Upcoming U.S. sanctions package on Russia to target Chinese companies

A top State Department official on Thursday said a sanctions package coinciding with the one-year mark of Russia’s war in Ukraine will include Chinese companies that the Biden administration says are violating export bans against Moscow. 

Victoria Nuland, the under secretary of State for political affairs, said the administration has identified Chinese-based or Chinese entities in Europe that are actively evading existing sanctions against Russia aimed at strangling the nation’s ability to finance and supply its war in Ukraine.

“There will be in the sanctions package, that we will be announcing tomorrow on the one-year anniversary of the war. We will also be putting other constraints on entities, Chinese-based or Chinese subs of entities in Europe, which we think are active in evading sanctions,” Nuland said during a Washington Post Live event on Thursday. 

The sanctions move comes after Biden administration officials have stated that they believe the Chinese government is thinking about providing lethal aid to Russia and warned Beijing against taking such action, without spelling out concrete consequences. 

“We know that the Russians have consistently been asking the Chinese for weapons. We also know that some Chinese companies, whether the government is witting or not, have been sneaking up to the edge and trying to provide some support,” Nuland said.

In January, the U.S. sanctioned the Chinese company Spacety for providing geolocation technology to a Russian company that the U.S. said is supporting the Wagner Group, the private Russian mercenary company fighting alongside the Russian military in Ukraine. 

The sanctions package expected to be announced on Friday is targeting entities that the U.S. and allies part of the Group of Seven nations have found are evading existing sanctions against Russia, Nuland said.  

Independent analysis has found that Russia is using third-countries to access foreign commodities that it was banned from importing related to sanctions imposed since February 24.

Many of these imports — such as laptops, smartphones, dishwashers, washing machines and cars — include advanced semiconductor chips that the U.S. warns could be diverted towards Russian military manufacturing. 

“They are importing a thousand percent more laptops, iPhones, dishwashers from third countries, not because they need to, you know, work at home on their laptops but so they can cannibalize this machinery to get the advanced chips that we have denied them so that they can make more rockets, et cetera,” Nuland said. 

“This is not about helping the Russian people or the Russian economy,” she added. ”It’s about the war machine. So we will clamp down on that evasion starting tomorrow.”