The US Treasury Department issued hundreds of sanctions targeting companies in a handful of countries that Washington claims are helping Russia evade US sanctions.
“The Treasury sanctioned 275 individuals and entities involved in supplying Russia with advanced technology and equipment that it desperately needs to support its war machine,” the press release says. “Today’s action targets both individual actors and sprawling sanctions evasion networks across 17 jurisdictions, including India, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Switzerland, Thailand, and Türkiye.”
Multiple US presidents have increasingly sanctioned Russia, pushing Moscow to develop more economic ties with India, China, and other nations in the Global South. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, President Joe Biden said that the US would lead its allies in an economic war against Russia that would cripple Moscow’s economy and bring the Kremlin’s war machine to a halt.
The Treasury claims the latest sanctions are a result of the economic war impacting Moscow’s economy. “Thanks to the unprecedented international sanctions regime implemented by the United States and its global partners.” A press release from the Treasury stated, “Russia is ever more reliant on complex and expensive transnational schemes to procure critical technological and manufacturing components and machinery it needs to create its own weapons production capability.”
However, the sanctions war has largely backfired. As Ariel Petrovics explains at the Quincy Institute, “Sanctions are not just failing to end the war in Ukraine or weaken the Kremlin’s warfighting currency,” she wrote, adding, “they’ve also backfired, inadvertently strengthening Moscow’s hardline position, undermining the utility of alternative strategies, and shoring up the Kremlin against future international coercion.”
As the Western sanctions have failed to harm the Russian economy, Washington has increased the amount of penalties on Moscow, including price caps and placing secondary sanctions on firms that violate the US blacklist.
