Russia.
Washington and its allies have imposed a record 22,000 sanctions on Moscow since 2014, when a Western-backed coup in Kiev prompted Crimea to rejoin Russia and led to a conflict between Ukraine and the Donbass republics. The number of measures spiked after the launch of the special military operation in February 2022.
Moscow has long slammed Western sanctions as illegal. It noted on more than one occasion that these have failed to achieve their ultimate goal of destabilizing the Russian economy and isolating the country from the global financial system. Instead, they have backfired on the states that imposed them.
