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The US announces 300 sanctions, including a veto on Chinese companies for selling chips to Russia

The US announces 300 sanctions, including a veto on Chinese companies for selling chips to Russia

USA announced this Wednesday sanctions against more than 300 people and entities, both in Russia and outside its borders, including Chinese companies accused of selling chips to Moscow that are used in the manufacture of weapons used in the war in Ukraine.

The announcement, which affects entities and individuals from Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Central Asia and the Caribbean, comes just before the start, tomorrow, of the G7 summit in the Italian region of Apulia (south), in which the war in Ukraine will be one of the central issues.

The objective of the sanctions is to cut off financing to Russia’s war sector and prevent the Kremlin from evading the sanctions imposed by Washington and its allies after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the State and Treasury Departments detailed in two statements.

In one of those statements, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen considered that these sanctions leave the Russian economy even more “desperate” to access the outside world.

At the heart of the new measures is an expansion of so-called sanctions “high schools”, which give the United States the ability to blacklist any entity that does business with previously sanctioned Russian entities.

This measure is intended to discourage financial entities, especially in China, from financially supporting Russia’s war efforts.

The Treasury Department also implemented restrictions against the Moscow stock exchange in order to prevent foreign investors from financially supporting Russian companies in the defense sector.

Likewise, the sanctions affect several Chinese companies that Washington accuses of selling chips to Russia and helping the Kremlin access military equipment critical to the war in Ukraine, such as drones and lasers.

These chips They are a key aspect of the sanctions because, according to Washington, Russia still obtains chips from third countries and uses them to build missiles and other weapons, despite Western efforts to limit Moscow’s access to technologies that support its effort. warlike

Other sanctions are directed against companies “involved in developing Russia’s future energy, metals and mining production and export capacity”, as detailed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in one of the notes.

Although the measures expand the United States sanctions regime against Russia, the Joe Biden Administration has so far not directly imposed sanctions on Chinese or European banks suspected of financing the Russian war machine.

Source: Gestion