The US has sanctioned one other 500 individuals and entities related with Russia, together with monetary executives and jail officers. US President Joe Biden mentioned that the restrictions will make sure that Russian President Vladimir Putin “pays an even steeper price for his aggression,” however the Kremlin has dismissed them as “fruitless.”

The sanctioned entities embody the operator of Russia’s Mir fee card system, which soared in recognition after Russia was minimize off from SWIFT and Visa/MasterCard in 2022. Russian vitality corporations and corporations linked with the military-industrial sector made up the majority of the 100 focused entities, which have been revealed in a US Treasury Department record on Friday.

Among the people sanctioned are Russian troopers, figures concerned in navy procurement, and executives within the finance sector. More than two dozen of these named are primarily based outdoors of Russia, together with in China, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam.

In an announcement on Friday, US President Joe Biden mentioned that the record would additionally embody “individuals connected to [Alexey] Navalny’s imprisonment.” 

A former far-right campaigner feted within the West for his opposition to Putin’s authorities, Navalny died in a Russian penal colony final week after instantly falling unwell. Navalny had been serving a 19-year sentence for “extremist activities,” and though an investigation into his loss of life is ongoing, Biden and different Western leaders have held Putin answerable for his passing.

Friday’s sanctions package deal is the lengthiest tranche of penalties unveiled by Washington for the reason that battle in Ukraine started nearly two years in the past. In his assertion, Biden mentioned that it was drafted in response to Russia’s “ongoing war of conquest on Ukraine and for the death of Alexey Navalny.”

The sanctions “will ensure Putin pays an even steeper price for his aggression abroad and repression at home,” the American chief mentioned.

Sanctioned people are barred from coming into the US, whereas American residents and corporations are forbidden from buying and selling with sanctioned people or entities. In a parallel transfer, the EU introduced sanctions on 200 Russian people and corporations, together with some which seem on the American record.

The Russian Foreign Ministry described these restrictions as “fruitless attempts to put pressure on Russia,” and introduced that Moscow had “significantly expanded” its record of sanctioned European officers, firms, and people in response, together with these “responsible for providing military assistance to the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev.”

Successive rounds of Russian sanctions have failed to “crater” the Russian economic system, as Biden predicted they might in 2022. Instead, the Russian economic system grew by 4% in 2023, Russian Prime Mikhail Mishustin introduced earlier this month. This determine of 4% eclipses the two.7% forecast by the Russian Central Bank in January.

Less than per week earlier than Mishustin’s announcement, the International Monetary Fund considerably raised its development forecast for the Russian economic system in 2024. It now expects development of two.6% this 12 months, a pointy improve from its October forecast of a 1.1% achieve.