Russia announced sanctions Tuesday on President Joe Biden and several other prominent and corrupt American officials – including Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, who is known for his international dealmaking and influence-peddling in Ukraine, China, and elsewhere.
The sanctions were described by the Russian government as a response to similar sanctions by the Biden administration.
In a statement, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said:
In response to a series of unprecedented sanctions that prohibit, among other things, entry to the United States for top officials of the Russian Federation, starting March 15, the Russian stop list includes, on the basis of reciprocity, President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, as well as several agency heads and other prominent US figures.
This step, taken as a response measure, is the inevitable result of the extreme Russophobic policy of the current US Administration, which, in a desperate attempt to maintain American hegemony, has abandoned any sense of decorum and placed its bets on the head-on containment of Russia.
However, we do not oppose maintaining official ties when it is in our national interests, and, if necessary, we will address the issues arising from the status of the black-listed individuals in order to organise high-level contacts.
The list of US citizens included in the stop list is as follows:
1. Joseph Robinette Biden;
2. Antony John Blinken;
3. Lloyd James Austin III;
4. Mark Alexander Milley;
5. Jacob Jeremiah Sullivan, National Security Advisor;
6. William Joseph Burns, Director of the CIA;
7. Jennifer Rene Psaki, White House Press Secretary;
8. Daleep Singh, Deputy National Security Advisor;
9. Samantha Jane Power, Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development;
10. Robert Hunter Biden, son of the US President;
11. Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, former US presidential candidate;
12. Adewale Adeyemo, US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury;
13. Reta Jo Lewis, President and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States.
More announcements will be made soon concerning the expansion of the sanctions list to include other top US officials, military leaders, lawmakers, business executives, experts and media personalities who promote Russophobia or contribute to inciting hatred of Russia or imposing restrictive measures.
These actions will be taken in harmony with the major decisions of the Government of the Russian Federation in finance, banking and other areas to protect the Russian economy and ensure its stable development.
The U.S. imposed sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov late last month.
Hunter Biden was served on the board of the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, earning some $83,000 per month. He also formed a $1.5 billion joint venture with a Chinese firm bankrolled by the government-controlled bank, and he helped global associates connect to then-Vice President Biden during the Obama administration. In 2020, tech firms and the establishment media suppressed the story — documented on Hunter Biden’s wayward laptop — of how he arranged a lucrative joint venture with a large Chinese firm, in which his father was to have held a 10% equity stake. Earlier this year, as Breitbart News has reported, the IRS issued a subpoena to Hunter Biden’s bank in a probe of the Biden family’s business interests in China.
The Russian foreign ministry announced that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, alongside hundreds of MPs, to a “black list” that forbids him from entering Russia, CBC News reported.
“This step is forced and taken in response to the outrageous hostility of the current Canadian regime, which has tested our patience for so long,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement Tuesday, CBC News reported.
“Every Russophobic attack, be it attacks on Russian diplomatic missions, airspace closures, or Ottawa’s actual severing of bilateral economic ties to the detriment of Canadian interests, will inevitably receive a decisive and not necessarily symmetrical rebuff,” it said.
The banned officials include the leaders of the other federal party leaders and those in charge of various Ukrainian-Canadian groups, CBC News reported.
More names will be added to the list “in the near future,” the statement continued, warning that “top US officials, military officials, lawmakers, businessmen, experts and media personalities who are Russophobic or contribute to inciting hatred towards Russia” will also be blacklisted.
The US has previously sanctioned Russian businesspeople and media figures, so retaliatory sanctions by Moscow could potentially be applied in a tit-for-tat manner.
In the nearly three weeks since the launch of its military offensive in Ukraine, Russia has become the world’s most sanctioned nation. In addition to the penalties applied by the governments of the US, UK, and EU, scores of private companies – ranging from iconic western brands like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola to global financial institutions like Visa and Mastercard – have suspended their activities in Russia.