On Tuesday, the Russian government announced sanctions against 13 Americans over sanctions that the United States has placed on Russians after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last month.
“In response to a series of unprecedented sanctions banning, among other things, entry into the United States for top officials of the Russian Federation, from March 15 of this year, President J Biden is included in the Russian ‘stop-list’ on the basis of mutual reciprocity,” Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. “Biden, Secretary of State A Blinken, Minister of Defense L Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff M Milly, as well as a number of department heads and other American leaders.”
The sanctions were an “inevitable consequence of the extremely Russophobic course taken by the current US Administration, which, in a desperate attempt to maintain American hegemony, has relied, discarding all decency, on the frontal constricting of Russia,” the statement claimed. “At the same time, we do not refuse to maintain official relations if they meet our national interests, and, if necessary, we will solve problems arising from the status of persons who appear on the ‘black list’ in order to organize high-level contacts.”
Those sanctioned include President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, National Security Adviser Jacob Sullivan, CIA Director William Burns, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, deputy national security adviser for international economics Daleep Singh, United States Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power, President Biden’s son Hunter Biden, Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo, and Reta Jo Lewis, president and chairman of the board of directors of the Export-Import Bank.
The news comes the same day that Russia placed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and 300 other Canadian officials on a “black list,” barring them from entering the country over sanctions Canada placed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
In a statement, the Russian government said that the Canadian government had been acting with “Russophobic rage.”
“The ‘black list’ of persons prohibited from entering the Russian Federation includes Prime Minister J. Trudeau, Ministers of Foreign Affairs and National Defense M. Joli and A. Anand. Most of the deputies of the House of Commons of the Canadian Parliament and aggressive pro-Bander elements are also among those banned,” the statement said.
“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. 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 added.
