The Biden Administration still fantasizes that it can impose strategic defeat on Russia using just about the only tool it has left short of nuclear weapons, that is, sanctions. Yesterday, President Joe Biden signed an executive order allowing the U.S. to impose another level of sanction enforcement on Russia targeting financial institutions that have allegedly indirectly have allowed Russia to keep building its war arsenal. “The new executive order by the President will simply give us a tool that will allow us to go after financial institutions that failed to make the choice to either stop allowing their companies to ship these goods to the Russia’s military industrial complex, or getting out of business with Russia,” a senior administration official said on a call with reporters, according to the White House transcript.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the new sanctions “will make clear to foreign financial institutions that facilitating significant transactions relating to Russia’s military industrial base will expose them to sanctions risk,” noting that the multiple rounds of sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies to date “have significantly degraded Russia’s ability to replace the equipment, materials, and technology it needs to fuel its aggression.”
According to a report in ABC News, Biden’s order is aimed at cracking down on an evasion tactic that has allowed Russia to continue to get access to financial institutions through other, smaller financial institutions, and buy materials they need for war. Russian sanctions, they say, have been a constant game of cat and mouse, and the new executive order marks the latest attempt to catch Russia in those tactics.
Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador in Washington, ridiculed the new sanctions by in effect, warning that they’ll do more harm to U.S. interests than Russia’s. “The White House is once again trying to demonstrate the notorious desire to inflict strategic defeat on Russia, including in the economic sphere,” he said in a statement posted on the embassy’s Telegram channel. “It is piling up more and more sanctions in futile attempts to put sticks in the wheels of the steady development of the Russian economy and to obstruct our special military operation.”
Antonov noted that for the most part, the new sanctions target institutions in third countries, not in Russia itself. “One can read an obvious desire to intimidate our partners, push them to cut off mutually beneficial ties with the Russian Federation under the fanfare of geopolitical slogans,” he said. “The U.S. seems not to understand or does not want to understand that with such reckless actions it is contributing to the fragmentation of the world economy, as well as undermining the status of dollar jurisdiction in the eyes of the Global South, and even of America’s satellites.
“Washington’s sanction fantasies cause additional damage to bilateral relations,” Antonov concluded. “Basically, they cross out any possibility of restoring mutually respectful dialogue between the great powers even on the short list of topics where Russia and the United States could still share similar positions.”