Leaders of western states and governments imposed a number of sanctions against Russia on Thursday over the military operation in Ukraine.
Britain on Thursday has announced further sanctions targeting Russian banks, companies, entities and individuals. Prime Minister Boris Johnson described the sanctions as the "largest and most severe package" of sanctions "that Russia has ever seen."
Johnson said the UK will target all major Russian banks, five oligarchs and more than 100 companies and individuals. The UK will freeze the assets of all major Russian banks next week, the prime minister said, but he added that the VTB Bank will see an immediate “full asset freeze.”
Russia’s defense company Rostec will also be hit by the new sanctions. Johnson said legislation will be introduced to block major Russian companies to raise finance and stop the Russian state from raising sovereign debt on British markets.
The prime minister also said the state-owned Russian airliners Aeroflot will be banned from landing in the UK.
US President Joe Biden said the United States is imposing sanctions on major Russian bansk, including Sber and VTB, and introduces personal sanctions against certain members of Russian state officials and businessmen. Moreover, the United States will restrict imports of high-tech goods to Russia.
Speaking in the White House on Thursday, the US leader said the decision has been made over Russia’s decision to recognize people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk (DPR and LPR) as independent states and to launch a military operation on the territory of Ukraine. He described Moscow’s actions as "a brutal assault on the people of Ukraine without provocation, without justification, without necessity."
"We saw a flagrant violation of international law in attempting to unilaterally create two new so-called republics on sovereign Ukrainian territory," Biden continued.
Biden said the anti-Russian sanctions, drafted in cooperation with the European Union and other US allies, were designed to deal a major blow to Russia. In his words, Washington plans to "limit Russia’s ability to do business in Dollars, Euros, Pounds, and Yen to be part of the global economy."
The US president named only VTB in his speech. However, the US Department of the Treasury said later on Thursday that Sber, Otrkytie, Novikombank and Sovkombank were also targeted. Their US assets will be frozen, and they will not be allowed to use correspondent accounts in US banks to perform their financial operations. At the same time, the US and their allies have so far stopped short of disconnecting Russian banks from the SWIFT system.
He also said that anti-Russian sanctions, to be imposed by the United States and its allies, will target Russia’s high-tech industry and the country’s space program. "We estimate that we’ll cut off more than half of Russia’s high-tech imports. It will strike a blow to their ability to continue to modernize their military. It’ll degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program," he said.
In Biden’s opinion, US sanctions will reduce Russia’s ability to compete economically and "will be a major hit to Putin’s long-term strategic ambitions." "We have purposefully designed these sanctions to maximize the long-term impact on Russia and to minimize the impact on the United States and our Allies," he said.
Moreover, Biden said that his administration was still considering the possibility of imposing personal sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin. "It is not a bluff, it is on the table," Biden said.
The US Treasury imposed sanctions on the sons of presidential envoy for environment, ecology and transport, Sergey Ivanov, Rosneft chief Igor Sechin and Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev, the agency said in a statement on Thursday.
The statement asserts that the sanctioned representatives of the Russian elite "have used family members to move assets and to conceal their wealth."
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the second package of the European Union’s anti-Russian sanctions affects 70% of the Russian banking sector and key state-owned companies, including defense enterprises.
"First, this package includes financial sanctions, targeting 70% of the Russian banking market and key state owned companies, including in defense," she said at a news conference following an emergency EU summit on Ukraine.
In her words, the EU will limit Russia’s access to advanced technologies and semiconductors. "We will hit Russia’s access to important technologies it needs to build a prosperous future, such as semiconductors or cutting-edge technologies," von der Leyen said.
As part of sanctions targeting Russia’s energy sector, the EU will also prohibit exports of "instruments <…> that are crucial to refine the oil." "These instruments are built in Europe, they are unique and cannot be replaced globally by other suppliers," she added.
In her opinion, this will prevent Russia from modernizing its oil refineries, which generated incomes of 24 billion euro in 2019. Among other measures mentioned by von der Leyen is scrapping privileged access to the EU for Russian businessmen and diplomats.
Canada added 27 financial institutions and five companies to its blacklist of sanctions, including Sberbank, VTB, RZD, Gazprom and Transneft, the government of Canada said on its website. The amendments to the existing blacklists impose restrictions on "27 key financial institutions," the document says. Overall, the list includes 32 legal entities from Russia.
The government of Japan resolved to toughen its anti-Russian sanctions over Ukraine, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said after a session of the country’s National Security Council on Friday.
"We are freezing visa issuance to Russian citizens, freeze assets of financial institutions, limit exports to organizations linked to the defense sector," the Japanese premier said.
At the same time, the premier gave no direct answer to the question of whether sanctions against Russia’s energy sector were possible in the future or about the possibility of disconnecting Russia from SWIFT. He said that his country will act depending on the situation, in close cooperation with the Group of Seven (G7) and the international community.
"We are ready to discuss the question of taking new measures if the situation around Ukraine deteriorates," he said.
In his words, the energy sector - including Japan’s participation in gas projects on Russia’s Sakhalin Island - was excluded from sanctions in coordination with US and other partners.
The head of the Japanese government vowed that Japan will take all possible measures to prevent oil price growth in coordination with US, other partners and the International Energy Agency.
Earlier, the Czech Republic shuts down Russian consulate generals in Brno and Karlovy Vary, as well as two of its own missions in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, over the Russian military situation in Ukraine.
