US expands anti-Russian sanctions list

The US has expanded the sanctions list of individuals and corporations in relation to the situation in Ukraine. The list includes names of 11 individuals and 15 entities: the relatives and business partners of Gennady Timchenko and Boris Rotenberg, the Izhevsk Mechanical Plant, Izhmash, a number of commercial ports in Crimea, and Vnesheconombank's and Rosneft’s subsidiaries.

They are banned from entering the US, and their assets will be arrested. US companies are prohibited from any business with the corporations and individuals on the blacklist.

According to the Acting Director of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, John Smith, this action underscores their resolve to maintain pressure on Russia for violating international law and fueling the conflict in eastern Ukraine. "We will continue to act to ensure the effectiveness of our sanctions, which will not be rolled back until the Minsk Agreements are fully implemented. This follows an EU action last month to extend its sanctions to Russia, and Canada’s announcement also last month to add to its own sanctions on Russia," he said.

Rosneft's Vice President Mikhail Leontyev said in an interview with a correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza that the new US sanctions are redundant. "I don't understand its meaning or content. I see an 'update' to the clarification of the Treasury, and that is the key word – there is nothing new in these sanctions from the legal point of view. They were distributed to our subsidiaries in the past, and now they just listed it," Leontiev said.

The spokesman for Rosneft added that the company will not have new problems.

An associate professor of stock markets and financial engineering of RANEPA, Vasiliy Yakimkin, in his turn, pointed out how the sanctions list makes life for the Russian companies difficult. They closed loans to Rosneft and VEB's subsidiaries, which they could receive for 90 days previously. Rosneft's access to technologies has been tightened," he said.

"The pressure from the United States is growing, and no one was expecting anything else. They will systematically push Russia, and we must be ready for this. We should not turn it into some kind of tragicomedy, because, actually, we have successfully avoided the previous sanctions, and we can find a way to bypass present and future ones. The businessmen say, "it's nothing personal, it's just business." So I think these gentlemen and the companies will sign the necessary contracts through the Asia and Pacific region," the expert added.

"If our government executives believe that the sanctions are here to stay, it is necessary to seek out some way to bypass these sanctions," Vasily Yakimkin concluded.