U.S. sanctions 30 entities and 13 individuals, including former gymnast Alina Kabaeva

Washington puts 893 Russian officials on its travel restrictions list

The United States has issued new sanctions against Moscow in response to the war in Ukraine that include more than 30 entities and 13 individuals, including people in the Kremlin’s closest circle, such as former gymnast Alina Kabaeva, who many point to as a mistress of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The Treasury Department will use every tool at our disposal to ensure that Russian elites and Kremlin enablers are held accountable for their complicity in a war that has cost countless lives,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.

The new sanctions have been extended to Andrei Guryev, founder and former vice president of PhosAgro, Russia’s leading chemical company. The businessman’s Cayman Islands-flagged yacht, the ‘Alfa Nero’ — valued at $120 million — is on the new list as blocked property. Guryev has already been sanctioned by the UK.

Other names also include Viktor Rashnikov, majority shareholder of one of the world’s largest steel producers, MMK, as well as two subsidiaries. This businessman has previously been sanctioned by Australia, Canada, the EU, Switzerland and the UK.

Also, of Putin’s closest elite, there is Alina Kabaeva, Olympic champion in Athens 2004 and the current head of the National Media Group; as well as Natalia Valerievna Popova, first deputy director of the Russian-based technology company Innopraktika Institute of Non-State Development.

The Biden Administration has specified that the sanctions extend to the financial institution Joint Stock Company Promising Industrial and Infrastructure Technologies “for attempting to circumvent previous sanctions imposed on the Russian Direct Investment Fund.”

The State Department has specified that Washington has added to this list Russian oligarchs such as tycoon Dimitri Aleksandrovich Pumpianskii, former president of OAO TMK, Russian world manufacturer of steel pipes; Andrei Igorevich Melnichenko, chairman of the Mining Commission of the Board of Directors of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, and businessman Alexander Anatolevich Ponomarenko.

In addition, the Department has designated 24 Russian entities related to defense and technology, as well as “four individuals and one entity operating illegitimately on the territory of Ukraine in collaboration with Russia.”

“The State Department is taking steps to impose visa restrictions on individuals in connection with Russia’s war in Ukraine. This includes 893 Russian Federation officials, such as members of the Federation Council and military members, for threatening or violating the sovereignty, territorial integrity, or political independence of Ukraine,” it explained in a statement.

That list, the U.S. has said, includes 31 foreign government officials who have acted to “support Russia’s alleged annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine” and thus “threatened or violated Ukraine’s sovereignty.”