The Biden administration on Wednesday announced nearly 300 new sanctions on international suppliers of military equipment technology that the administration says have been helping Russia replenish its arsenal as it wages war in Ukraine.
The sanctions represent an increase in U.S. efforts to disrupt Russia’s military-industrial complex supply chains. They include more than a dozen targets in China, which the United States says is increasingly helping Russia arm itself. The Biden administration has expressed growing alarm about the weapons technology alliance between China and Russia. In recent weeks, senior U.S. officials have expressed these concerns to their Chinese counterparts.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement on Wednesday that “today’s actions will further undermine and weaken Russia’s war effort and attack Russia’s military industrial base and the evasion networks that supply it.”
The sanctions follow Yellen’s visit to China last month. She confronts Chinese officials over support for Russia. She warned them that Chinese companies and financial institutions that facilitated the Kremlin’s war effort would face penalties. The finance minister said her counterparts told her it was China’s policy not to provide military aid to Russia.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed similar concerns during a separate visit to China last week.
“Russia will have difficulty sustaining its attacks on Ukraine without China’s support,” Mr Blinken said at the end of the trip. “I made it clear that if China doesn’t solve this problem, we will.”
The U.S. Treasury Department has accused Chinese companies facing sanctions of supplying Russia with infrared detectors, parts for Russian drones and pressure sensors used in Russian missiles.
The sanctions, imposed in coordination with the State Department, also target Azerbaijan, Belgium, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Several Russian companies and individuals linked to Moscow’s procurement of materials for its chemical and biological weapons programs were also sanctioned, as were importers of cotton cellulose and nitrocellulose, which Russia uses to produce gunpowder and rocket propellant.
The U.S. Treasury Department hopes the sanctions will have a bigger impact, following an executive order signed by President Joe Biden last year. Power to crack down on banks and financial services companies is helping Russia evade strict sanctions on its acquisition of military technology and equipment.
