With some countries still in alliance with Russia, the U.S. Treasury Department plans on adding economic sanctions on them in order for Russia to receive less support.
Throughout the month of April, U.S. officials are planning to travel to countries that are still doing business with Russia. The purpose is to pressure firms and institutions that are still doing business with the Kremlin to completely remove support.
Russia’s isolation from the international community continues to give them a momentum of economic instability. The message that the U.S. Treasury Department wants to deliver is a boundary between friends and foes.
The treasury’s statement is to be on Russia’s side or do business with the countries that are 50% of the world’s economy.
According to U.S. News, Treasury officials Liz Rosenberg and Brian Nelson, who are specialists in sanctions and terrorism, will travel to Europe to discuss matters of compliance with international sanctions against Russia, with warnings of penalties if they don’t follow.
U.S. News sources also confirm that the U.S. has sanctioned Russian firms, government officials and oligarchs and its allies.
Central Asia continues to remain neutral when it comes to the Russia-Ukraine war according to AP News. They have not taken a side either with Russia or Ukraine in terms of condemning or supporting the offensive war that was initiated by the Kremlin.
AP News also confirms that Rosenberg will travel to the former Soviet Union country of Kazakhstan to urge the private businesses to stop supplying Russia with sensitive materials of intelligence. Earlier this year, the U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visited Kazakhstan to support its independence and stated that Kazakhstan and its “sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence,” must be respected.
NPR News reported that the Biden Administration has given speeches to call out the companies and countries that are still doing business with Russia. These countries are China, Turkey, UAE and Armenia, who are supplying economic relief to the Kremlin. The White House has warned these countries that the U.S. is watching those that are evading sanctions to Russia.
According to Jackie Northam from NPR, Anne Clunan, a Russia Specialist at the Naval Postgraduate School, says “one of the things Russia learned after it seized Crimea in 2014 was that it could wait out sanctions and continue to build its military.”
Clunan went on to state, “Some of the most important ways of changing that thinking — because Putin still thinks he is in a waiting game where he can wait out sanctions, and the Russian economy can adapt to those sanctions — is to ensure that the sanctions are as effective as possible.”
Wally Adeyemo, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Department, pointed out how Russia has been getting support through those who aren’t enforcing the sanctions, “Russia has been attempting to import things like sophisticated refrigerators in order to bring them into the country and then strip out the semiconductors and use those semiconductors to build equipment.”
Adeyemo added that no country is immune to doing business with Russia and that includes China. If the countries or companies still persist doing business with Russia, they will also suffer sanctions as well, according to Brian O’Toole Atlantic Council of Sanctions.