China has been hit with sanctions by the US for supplying “critical inputs to Russia’s military-industrial base” for use in the war against Ukraine. US officials on Wednesday announced a sweeping package targeting nearly 300 entities in Russia, China and other countries. “Today’s actions will further disrupt and degrade Russia’s war efforts by going after its military industrial base and the evasion networks that help supply it,” said the US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen.
The almost 300 targets include dozens of actors accused of enabling Russia to acquire technology and equipment from abroad. Other than China, targeted non-Russian entities were located in Azerbaijan, Belgium, Slovakia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). These companies “enable Russia to acquire desperately needed technology and equipment from abroad”, a treasury statement said. As part of the measures, the state department blacklisted additional individuals and companies involved in Moscow’s energy, mining and metals sectors; and individuals connected to the death of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a Siberian prison in February.
Long queues formed in Moscow on Wednesday as the Russian army displayed western tanks and military hardware captured in Ukraine. It included US, German and French tanks along with British and Australian armoured vehicles, and military hardware made in Turkey, Sweden, Austria, Finland, South Africa and the Czech Republic. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, held a similar exhibition in Kyiv in 2023 of captured Russian tanks and equipment. Russia has itself lost more than 3,000 tanks in Ukraine, says the International Institute for Strategic Studies, amounting to its entire pre-war active inventory, but has enough lower-quality armoured vehicles in storage for years of replacements and says it is ramping up production of new tanks.
