The Biden administration will impose a fresh slate of sanctions on more than 500 targets on Friday in response to the death of opposition figure Alexey Navalny and on the eve of Russia’s two-year war in Ukraine, according to a Treasury official.
The sanctions mark the latest move by the administration to levy consequences against Russia amid heightened tensions between the two countries.
Speaking Tuesday, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the new measures would be a “substantial package” that covers a wide range of elements linked to the Russian defense industrial base and sources of revenue for the Russian economy that power the country’s “war machine.”
President Joe Biden teased the sanctions earlier Thursday, saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “responsible” for Navalny’s death. The comments came shortly after he met in San Francisco with Navalny’s widow and daughter.
Biden has repeatedly condemned Putin and called him “a crazy SOB” during a fundraiser in San Francisco on Wednesday, according to the pool reporters traveling with the US president.
“We have a crazy SOB that guy, Putin, others. And we always have to be worried about a nuclear conflict. But the existential threat to humanity is climate,” Biden told those gathered at the fundraiser. The Kremlin, in response, said Biden’s comments were a “huge disgrace” for the United States.
Sullivan described the package as “another turn of the crank” after withering Western sanctions on Moscow since the start of the Ukraine war. While those sanctions have hampered Russia’s economy, they haven’t deterred Putin from proceeding with the invasion.
The US, along with other Western governments, has levied a series of sanctions against Russia in recent years, but Russia has adapted to them. Putin has taken to gloating about Russia’s resistance to international sanctions, which take time to have an effect.
US officials had been working on a new sanctions package on Russia ahead of Navalny’s death and supplemented them in the wake of the opposition leader’s death, according to a senior US official, adding that US officials coordinated with European partners on the new package.
Reuters first reported the number of targets sanctioned.
This story has been updated with additional details.
