President Biden’s administration is expanding the use of secondary sanctions on Russia with an eye toward curtailing the sale of semiconductor chips and other goods to Russia, targeting third-party sellers in China and elsewhere as it looks to further choke off Vladimir Putin’s war machine in Ukraine, Bloomberg reported.
The new measures include all Russian companies, people, and entities that have been previously sanctioned, including banks Sberbank and VTB, increasing the risk to third-country financial institutions or companies who do business in the Russian economy. The measures also include sanctions on new Russian natural gas projects and Russia’s main stock exchange, the MOEX, as well as the National Clearing Center and the country’s main settlement depository.
“We are increasing the risk for financial institutions dealing with Russia’s war economy and eliminating paths for evasion, and diminishing Russia’s ability to benefit from access to foreign technology, equipment, software, and IT services,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement. “Every day, Russia continues to mortgage its future to sustain its unjust war of choice against Ukraine.”
On the energy front, new measures target Russia’s planned liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects, including Obsky LNG, Arctic LNG 1, Arctic LNG 3 and Murmansk LNG. The measures also target seven LNG tankers at Russian shipyard Zvezda, including three vessels for an Arctic LNG 2 project hit by an earlier round of sanctions that prevented the start of exports from Russia’s newest LNG export plant.
New sanctions also target RusGazDobycha, which is Gazprom PJSC’s partner in a project to produce LNG and other products at Ust-Luga on the Baltic Sea, and insurer Sogaz. General licenses permitting trade in agriculture, medicine, and other forms of energy, including oil, remain in effect, according to Bloomberg.
The European Union is currently discussing proposals demanding companies enhance checks and making them responsible for the actions of firms they control. Several member states are pushing to water down these proposals, however, over concerns they place too heavy a burden on companies and are difficult to enforce.
The EU is also discussing sanctions on banks in third-party countries that are enabling some of these transactions by using Russian alternatives to the SWIFT payments system, which processes many international money transfers.