Home » Biden punishes Putin: sanctions and via 10 NATO and EU diplomats. Russia summons the US ambassador

Biden punishes Putin: sanctions and via 10 NATO and EU diplomats. Russia summons the US ambassador

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Joe Biden uses carrot and stick with Vladimir Putin. After calling him a “killer”, he proposed a summit in a third country but today announced new measures against Russia for its interference in the presidential elections in favor of Donald Trump and for the SolarWinds cyber attack that hacked numerous government agencies and private companies: 32 Russian individuals and entities linked to government and intelligence were sanctioned while ten Moscow diplomats, largely identified as 007, were kicked out of the embassy in Washington.

The US – along with the EU, Great Britain, Canada and Australia – also sanctioned 8 individuals and entities linked to the Russian occupation in Crimea. These are the first expulsions and the second round of sanctions by the Biden executive against Moscow, after those for the poisoning and imprisonment of the opponent Alexiei Navalni. But this time there is more, in an attempt to scratch more for deterrent purposes.

By signing an executive order in which he defines Russian destabilizing activities as an “unusual and extraordinary threat to national security, foreign policy and the economy of the United States“, the US president has also hit Russian sovereign debt: by banning American financial institutions to directly buy bonds issued by Moscow and reserving the right to extend this type of sanctions if the destabilizing activities of the Kremlin persist.

A move that risks complicating Russia’s ability to raise money in international financial markets, even though 80% of the $ 190 billion worth of bonds issued by the end of the year are held by local investors. The pandemic and the fall in the price of oil, the main engine of the Russian economy, have made Moscow more vulnerable to financial sanctions, although the recovery of black gold in the first quarter of this year has allowed the federal budget to return to surplus. In addition, the US officially indicated for the first time the SVR, the Russian CIA, as responsible for the SolarWinds operation, and also used “invisible” measures in response to the hack, as noted by national security adviser Jake. Sullivan. NATO and the EU expressed solidarity with the US for the measures taken, while Moscow reacted harshly, summoning the American ambassador and heralding retaliation. “This kind of aggressive behavior is sure to meet with strong resistance. The answer will be inevitable, ”assured the spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova, stressing that the sanctions increase the level of confrontation in Russian-US relations.

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Shortly before the American announcement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov had prophesied that the upcoming measures “unequivocally will not contribute in any way” to the summit proposed by Biden, to be held perhaps in Finland, a country that had already hosted the face-to-face between Putin and Trump. In his recent phone call to the Kremlin leader, the second, Biden warned him that the US would react to Russian hostile actions. The answer came against the background of the strengthening of Moscow’s troops on the border with Ukraine and in Crimea, on which the United States has found full harmony with its NATO allies. Biden, however, refrained from sanctions for alleged Russian rewards to the Taliban for killing American soldiers in Afghanistan (intelligence has a medium-low conviction) and from those on the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 pipeline, in order not to compromise the relationship with Berlin. at this crucial moment.

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