“If Putin does not pay the price for his death and destruction, he will keep going,” President Biden said in a statement announcing the sanctions. “And the costs to the United States—along with our NATO Allies and partners in Europe and around the world—will rise.”
The U.S., along with international partners, have sought to use sanctions to financially squeeze Putin’s ability to wage war on Ukraine — pairing them with military, economic and humanitarian support to Ukraine to help the country push back against the Russian invading forces.
The package to be announced Friday will include sanctions targeting individuals connected to Navalny’s imprisonment, Biden said in his statement, and target Russia’s financial sector, defense industrial base, procurement networks and sanctions evaders across multiple continents.
The U.S. is also imposing nearly 100 new export restrictions, blocking the shipment of items to Russia in a warning to exporters that they can face American sanctions for facilitating such deliveries to Russia.
Additionally, Biden said sanctions will target Russia’s energy profits, and that the U.S. will “strengthen support for civil society, independent media, and those who fight for democracy around the world.”
The president further called for House lawmakers to pass the $95 billion national security supplemental that includes more than $60 billion in funding related to supporting Ukraine — the majority of those dollars earmarked for U.S. weapons production to backfill supplies already sent to Ukraine.
Russia, however, has shown a remarkable ability to resist the sanctions pressure, maintaining an occupation of an estimated 20 percent of Ukrainian territory over the course of two years of war. That territory includes land it seized in 2014 in Luhansk, Donetsk and the Crimean Peninsula.
And while Russian military casualty figures are estimated to be about 60,000 killed and several hundred thousand injured, the Kremlin has so far demonstrated an ability to outgun and outman Ukrainian forces.
A key part of Putin’s war strategy is to try to outlast the unity and solidarity of Western and democratic nations supporting Ukraine financially and militarily. Russian forces recently captured the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, considered a battlefield gain that came at a high cost to both Russian and Ukrainian troops but provided Moscow with a propaganda victory for its domestic audience.
Meanwhile, the death last week of Russian opposition figure Navalny, long a thorn in Putin’s side, is viewed as a further example of the Russian leader tightening the vice around any resistance to his war aims in Ukraine and suppression of freedoms in Russia.
Read the full report at TheHill.com.
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