US and EU extend sanctions on Russia

EU targets 15 Russian officials, while US adds seven Russians and 16 Russian companies to its blacklist.

The European Union and the United States today (28 April) announced a further round of targeted sanctions against top Russian officials, in a bid to persuade Russia to help ease the crisis in Ukraine.

The US and the EU had warned Russia that additional sanctions would follow if it took no action to de-escalate the crisis. The decision to take fresh action against Russia comes 11 days after Russia, Ukraine, the US and the EU agreed on a set of steps to be taken to ease tensions. These included a central role for monitors from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). However, pro-Russian separatists seized eight OSCE monitors over the weekend.

In Ukraine itself, there have been several reports of bloodshed today in the mainly Russian-speaking east of Ukraine. The mayor of Kharkiv, Gennady Kernes, is now in a critical condition after being shot in the back while out jogging, and there were bloody clashes after pro-Russian groups showed up at a pro-Ukrainian demonstration. It remains unclear who shot Kernes.

The names of the 15 Russians added to the EU’s blacklist will be officially announced tomorrow. The list already features 25 Russians and eight people from Crimea, the Ukrainian region annexed by Russia in March.

The sanctions announced by the United States replicate an early round of sanctions, by targeting some of the closest friends and political aides of President Vladimir Putin. The US today added seven people to the list of Russians who are now barred from travelling to the US and whose assets in the US are now frozen.

The seven include Igor Sechin (pictured), head of Rosneft, Russia’s leading oil company, Dmitry Kozak, a deputy prime minister, and Vyacheslav Volodin, one of Putin’s deputy chiefs of staff. The other four are: a Rosneft board member, Sergei Chemezov; Putin’s envoy to Crimea, Oleg Belavantsev; a leading parliamentarian, Aleksei Pushkov; and a leading member of Russia’s security services, Evgeny Murov.

In its announcement of the sanctions, the US treasury drew attention to Putin’s personal relationship of two of the men. It noted that “Sechin has shown utter loyalty to Vladimir Putin – a key component to his current standing”, and that “Chemezov is a trusted ally of President Putin, whom he has known since the 1980s when they lived in the same apartment complex in East Germany”.

To date, the EU has not chosen to target people so close to Putin, though its blacklist includes a deputy prime minister, Dmitry Rogozin, and two advisers to Putin, Sergey Glazyev and Vladislav Surkov.

Shortly after the announcement of today’s sanctions, Surkov tweeted a map showing Ukraine only as a small region around the western Ukrainian cities of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil. “A realistic map of Ukraine…Or is that too optimistic?”, he wrote.

Over the past month, Russian officials have made a series of scoffing remarks in response to the West’s sanctions against individuals.

The US, though, today indicated its readiness to extend sanctions to the Russian economy, imposing restrictive measures against 17 companies. It had already targeted one bank, Bank Rossiya, which the US treasury described as “the personal bank for officials of the Russian Federation”.

The EU has yet to impose sanctions on any Russian companies but has warned of “far-reaching consequences” for the Russian economy.

Late last week, the European Commission sent the EU’s 28 member states an assessment of the potential impact of a variety of economic sanctions. The options are now being discussed by member states.