The Morrison government has slapped fresh sanctions on Russian oligarchs, including the prominent billionaire Roman Abramovich, who is the London-based owner of Millhouse Capital and Chelsea Football Club.
Australia on Monday designated 33 individuals, including the chief executive of Gazprom, Alexey Miller, and the chair of Bank Rossiya, Dmitri Lebedev. The move against Abramovich, one of the world’s richest men, brings Australia in line with the UK and the US.
The latest move by Australia comes after a Russian strike on a military base close to the Polish border in the far-west of Ukraine. The weekend attack – one the deadliest of the war so far – killed at least 35 people and injured more than 130. The escalation prompted a warning from Nato.
The base has been used by Nato to train Ukrainian military forces. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has appealed to western nations for weeks to impose a no-fly zone over his country. While a number of nations, including Australia, have dispatched lethal military support, allies are seeking not to engage Russia directly, fearing a conflagration in Europe.
Canada, the EU, New Zealand, the US and the UK have imposed sanctions targeting the Russian president Vladimir Putin’s inner circle since the president ordered the invasion of Ukraine.
Other individuals named by Australia on Monday include: the chair of Rostec and member of the Supreme Council of United Russia, Sergey Chemezov; the founder and largest shareholder of Alfa Group, Mikhail Fridman; the president of Transneft, Nikolai Tokarev; the chair of Sheremetyevo international airport, Alexander Ponomarenko; the chair of VEB, Igor Shuvalov; and the chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev.
The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, is due to meet with China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, in Rome this week. Sullivan has warned China it will face consequences if it helps Moscow evade escalating sanctions triggered by the war.
Over the weekend, Sullivan told NBC: “We have made it clear to not just Beijing but every country in the world that if they think that they can basically bail Russia out, they can give Russia a workaround to the sanctions that we’ve imposed, they should have another thing coming because we will ensure that neither China, nor anyone else, can compensate Russia for these losses.”
The Australian sanctions cover a group of oligarchs close to Putin, and some spouses and children. The Morrison government argues many Russian oligarchs have either facilitated, or directly benefited from, the Kremlin’s military incursions into Ukraine since 2014. The government says more than 400 sanctions have been imposed since the invasion began.
