The Biden administration will impose sanctions on more than 500 targets Friday in response to Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny’s death, according to a Treasury official. The sanctions also come one day before the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The sanctions will be the “largest single tranche since the start of (Russian President Vladimir) 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 as tensions mount between the two countries.
Prior to the announcement, US President Joe Biden said he would on Friday impose sanctions directly on Putin, who he said was “responsible” for Navalny’s death.
On 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.
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 the officials coordinated with European partners on the new package.
Reuters first reported the number of targets sanctioned.
