White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan speaks during an interview at an Economic Club of Washington event in Washington, DC, U.S., Thursday, April 14, 2022.
Al-Draco | Bloomberg | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Thursday that the Biden administration is focused on ensuring that Russia won’t be able to escape punitive global sanctions for its war in Ukraine.
Sullivan, speaking at the Economic Club in Washington, DC, said the administration was now focused on enforcing the sanctions already imposed on Russia, its officials and its elites.
“I mean, what we’ve done is unprecedented for a major economy that’s taken this set of measures through financial sanctions, investment bans, export controls,” Sullivan said when asked. asked him if the United States had exhausted the sanctions it could impose on Russia. “But where we will be focusing over the next few days is on escapism,” he added.
“As Russia tries to adjust to being under this massive economic pressure, what measures can they try to evade our sanctions and how do we suppress this?”
President Joe Biden’s top national security adviser added that he expects the White House to announce “in the next week or two” some targets that are trying to facilitate Russia’s evasion of sanctions.
In the weeks following Russia’s invasion of its former Soviet neighbor, Washington and its allies imposed a series of coordinated sanctions that pushed Russia ahead of Iran and North Korea as the most sanctioned countries in the world. world.
Sullivan reiterated that the United States is deeply concerned about China’s alignment with Russia and the possibility that the world’s second-largest economy will try to help Moscow impose harsh sanctions.
Sullivan said the United States had yet to see Beijing provide military assistance to Moscow for its fight in Ukraine.
“It’s something we’re constantly monitoring and of course we don’t have full visibility all the time,” Sullivan said. “Russia and China have an economic relationship, and there is an ongoing economic relationship between Russia and China. But have we seen a systematic effort to undermine, weaken or defend sanctions at this stage? we didn’t do.”
