The United States said Friday it will impose sanctions on foreign banks that support Russia’s war in Ukraine, in a new bid to exert pressure on Moscow as it diversifies from the West to China.
Under an executive order signed by President Joe Biden, the United States will slap so-called secondary sanctions against financial institutions that back companies already targeted for supporting Russia’s defense industry.
“We are sending an unmistakable message: anyone supporting Russia’s unlawful war effort is at risk of losing access to the US financial system,” Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said in a statement.
Sullivan said the new sanctions will “continue tightening the screws on Russia’s war machine and its enablers,” adding that earlier measures have “significantly degraded” Russia’s military, long seen as among the world’s most formidable and which in recent months has relied on imports from sanctioned North Korea and Iran.
But Russia since the start of the war has been rapidly working to reduce exposure to the West, shifting away from trade in dollars, euros, sterling and yen.
China’s largest banks meanwhile have extended billions of dollars worth of credit in renminbi to Russia since the war as Western institutions exit.
“Today we are taking steps to level new and powerful tools against Russia’s war machine. As a result of our restrictions, Russia has increasingly shifted certain trade and financial flows through third countries to evade sanctions and continue its procurement of critical items for their wartime production,” said a statement released by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.—AFP
