Hunter Biden among Americans sanctioned by Russia
Russia has hit back at sanctions imposed by the US in retaliation to the war in Ukraine by imposing their own sanctions on a number of current and former senior US officials… and the president’s son Hunter Biden.
It is not entirely clear what the Russian government hopes to achieve by sanctioning Mr Biden.
While he was once a board member of Ukrainian natural gas producer Burisma Holdings until his four-year term expired in 2019, he is now an artist.
His time on the board of Burisma is the focus of an unsupported conspiracy theory popularised by former President Donald Trump and his followers.
Others on the list released by the Russian Foreign Ministry include President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, White House press secretary Jen Psaki, and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
“In response to a series of unprecedented sanctions prohibiting, among other things, entry into the United States for top Russian officials, effective March 15 this year, the Russian ‘stop list’ includes @JoeBiden, @SecBlinken and a number of other American figures on the basis of reciprocity,” the ministry said on Twitter.
In a separate development, the US State Department said it will hand over email records mentioning Mr Biden to The New York Times after the publication sued for alleging the agency had failed to respond in a timely manner to FOIA requests.
The Times wants to see email correspondence between officials in the US embassy in Romania that mention Mr Biden dated between August 2015 and December 2019.
Journalist Kenneth Vogel has also requested records mentioning Tony Bobulinski, a former business associate of Hunter Biden; Louis Freeh, the former FBI director who reportedly gave Biden a $100,000 gift; Rudy Giuliani, who then-President Donald Trump sent to Europe to dig up dirt on Mr Biden; Devin Archer, a former friend of Mr Biden recently sentenced to a year in prison on a fraud scheme; and more than a dozen other people.
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