Russia Sanctions Joe Biden, Antony Blinken and Other Top US Officials

Russia responds to US sanctions for the invasion of Ukraine. This Tuesday, Moscow has sanctioned, in turn, the US president Joe Bidento the Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and other high-ranking officials of the North American country.

As reported by the Kremlin in a statement from the Foreign Ministry, among those sanctioned are also the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin; the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley; National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan; the director of the CIA, William Burns; the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki; Biden’s son Hunter Biden; and former presidential candidate Hillary Clintonamong others.

The Government of Vladimir Putin has indicated that the measure has been taken “in response to an unprecedented series of sanctions that prohibit, among other things, the entry into the United States of senior Russian officials,” according to the Russian news agency TASS.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has defined this decision as a “reaction” to the US measures and defended that it is a “unavoidable consequence” for the “extremely Russophobic course taken by the current US Administration”.

However, he specified that Moscow “does not refuse to maintain official relations” with Washington if these respond to their “national interests”. “If necessary, we will resolve the issues arising from the status of people on the blacklist to organize high-level contacts,” he said.

The United States, in coordination with its international partners, has imposed in the last two weeks a series of sanctions against Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine, including a ban on the import of Russian oil or products such as vodka. In addition, it has restricted trade relations with the Eurasian country.