Washington announced on Friday its largest round of sanctions since Russia's invasion of Ukraine just two years ago, targeting more than 500 people and organizations from different countries, also in response to the death of the opponent Alexei Navalny.
Three Russian officials are among those targeted by the United States for their involvement in this death, the State Department announced.
Companies from 26 countries, people from 11 countries, including China and Germany, are among these more than 500 individuals and organizations targeted for having fueled the Russian war machine, or having helped the power to circumvent sanctions international.
This brings to more than 4,000 the number of entities targeted by American sanctions since the start of the war.
The Commerce Department has added more than 90 companies to its blacklist.
“
To deprive Russia of the resources needed to support its war against Ukraine, Treasury is singling out targets including a major cog in Russia's financial infrastructure;
more than twenty third countries that have escaped sanctions in Europe, East Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East;
and hundreds of entities within the Russian military-industrial complex and other key sectors
,” detailed the Treasury Department.
Russian Mir payment system also sanctioned
Among the long list, many technology companies from the semiconductor, optics, drones, and information systems sectors, and even an institute of applied mathematics.
The Russian payment system Mir is also sanctioned.
Its development “
has allowed Russia to build a financial infrastructure that allows it to evade sanctions and rebuild broken ties with the international financial system
,” the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement.
Developed in 2015 in the face of Western sanctions following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Mir cards - which means "
world
" and "
peace
" in Russian - allow Russians to make payments and withdraw money in some foreign countries.
“
If Putin does not pay the price for the death and destruction he is wreaking, he will continue
,” US President Joe Biden warned earlier Friday in a statement marking two years since the invasion. Ukraine.
Joe Biden cites in his press release “
more than 500 new sanctions
” against “
individuals linked to the imprisonment of Navalny
” and against “
the Russian financial sector, the defense industry, supply networks and perpetrators of circumvention of sanctions, across several continents.
» “
We are taking steps to continue reducing revenues from Russia's energy sector, and I have asked my teams to step up support for civil society, independent media and all those fighting for democracy around the world
,” Joe Biden wrote again.
Read alsoWashington sanctions the Russian Mir payment system, announces the Treasury
US support for Ukraine
The United States and the European Union have already applied a battery of sanctions against Moscow since the outbreak of war following the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The Biden administration regularly assures Ukraine of its support, but new US military aid of $60 billion is currently blocked in Congress, due to opposition from Donald Trump, many of whose lieutenants sit in the House of Representatives.
The American president called on parliamentarians to approve this funding as quickly as possible, “
before it is too late
”.
“
This is the time to prove that the United States is committed to freedom and does not submit to anyone
,” said Joe Biden.