By Simon Lewis and David Lawder
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States on Friday imposed sanctions on more than 400 entities and individuals for supporting Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, the State Department said, including Chinese companies that U.S. officials believe are helping Moscow overcome Western sanctions to bypass and build up his army. .
Washington has repeatedly warned Beijing about its support for Russia’s defense industrial base and has already imposed hundreds of sanctions aimed at limiting Moscow’s ability to exploit certain technologies for military purposes.
Friday’s sanctions include measures against companies in China involved in shipping machine tools and microelectronics to Russia, according to a State Department fact sheet outlining sanctions against 190 targets.
The U.S. Treasury Department said it also targeted transnational networks involved in purchasing munitions and other equipment for Russia, helping Russian oligarchs and others evade sanctions and laundering gold for a sanctioned company.
“Russia has turned its economy into a tool serving the Kremlin’s military-industrial complex,” Deputy Finance Minister Wally Adeyemo said in the statement.
“Companies, financial institutions and governments around the world must ensure they do not support Russia’s military-industrial supply chains.”
The Biden administration also added 123 entities to its U.S. export control list, known as the Entity List, which forces suppliers to obtain licenses before shipping to targeted companies. Among those added Friday were 63 entities in Russia and 42 in China, according to a notice published in the Federal Register.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked the US for the “additional strong sanctions” in a post on social media platform X, saying they would further weaken Russia’s ability to “wage an aggressive war against Ukraine”.
“The pressure on the aggressor must be continuously maintained and increased as long as Russia continues its aggression,” Zelenskiy added.
The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new sanctions.
After seizing Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022, triggering a raft of new US economic sanctions against Moscow.
The war escalated on August 6 when Ukraine sent thousands of soldiers across the border into Russia’s western Kursk region. Kiev has since announced a series of battlefield successes, but Russian forces continue to steadily advance in eastern Ukraine.
The U.S. Treasury Department said it imposed sanctions on several Russian financial technology, securities, real estate lending and other financial companies, but stopped short of imposing sanctions on foreign banks for supporting transactions that support Russia’s war effort.
The Treasury Department has warned banks since December that continued dealings in Russia’s wartime economy could cut them off from the dollar-based financial system.
CHINA OBJECTIVES
The State Department’s sanctions include measures aimed at stifling Russia’s energy sector and targeting companies in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Central Asian economies that the U.S. believes are helping Russia evade the sanctions, the State Department said Foreign Affairs.
“Today’s actions hit Russia where it hurts – damaging its ability to generate revenue from its energy projects and disrupting the acquisition of equipment to supply its war machine,” said State Department Director Aaron Forsberg for economic sanctions policy and implementation.
Targets include the import-export arm of China’s Dalian Machine Tool Group, which has supplied $4 million worth of dual-use items to Russian companies, according to the Foreign Ministry.
The Treasury Department also targeted more than two dozen Hong Kong- and China-based companies it said supplied Russia’s military industrial base.
Chinese Embassy spokesman in Washington Liu Pengyu said Beijing “firmly opposes unilateral sanctions based on ‘long-arm jurisdiction'” and added that “normal trade between China and Russia should not be undermined, and even less should be turned into an instrument to smear human rights. and contain China.”
The latest US sanctions include measures against companies supplying components used in the Orlan drones used by Russia in Ukraine.
Washington also tried to disrupt future energy projects in Russia and the shipment of liquid energy with the sanctions. It targeted Russia’s $21 billion Arctic LNG 2 project, which has already been hit by Western sanctions that have restricted access to ice tankers and other companies involved in future energy projects in Russia, the fact sheet said.
The sanctions also targeted companies involved in the shipments, such as UAE-based White Fox Ship Management, which the US said recently purchased four tankers to transport LNG.
