Personal sanctions have been imposed against the son of the director of the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, Denis, who holds the chair of the deputy chairman of the board of VTB.
Also under the sanctions were the chairman of the board of Promsvyazbank Pyotr Fradkov (son of the former prime minister and director of the SVR Mikhail Fradkov) and the head of VK trading in London Vladimir Kiriyenko (son of the first deputy head of the presidential administration Sergei Kiriyenko). All three are listed in a message posted on the US Treasury website.
The sanctions imply that the property and any assets of sanctioned individuals in the United States will be blocked. This also applies to companies in which they directly or indirectly own 50% or more. US citizens and financial institutions are prohibited from doing business with sanctioned individuals.
What other sanctions have the US imposed?
The main point was the sanctions against the Russian public debt. Here, as follows from the message of the US Treasury, the Americans chose an intermediate option – a ban on the purchase on the secondary market of new issues of Russian OFZ issued after March 1, 2022. A radical option would be a complete ban on participation in the secondary market of Russian government debt – this would force foreign investors to sell all the papers they have in their hands now. According to the Central Bank, as of January 1, 2022, the share of non-residents in OFZs was 19.9% (about 3 trillion rubles). Until now, American investors are prohibited from buying only primary issues of Russian government debt – this ban was introduced by Donald Trump in 2019 and tightened by Biden in the spring of 2021, but until now it has actually been a formality.
Blocking sanctions against “the two largest Russian financial institutions” – VEB.rf and, as Biden put it, “a military bank.” From the message of the US Treasury, predictably, it turned out that we are talking about Promsvyazbank, which in 2018 after the reorganization became the main bank for the defense industry. The sanctions also affected 42 subsidiaries of both banks. The largest state-owned banks, Sberbank and VTB, are not subject to sanctions.
The sanctions package did not include measures against Nord Stream 2: “We are working together with Germany to prevent the commissioning of Nord Stream 2,” Biden said verbatim.
New sanctions against Russia were also announced today by the EU and the UK. EU sanctions will also involve restrictions on the capital market, but details are not yet available.
