Biden administration announces sweeping Russia sanctions

The Biden administration announced a new set of economic sanctions against Russia following its launch of a military operation in Ukraine.

Russia: New economic measures from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control include:

• Sanctions targeting Russia’s two largest banks, including correspondent and payable-through account sanctions on Sberbank and full blocking sanctions on VTB Bank.

• Blocking sanctions on three additional major Russian financial institutions: Otkritie, Novikom, and Sovcom.

• Debt and equity prohibitions against major state-owned and private enterprises.

• New actions targeting Russian elites and their family members, including senior executives at state-owned banks linked to the Kremlin.

Belarus: OFAC also sanctioned 24 Belarusian individuals and entities in the defense and financial sectors due to Belarus’s support for and facilitation of the invasion.

Commerce Sanctions: The Commerce Department separately announced export controls designed to restrict Russia’s access to defense, aerospace, and maritime technologies.

SWIFT: The new set of sanctions does not include barring Russia from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, the international bank messaging system. President Joe Biden said the new sanctions are more effective than cutting Russia off from SWIFT—which would have broad economic repercussions on other nations—though doing so remains an option.