New Russia sanctions target technology, money used to fuel Ukraine war

The State and Treasury departments announced new sanctions against Russia on Thursday, targeting Russian companies engaged in sanction evasion and those in the country’s energy industry in an attempt to further weaken its economy.

The combined efforts from the two departments target more than 150 individuals and companies in Russia, including mining magnate and oligarch Andrei Bokarev and his family. 

A small number of companies and individuals in Georgia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey were also sanctioned for assisting the Russian war effort.

“With today’s sanctions, the United States is continuing our relentless work to target Russia’s military supply chains and deprive Putin of the equipment, technology, and services he needs to wage his barbaric war on Ukraine,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement. 

“We have also made clear that those individuals and entities who profit from invasion and their proximity to the Kremlin will be held accountable, and today’s actions show our global reach in imposing severe costs on Putin’s oligarchs,” she added.

The sanctions are mostly focused on limiting ways to get around the sanctions already in place through closing loopholes and sanctioning new companies and foreign firms that assist already sanctioned companies.

About half of the State Department’s new sanctions are related to the Russian energy industry, which is a major source of funding for the country. It includes engineering firms and construction companies involved in building new energy infrastructure.

Future energy development targets include efforts to drill for natural gas in the Arctic. Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 project would be one of the largest in the country and is set to start production later this year.

New U.S. sanctions are similarly targeting the Russian mining and mineral sectors, as well as technology firms in the country.

“The purpose of the action is to restrict Russia’s defense production capacity and to reduce the liquidity it has to pay for its war,” James O’Brien, head of the State Department’s Office of Sanctions Coordination, told The Associated Press.

The war in Ukraine has raged for over a year and a half, with Ukraine in the midst of a counteroffensive in the country’s east and south, trying to break through heavily fortified Russian lines.