On Thursday morning American President Obama signed an executive order on visa sanctions for all persons determined to have impeded democracy, contributed to violence or engaged in corruption in Ukraine. The order does not specify who is included in the order, but senior administration officials said it would include both Russians and Ukrainians. The Washington Post devoted an article to this question.
There had previously been some information that sanctions would not apply to President Vladimir Putin or other top Russian officials. “It is an unusual and extraordinary circumstance to sanction a head of state, and we would not begin our designations by doing so,” The Washington Post quotes a senior official.
The measures are intended to “send a strong message that we intend to impose costs on Russia” for its military intervention in Crimea, the newspaper quotes its source.
“The fact that we have not yet designated” the targets of the sanctions “should lead some of those individuals to be questioning whether they’re going to be finding their names on a list,” the senior administration official said, quoted by the Washington Post.
