US hits Chinese companies with new sanctions over Russia-Ukraine war

The U.S. on Friday sanctioned a long list of Chinese and Russian companies over their support for Moscow’s war in Ukraine, as the Biden administration looks to sharpen its tools aimed at crippling Moscow’s war machine.

The sanctions list, targeting nearly 400 entities and individuals, is among the most sweeping actions taken yet against Chinese companies for their support in the war against Ukraine.

Also hit with sanctions are companies from the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Hong Kong, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

The U.S. sanctions are trying to disrupt the flow of microelectronics and computer numerical control items, or machine tools, to Russia — nonlethal technology that the Biden administration has said for months China is supplying to Moscow to use in the war in Ukraine.

“We remain concerned by the magnitude of dual-use goods exports from the PRC to Russia,” the State Department said in a Friday release, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China. “Imports from the PRC are filling critical gaps in Russia’s defense production cycle, thereby enabling it to produce weapons, ramp up defense production, and bolster its military-industrial base.”

The sanctions come as White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will travel to Beijing next week to meet with China’s Foreign Affairs minister. The two are expected to discuss the war in Ukraine.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has increasingly warned that Chinese support for Russia’s war is posing a major problem. The western security alliance NATO for the first time called China a “decisive enabler” of the war in Ukraine during a July summit.

The companies on the list include two major Chinese machine tool suppliers and six Chinese electronic component suppliers.

Several Chinese or Hong Kong companies were also sanctioned for their support of the Russian company Special Technology Center, which makes surveillance and reconnaissance drones, along with businesses from Russia, the UAE and Turkey.

Hong Kong, Turkey and Russian business affiliates of Russian national Maxim Marchenko, who was arrested by the FBI in September 2023 for smuggling microelectronics out of the U.S., were also targeted in the Friday sanctions package.

And the U.S. announced sanctions against Turkish, Russian and UAE companies that supply microelectronic components and targeted mostly Russian companies in the sectors of energy production, air transport, heavy machinery, diamonds and titanium, bullet-proof glass and armor and Belarusian companies and individuals supplying armored vehicle components to Russia.

Washington also imposed sanctions on three leaders of the Russian organization Movement of the First, which is funded by the government of Russia, and which the U.S. accused of militarizing and pushing pro-Russian ideals on Ukrainian children.