WASHINGTON: The United States on Wednesday imposed hundreds of sanctions targeting Russia, seeking to increase pressure on Moscow in the Biden administration\u2019s final days and protect some sanctions previously imposed.
\nThe US State and Treasury departments imposed sanctions on over 250 targets, including some based in China, taking aim at Russia\u2019s evasion of US sanctions and its military industrial base.
\nAs part of the action, the Treasury imposed new curbs on almost 100 entities that were already under sanctions, potentially complicating any future efforts to remove the measures.
\nRussia\u2019s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
\nThe Treasury in a statement said Washington was imposing fresh sanctions on almost 100 critical Russian entities \u2014 including Russian banks and companies operating in Russia\u2019s energy sector \u2014 that were previously sanctioned by the United States. It said the move increases secondary sanctions risk for them.
\nThe new sanctions are issued under an executive order that a senior Treasury official said requires Congress to be notified before any of the actions can be reversed.
\nJeremy Paner, a partner at the law firm Hughes Hubbard & Reed, said the actions are \u201cTrump-proofed,\u201d preventing reversal of the additional sanctions without congressional approval.
\n\u201cYou can\u2019t just with the stroke of a pen remove what\u2019s being done,\u201d he said.
\nEdward Fishman, a former US official who is now a research scholar at Columbia University, called it a \u201cvery significant action.\u201d
\n\u201cIt protects these sanctions against sort of any frivolous decision to lift them,\u201d he said. \u201cIt gives the new Trump administration more leverage with Russia.\u201d
\nTrump\u2019s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
\nIt was unclear how Donald Trump, who succeeds President Joe Biden on Monday, will approach the issue of sanctions on Russia. Trump has been friendly toward Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past and said on Monday that he would aim to meet quickly with him to discuss Ukraine.
\nWhen asked about his strategy to end the war, Trump told Newsmax: \u201cWell, there\u2019s only one strategy and it\u2019s up to Putin and I can\u2019t imagine he\u2019s too thrilled about the way it\u2019s gone because it hasn\u2019t gone exactly well for him either.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: The United States on Wednesday imposed hundreds of sanctions targeting Russia, seeking to increase pressure on Moscow in the Biden administration\u2019s final days and protect some sanctions previously imposed. The US State and Treasury departments imposed sanctions on over 250 targets, including some based in China, taking aim at Russia\u2019s evasion of US sanctions …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":75719,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75702"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75720,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75702\/revisions\/75720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}