U.S. Sanctions Target Russian Industry, Putin Cronies

The Biden administration plans to spare everyday Russians from the brunt of US export controls if Russia invades Ukraine, and focus on targeting industrial sectors, a White House official said.

Photo Insert: A caricature of the man at the center of the current turmoil in Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin

"Key people" will also face "massive sanctions," a top Commerce official said in a separate speech on Friday (Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022, in Manila), Karen Freifield reported for Reuters.

The comments narrow the scope of potential curbs on imports to Russia that had previously been described as disrupting Russia's economy more broadly, hitting industrial sectors and consumer technologies like smartphones.

"We can't preview every action, but the intent there really is to have measures that we think will degrade Russia's industrial capabilities and industrial production capacity over time, not to go after individual, everyday Russian consumers," White House national security official Peter Harrell said in a virtual speech for the Massachusetts Export Center on Thursday that received little media coverage.

Harrell, who sits on the National Security Council (NSC), said the US was prepared, immediately after an invasion of Ukraine, to impose "crippling financial costs on major Russian financial institutions as well as to impose a range of quite sweeping export controls that will degrade Russian industrial capacity over the mid-and long term."

Commerce Department official Thea Kendler, who spoke to the export gathering on Friday, said "We are contemplating massive sanctions targeting key people and industries that were not on the table in 2014." That year Russia invaded and annexed Crimea from Ukraine.

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