NEW YORK, March 26. /TASS/. The United States is set to impose sanctions against Russian companies who provide goods and services to the Russian military and intelligence, the Wall Street Journal reported.
According to the paper’s sources, the new sanctions may be announced early next week.
Among the companies that may be affected are equipment makers Sertal and Serniya Engineering. The US authorities also mull sanctions against microelectronics company NII Vektor, chipmaker JSC Mikron and supercomputer company T-Platforms.
The majority of those companies have already been blacklisted by the US Department of Commerce, which banned sales of foreign technologies and equipment to them. Now, the US Department of the Treasury prepares to blacklist those companies as well, effectively hampering their financial operations abroad.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24 said in an early morning televised address that he had launched a special military operation in Ukraine in response to a request for help from the leaders of the Donbass republics. He stressed that Moscow had no intention of occupying Ukrainian territories, the sole purpose of the operation, the leader stressed, is the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine. Western countries responded to the actions of the Russian authorities by slapping sanctions against physical and legal entities.
On March 3, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called sanctions "a kind of tax on independency." He expressed confidence that the situation around Ukraine will be settled and "a solution will be found.".