United States Department of Commerce will impose further sanctions on Russia ratcheting up pressure on Moscow over its military campaign in Ukraine, according to the White House.
The new sanctions to be unveiled in the coming days will target Russia's defense, aerospace and maritime sectors, spokesperson Kate Bedingfield told a news conference on Thursday.
The department's move will add 120 entities from Russia and Belarus to its entity list, bringing the number of Russian and Belarusian parties on the list to over 200 since the military operation began in Ukraine in late February, Bedingfield added.
"In the coming days, the Ministry of Commerce will take further actions to worsen the positions of the Russian defense, aerospace and maritime sectors by adding 120 more organizations from Russia and Belarus to the sanctions list," she said.
"Being added to this list means these entities can no longer get US cutting-edge technology without a license which will in most, if not all of these cases, be denied," she added.
This comes just hours after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced new sanctions on dozens of Russian individuals and entities.
“These designations will further impede Russia’s access to western technology and the international financial system,” Blinken said in a statement on Thursday. “We will continue to target [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin’s war machine with sanctions from every angle until this senseless war of choice is over.”
Meanwhile, the US Treasury Department on Thursday expanded its sanctions list for Russia by adding 13 individuals and 21 companies to it.
According to a statement on the department’s website, the US Treasury's new sanctions are "targeting operators in the Russian technology sector to prevent it from evading unprecedented multilateral sanctions and procure critical western technology."
"OFAC (the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control) is designating 21 entities and 13 individuals as part of its crackdown on the Kremlin’s sanctions evasion networks and technology companies," the statement says.
In particular, the sanctions target the Serniya Engineering and Sertal enterprises, which, according to the American side, "work to illicitly procure dual-use equipment and technology for Russia’s defense sector."
The US Treasury believes that "to evade sanctions and carry out their procurement of sensitive technology, Serniya and Sertal employed a network of individuals to structure transactions and deceive counterparties."
The sanctions also target key Russian technology companies operating in the defense sector. This list includes AI NII-Vektor research institute", T-Platforms, JSC Mikron, as well as the Molecular Electronics Research Institute (MERI).
"These designations will further impede Russia’s access to western technology and the international financial system," the document says, according to TASS News Agency.
The US Treasury announced additional sanctions against three employees of the Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics (TsNIIKhM), against whom in 2020 the United States had already introduced restrictions under CAATSA (the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act). The list included, in particular, Yevgeny Gladkikh, who was accused by the US Department of Justice on March 25 of committing cybercrimes. Sanctions were also imposed against the General Director of the TsNIIKhM, Sergey Bobkov, and his deputy, Konstantin Malevanyy.
ZZ/PR