The United States has included a number of Sberbank Group companies, including subsidiary banks in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, Cetelem Bank, bankrupt Sberbank Europe AG and payment service YooMoney, in its sanctions list, a statement from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) indicated.
Sberbank Insurance, Sberbank Life Insurance, Sberbank Insurance Broker, Sberbank Leasing, Sberbank Factoring, NPF Sberbank, Sberbank-AST, Sberbank Capital, Sberbank CIB and Strategy Partners have also been included in the OFAC Specially Designated Nationals List (SDN List), as has United Credit Bureau, in which Sberbank holds a 50% according to the latest disclosure.
The SDN List now also includes Digital Technologies, a company through which Russia’s top bank invested in a range of information technology companies.
The United States on Wednesday imposed blocking sanctions against Sberbank that call for freezing assets in the U.S. and bar U.S. citizens from doing any business with the bank. The UK imposed similar sanctions against Sberbank.
The United States imposed correspondent and payable-through account sanctions against Sberbank in February 2022.
US President Joe Biden, in a conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky, announced Washington’s plans to provide Ukraine with $500 million in direct financial assistance, according to a White House press release.
“President Biden informed President Zelensky that the United States intends to provide the Ukrainian government with $500 million in direct budget support,” the document says.
The two leaders also discussed how the US is working with allies and partners to identify additional opportunities to provide defense assistance to the Ukrainian military. It was also about how the United States is trying to “satisfy the basic needs of Ukraine in the field of security.”
In addition, Zelensky provided Biden with information on the state of negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, the press release also says.
The United States may further expand sanctions against Russia, U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser for International Economics Daleep Singh said in an interview with CBS News.
“We can broaden our sanctions. So – take the measures, take the sanctions we’ve already applied, apply them in more targets. Apply them to more sectors. More banks, more sectors that we haven’t touched,” Singh said.
According to him, the sanctions may affect “the commanding heights of the Russian economy.” “It’s mostly about oil and gas, but there are other sectors too,” he said.
Speaking about the possibility of lifting sanctions against Russia, Singh stressed that “we’re nowhere near that point.”
He believes that “the first thing he has to do is to stop – a reckless and barbaric attack on the civilians of Ukraine. That’s not happening.”
On February 18, Ukraine imposed a ban on the import of poultry meat and by-products from the United States after an outbreak of avian flu on a turkey farm in Indiana on February 10.
As reported on the website of the Public Health Center (PHC), the ban applies to the import of hatching eggs, birds, products from it (with the exception of products that have been processed by a method that guarantees the destruction of the causative agent of the specified disease), feed, as well as by-products of the poultry industry.
According to the State Customs Service, in 2021 Ukraine imported $122,000 worth of poultry meat and offal from the United States, becoming Ukraine’s 15th trading partner in terms of imports, while Poland ($40.6 million) and Hungary became the largest ($10.3 million).
Avian influenza is an acute infectious viral disease of birds, characterized by damage to the digestive and respiratory organs and high mortality. Influenza affects birds of any age, and the mortality rate for the disease reaches 80-100%.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has said that he does not feel pressure from the United States on the economic interaction between Ukraine and China.
“I’m not saying that there are no signals from the United States regarding the relations of any countries in Europe with China. I’m not saying that there is no such thing, but we are a fairly independent country that chooses business partners for itself. If business is transparent and open and it creates additional jobs for Ukraine, this is a priority,” Zelensky said at the Yalta European Strategy Forum in the YES Brainstorming 2021 format in Kyiv on Friday.
Ukraine expects to start free trade negotiations with the United States during the visit of President Volodymyr Zelensky to the United States, First Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Economy Oleksiy Liubchenko has said.
“During the president’s visit to the United States, we want to reach an agreement to start free trade negotiations with the United States,” Liubchenko said in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
In addition, Ukraine has carried out preliminary work to expand the free trade area (FTA) with Canada.
“I hope this year we will complete negotiations on expanding the FTA to include services and mutual protection of investments,” the first deputy prime minister said.
He added that Canada is interested in this, since it has great investment potential, concentrated in private pension funds.
