The United States on Tuesday targeted more Russian businessmen and companies over Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the conflict in Ukraine, slapping them with U.S. sanctions in a move Moscow criticised as hostile.
The measures come a month before U.S. President Barack Obama hands over power to President-elect Donald Trump, who has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and said it would be good if the two countries could get along.
Annexation of Crimea
Mr. Trump’s nominee for U.S. Secretary of State, Exxon Mobil Corp Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson, has opposed U.S. sanctions on Russia, which awarded him a friendship medal in 2013. The United States introduced sanctions on Russia after it annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and expanded them over its support for separatist rebels. But it is unclear if the United States will maintain the sanctions on Russia under Mr. Trump. In a statement, the U.S. Treasury named seven Russian businessmen, six of whom it said were executives at Bank Rossiya or its affiliates.
The U.S. Treasury has called Bank Rossiya “the personal bank for officials of the Russian Federation” and had previously sanctioned it and the two affiliates.
The U.S. Treasury also sanctioned several companies and government enterprises for operating in Crimea, including two Russian firms it said were helping to build a multi-billion-dollar bridge to link the Russian mainland with the peninsula, a project important to Mr. Putin. Treasury also named 26 subsidiaries of Russian Agricultural Bank and gas producer Novatek, both of which had already been sanctioned in 2014.
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told TASS news agency that the sanctions were hostile acts by the outgoing Barack Obama administration and that Russia would expand its own sanctions lists against the United States in response. — Reuters
