প্রকাশ: 29/01/2022
The Biden
administration plans to spare everyday Russians from the brunt of U.S. export
controls if Russia invades Ukraine, and focus on targeting industrial sectors,
a White House official said.
"Key
people" will also face "massive sanctions," a top Commerce
official said in a separate speech on Friday.
The
comments narrow the scope of potential curbs on imports to Russia that had
previously been described as disrupting Russia's economy more broadly, hitting
industrial sectors and consumer technologies like smartphones.
"We
can't preview every action, but the intent there really is to have measures that
we think will degrade Russia's industrial capabilities and industrial
production capacity over time, not to go after individual, everyday Russian
consumers," White House national security official Peter Harrell said in a
virtual speech for the Massachusetts Export Center on Thursday that received
little media coverage.
Harrell,
who sits on the National Security Council, said the United States was prepared,
immediately after an invasion of Ukraine, to impose "crippling financial
costs on major Russian financial institutions as well as to impose a range of
quite sweeping export controls that will degrade Russian industrial capacity
over the mid- and long term."
Commerce
Department official Thea Kendler, who spoke to the export gathering on Friday,
said "We are contemplating massive sanctions targeting key people and
industries that were not on the table in 2014." That year Russia invaded
and annexed Crimea from Ukraine.
Three days
ago President Joe Biden said he would consider personal sanctions on Russian
President Vladimir Putin if he sent forces into Ukraine.
Harrell
said he hoped the hundreds of hours he and his colleagues had spent over the
last couple of months developing measures would never see the light of day, but
that they are prepared to impose the sweeping measures.
The
two-fold strategy includes financial sanctions against major Russian financial
institutions "to trigger capital flight, to trigger inflation, to make the
Russian central bank provide bailouts to its banks... so Putin feels costs on
day one," Harrell said.
Export
control measures would be announced as part of the package but would probably
not have the same immediate impacts, and instead "degrade Russia's ability
to have industrial production in a couple of key sectors".
Harrell
did not detail the sectors, but other White House officials have mentioned
aviation, maritime, robotics, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and
defense.
A person
familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday the focus was on strategic sectors
significant to Russian leadership. Asked about Russia's lucrative oil and gas
sector, the person said nothing was off the table.
In a
follow-up comment, White House spokesperson Emily Horne also said no options
had been eliminated.
"We
and our allies have a full range of high-impact sanctions and export controls
ready to go, both immediately after a Russian invasion and in waves to
follow," Horne said.
Harrell
said he expected the European Union to join in the effort. "Based on the
discussions I've been having and, frankly, people way above me ... we are quite
confident we will have a very high degree of alignment with Europe if Russia
does invade Ukraine."
Sources
have said the U.S. also may apply a rule to stop companies abroad from shipping
items like semiconductors made with U.S. technology to Russia, as it did to
curb the global chip supply to China's Huawei, which it views as a threat.
The person
familiar with the matter said on Thursday that U.S. officials are also having
conversations with Taiwan and South Korea, where major manufacturers of chips
are located, and countries in southeast Asia, where some packaging is done.
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