US senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren also added to Moscow’s sanctions list
FILE PHOTO: President Joe Biden and sister Valerie Owens © AP / Manuel Balce Ceneta
Moscow has announced sanctions against another 200 American citizens, including lawmakers, officials, corporate executives, establishment journalists, and the family members of political VIPs. The named individuals are banned from entering Russia for their involvement in “the promotion of the Russophobia campaign and support for the regime in Kiev.”
President Joe Biden’s brothers James and Francis and sister Valerie were added to Russia’s sanctions list on Friday, alongside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi.
US senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, Atlantic writer and “Russia expert” Anne Applebaum, and Politico editor-in-chief Matthew Kaminski were also among those barred from entering Russia.
The restrictions were adopted “in response to the increasingly broad sanctions of the administration of [US President] Joe Biden, not only against Russian officials… but also against all those who do not please Washington for one reason or another,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Biden, his wife, and their children Hunter and Ashley were already on the list, as was Nancy Pelosi and most of the better-known members of both houses of Congress. They join over 1,000 other US citizens forbidden from entering Russia indefinitely, a list that includes Hollywood actors Ben Stiller and Sean Penn, both of whom have used their celebrity to gin up support for the government in Kiev.
Washington has been piling sanctions on Moscow since 2014, when residents of Crimea voted to join Russia following a US-backed coup in Ukraine. The pace of the restrictions accelerated dramatically following the start of Russia’s military campaign in February 2022, with the US and other Western nations imposing economic sanctions and targeting Russian officials, lawmakers, businessmen and public figures.
