United States to introduce new sanctions against Russia at G7, says US official

The United States has signaled a fresh set of sanctions against Russia, ahead of the G7 summit in Japan. A US official has said that they will “extensively restrict Russia’s access to goods that matter for its battlefield capabilities,” on Friday before ahead of the summit.

Although the United States will have several G7 objectives this year, the fundamental one would still be to continue to demonstrate its support for Ukraine, he added.

“We have taken an array of actions to hold Russia accountable. In coordination with our G7 partners, we’ve put in place the largest set of sanctions and export control actions ever imposed on a major economy,” told the US Administrative official.

The US is looking to blocklist at least 70 companies and organizations for selling restricted products as part of the sanctions against Russia.

“We will continue to expand export controls to make it even harder for Russia to sustain its war machine. Among other things, this involves extensively restricting categories of goods key to the battlefield, and also cutting off roughly 70 entities from Russia and third countries from receiving US exports by adding them to the Commerce blacklist,” the US official added.

US to announce 300 fresh sanctions against Russia

The US will also announce more than 300 new sanctions against Russia, targeting people, organizations, ships, and planes. “These will go after financial facilitators, as well as future energy and extractive capabilities of Russia and other actors helping to support the war. This will include designations across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia,” the US official added.

The US will also adopt fresh sanctions against Russia to prevent it from utilizing its services and broaden the scope of its limitations to include those Russian economic sectors that are essential to the nation’s military-industrial complex.

“As part of all of these efforts, you will see us take significant steps to align our actions even more closely with the ones imposed by the EU and the UK to ensure that, as the G7, we remain as coordinated as possible in our response to Russia’s brutal actions,” the official went on to say.

He further added, “I’d also remind folks that it was just a little less than a year ago, at the G7 Summit in Elmau last June, that leaders agreed to pursue a policy to cap the price on Russian oil and petroleum products. And over the last six months, since that policy was implemented under the guidance the leaders provided in Elmau, we successfully implemented this policy.”

The G7 nations are getting ready to apply fresh sanctions against Russia and export limits, the person continued. “I won’t get into the specifics of what partners are doing, but the United States will be rolling out a substantial package of our own,” the official told.

The latest sanctions against Russia are part of the economic action by the United States after Russia-Ukraine broke out on February 24 and is still escalating between the two countries. The G7 summit is being held in Hiroshima with participation from President Biden and other world leaders.

Japanese PM Kishida to welcome G7 leaders in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park

Fumio Kishida, who is hosting this year’s G7 Summit in his country, will welcome world leaders to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park or otherwise known as Genbaku Dome which is the only structure left standing in the area, depicting the horrors of the first explicit use of atomic bomb which was dropped on the city on 6 August 1945.

It is also anticipated that the heads of the Group of Seven and the other eight invited nations, including India, would pay a visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The city of Hiroshima witnessed the world’s first military use of an atomic bomb.

The US Army Air Forces launched the atomic bomb “Little Boy” on the city on August 6, 1945, in the Pacific theatre of World War II. By the end of the year, between 90,000 and 166,000 people had perished as a result of the bomb, radiation exposure, and its aftereffects. The majority of Hiroshima had been devastated.

Constructed in the memorial of the devastating bombing of the city, Hiroshima Peace Memorial was later declared a Unesco World Heritage site. The G7 Summit is an annual gathering of world leaders from the European Union (EU), France, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and Italy (in that sequence of rotating presidency).