Biden to Sanction Putin Directly as Ukraine Invasion Escalates
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President Biden will sanction Russian president Vladimir Putin and foreign minister Sergei Lavrov directly as the Kremlin escalates a bloody full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said today.
The White House had held off from imposing personal sanctions on Putin for the last couple days but promised to keep the option on the table. The sanctions package announced earlier this week primarily targeted Russian oligarchs and cronies of Putin, their families, and Russian banks. Despite bipartisan pressure from U.S. lawmakers, the Biden administration has not inflicted serious penalties on the Russian energy sector, which supplies much of the world’s natural gas and oil.
In his press conference yesterday afternoon, President Biden also confirmed that the latest U.S. actions didn’t include sanctions wouldn’t kick Russia out of the SWIFT system, a move which would make it difficult for Putin to engage in international finance and banking, because some European nations did not arrive at a consensus about it.
The White House’s announcement today came after the European Union and United Kingdom deployed sanctions hitting Putin and Lavrov specifically on Friday. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson also announced Friday that he will impose sanctions against Putin and Lavrov “imminently.”
A major stakeholder in Russian oil company Surgutneftegaz and natural gas company Gazprom, Putin has amassed a fortune over the years, making him one of the richest men in the world. The sanctions are intended to hurt his stores of wealth.
“It’s been on the table for some time, but through coordination and discussion with our European partners over the last day or so,” Psaki told CNN about the latest U.S. sanctions against Russia.
So far, the U.S. has strategy has been to slap Russia with sanctions to deter Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. However, Biden has acknowledged that it will take some time for the regime to the feel the pain of the sanctions, even as Ukraine faces an ongoing invasion.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle have advocated for immediately unleashing the full arsenal of sanctions available to the U.S. instead of a more gradual approach responding to each of Putin’s escalations.
