US imposes new sanctions on Kremlin.
Washington imposed a new round of sanctions targeting Kremlin-linked elites for their role in supporting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine.
The financial sanctions hit Putin ally and billionaire Andrey Grigoryevich Guryev, who owns Witanhurst, London’s second-largest after Buckingham Palace.
Guryev’s son and the Alfa Nero yacht in the Caribbean are also targeted by these sanctions.
“While innocent people suffer from Russia’s illegal and aggressive war, Putin’s allies are enriching themselves and funding a lavish lifestyle,” US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.
Viktor Filippovich Rashnikov, one of Russia’s biggest taxpayers, and two subsidiaries of his company MMK, which is among the world’s largest steel producers, were also hit with sanctions, as were two other members of the Russian elite, Alina Maratovna Kabaeva and Natalya Valeryevna Popova.
“The Treasury Department will use every tool at our disposal to ensure that Russian elites and Kremlin supporters are held accountable for their complicity in a war that has caused many deaths,” Yellen said, adding that the goal is ” reducing the revenue and infrastructure that supports Russia’s unprovoked war in Ukraine.”
In a joint action, the US State Department imposed sanctions, including visa restrictions, on oligarchs who “run high-income companies”, including entrepreneurs Dmitry Aleksandrovich Pumpyanskiy, Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko and Alexander Anatolevich Ponomarenko, as well as about 900 officials and a number of defense and technology-related firms that help the “Russian war machine”.
The Treasury Department’s sanctions enable the seizure of any funds or assets in the United States of these individuals or organizations and prohibit US-based firms from making financial deals with them, although investors will have several weeks to close transactions with MMK company.