Russia announced sanctions Tuesday on President Joe Biden and several other prominent Americans — including Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, who is known for his international dealmaking and influence-peddling in Ukraine, China, and elsewhere.
The sanctions were described by the Russian government as a response to similar sanctions by the Biden administration, which has applied sanctions since Russia invaded Ukraine — after removing some Donald Trump-era sanctions last year.
In a statement, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said:
In response to a series of unprecedented sanctions that prohibit, among other things, entry to the United States for top officials of the Russian Federation, starting March 15, the Russian stop list includes, on the basis of reciprocity, President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, as well as several agency heads and other prominent US figures.
This step, taken as a response measure, is the inevitable result of the extreme Russophobic policy of the current US Administration, which, in a desperate attempt to maintain American hegemony, has abandoned any sense of decorum and placed its bets on the head-on containment of Russia.
However, we do not oppose maintaining official ties when it is in our national interests, and, if necessary, we will address the issues arising from the status of the black-listed individuals in order to organise high-level contacts.
The list of US citizens included in the stop list is as follows:
1. Joseph Robinette Biden;
2. Antony John Blinken;
3. Lloyd James Austin III;
4. Mark Alexander Milley;
5. Jacob Jeremiah Sullivan, National Security Advisor;
6. William Joseph Burns, Director of the CIA;
7. Jennifer Rene Psaki, White House Press Secretary;
8. Daleep Singh, Deputy National Security Advisor;
9. Samantha Jane Power, Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development;
10. Robert Hunter Biden, son of the US President;
11. Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, former US presidential candidate;
12. Adewale Adeyemo, US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury;
13. Reta Jo Lewis, President and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States.
More announcements will be made soon concerning the expansion of the sanctions list to include other top US officials, military leaders, lawmakers, business executives, experts and media personalities who promote Russophobia or contribute to inciting hatred of Russia or imposing restrictive measures.
These actions will be taken in harmony with the major decisions of the Government of the Russian Federation in finance, banking and other areas to protect the Russian economy and ensure its stable development.
The U.S. imposed sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov late last month.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki attempted to mock the sanctions during a press briefing Tuesday, noting that Russia missed the “Junior” in Hunter Biden’s name, and adding that she herself was not planning on traveling to Russia.
Hunter Biden was served on the board of the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, earning some $83,000 per month. He also formed a $1.5 billion joint venture with a Chinese firm bankrolled by the government-controlled bank, and he helped global associates connect to then-Vice President Biden during the Obama administration. In 2020, tech firms and the establishment media suppressed the story — documented on Hunter Biden’s wayward laptop — of how he arranged a lucrative joint venture with a large Chinese firm, in which his father was to have held a 10% equity stake. Earlier this year, as Breitbart News has reported, the IRS issued a subpoena to Hunter Biden’s bank in a probe of the Biden family’s business interests in China.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.