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 will be the “largest single tranche since the start of Putin’s further invasion of Ukraine,” a Treasury Department spokesperson said in a statement Thursday, and will target “Russia, its enablers, and its war machine.”
The sanctions will come from both the US Treasury and the State Department, the spokesperson said.
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.”
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.
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.
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