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The United States Treasury Department has announced that it is expanding its list of sanctions against Russian individuals and businesses.
The sanctions will affect seven Russian oligarchs and 12 companies they own or control, 17 senior Russian government officials, and a state-owned Russian weapons trading company and its subsidiary, a Russian bank.
The list includes aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller, Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, and Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev, among others. The businesses on the list are connected to them. They will be banned from making deals in the U.S., and their American assets will be frozen. This expanded list of sanctions is significantly smaller than the earlier one drawn up by the Treasury.
“The Russian government operates for the disproportionate benefit of oligarchs and government elites,” said Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. “The Russian government engages in a range of malign activity around the globe, including continuing to occupy Crimea and instigate violence in eastern Ukraine, supplying the Assad regime with material and weaponry as they bomb their own civilians, attempting to subvert Western democracies, and malicious cyber activities. Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government’s destabilizing activities.”
On January 30, the U.S. Treasury Department introduced a list with the names of officials, politicians and businessmen who have ties with Russian authorities, in particular, with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Among them were the head of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov and Putin’s assistant Vladislav Surkov. Also on the list were oligarchs who work in various areas of the Russian economy.
Many Russians made light of the list. Even Putin joked that he felt “slighted” by being left off.
