In an announcement put forth on Thursday, President Biden has issued a series of new sanctions against Russia and going even further to place limitations on what can and cannot be exported to Russia in efforts to punish Russian President Vladimir Putin for his choice to begin the invasion of Ukraine.
Biden stated that these sanctions will focus on crippling banks, Russian elites, and technology exports which he thought would hurt Russia’s abilities to modernize its fighting forces while damaging the country’s economy.
Some of the sanctions to be imposed by the Biden administration include:
- Cutting the connection to the U.S. financial system for Sberbank, which is Russia’s largest financial institution, including its 25 subsidiaries, by imposing correspondent and payable-through account sanctions.
- Full blocking sanctions on Russia’s second-largest financial institution, VTB Bank (VTB), including 20 subsidiaries. Including additional full blocking sanctions against three other massive Russian financial institutions: Sovcombank OJSC, Bank Otkritie, and Novikombank- with 34 subsidiaries.
- New debt and equity restrictions on thirteen of the most critical major Russian enterprises and entities. This is slated to include additional restrictions against all transactions in, provision of financing for, and other dealings in new debt of greater than 14 days maturity and new equity issued by thirteen Russian state-owned enterprises and entities: Sberbank, AlfaBank, Credit Bank of Moscow, Gazprombank, Russian Agricultural Bank, Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, Transneft, Rostelecom, RusHydro, Alrosa, Sovcomflot, and Russian Railways.
- Full blocking sanctions on Russian elites and their family members: Sergei Ivanov (and his son, Sergei), Andrey Patrushev (and his son Nikolai), Igor Sechin (and his son Ivan), Andrey Puchkov, Yuriy Solviev (and two real estate companies he owns), Galina Ulyutina, and Alexander Vedyakhin.
- Costs against Belarus to penalize their support of further invasion of Ukraine by placing sanctions on 24 Belarusian individuals and entities, which includes Belarus military and financial capabilities by sanctioning two significant Belarusian state-owned banks, nine defense firms, and seven regime-connected officials and elites.
- Countrywide restrictions to choke off Russia’s import of all technological goods important to a diversified economy and Putin’s ability to project power. This is slated to include the denial of exports of sensitive technology, primarily targeting the Russian aviation, defense, and maritime sectors to hinder Russia’s access to cutting-edge technology.
- Historic multilateral cooperation that seeks to be a force multiplier by cutting off over $50 billion in important imports to Russia.
These proposed sanctions from Biden to not focus on Putin directly and Biden refused to go over why he not going directly targetting the Russian president.
Biden skips a question on why he does not sanction Putin today. pic.twitter.com/FvLfHoC8K2
— MRCTV (@mrctv) February 24, 2022
Biden continued on to state that an even larger number of U.S. troops would be sent to the area in order to secure the various NATO countries, even though they would not be stepping in to fight the conflict in Ukraine.
“Our forces are not and will not be engaged in the conflict,” stated Biden. “Our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine but defend our NATO allies and reassure those allies in the east.”
“At the direction of the President, Secretary of Defense Austin has ordered the deployment to Europe of approximately 7,000 additional Service Members,” claimed the Department of Defense in a release. “This would comprise an armored brigade combat team with associated capabilities and enablers. They will deploy to Germany to reassure NATO Allies, deter Russian aggression and be prepared to support a range of requirements in the region. We expect them to depart in the coming days.”