Biden: Putin in a difficult situation… sanctions on Russian energy sector will hurt US itself

Outgoing US President Joe Biden said Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin was in a difficult situation after Washington and London imposed new, coordinated sanctions on Russia’s energy sector over the war in Ukraine.

“Putin is in a tough spot right now, and I think it’s really important that he doesn’t have any breathing room to continue to do the really terrible things that he continues to do,” Biden told reporters at the White House.

US President Joe Biden said that the sanctions imposed on the Russian energy sector are aimed at affecting the growth of the Russian economy, and may harm the US energy sector.

“The sanctions imposed today will have a profound impact on the growth of the Russian economy,” he told reporters during a speech at the White House.

At the same time, the US president admitted that sanctions on the Russian fuel and energy complex will lead to an increase in the cost of gasoline in the United States itself, but he considers the price increase to be insignificant.

The United States and Britain announced wide-ranging sanctions on the Russian energy sector on Friday, targeting Gazprom Neft in particular, in an effort to undermine the Kremlin’s largest source of funding.

Days before Donald Trump was inaugurated as US president on January 20, the US Treasury announced a series of sanctions targeting more than 180 ships and two major oil companies.

Britain, in turn, announced similar sanctions on the Russian oil sector.

The US Treasury Department said in a statement that the sanctions fulfill the G7 commitment to reduce Russian energy revenues.

A US official told reporters that they are the largest sanctions imposed to date on the Russian energy sector.

In total, the United States has imposed sanctions on 183 oil tankers in the so-called “ghost fleet,” although a number of these ships fly the flags of Barbados and Panama.

The sanctions also included companies operating in Russia in the oil trade and in oil fields, including Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegaz, along with more than twenty of their subsidiaries.

The British government said the companies’ profits fill Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war chest and facilitate the war in Ukraine.

“Confronting Russian oil companies would drain Russia’s war chest – and every ruble we take from Putin helps save Ukrainian lives,” British Foreign Secretary David Lammy was quoted as saying in a statement.

For its part, the Russian company Gaprom Neft, a subsidiary of the giant Gazprom Group, denounced the American and British sanctions targeting it on Friday, considering them unjustified and illegitimate.

The company said, as quoted by Russian news agencies, that “Gazprom Neft believes that the decision to include its assets on the US sanctions list is unjustified and illegitimate”.

“The United States is taking comprehensive action against Russia’s primary source of revenue to fund its brutal and illegal war against Ukraine,” US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.

“With today’s actions, we are increasing the risk of sanctions exposure related to Russian oil trade, including shipping and financial facilities to support Russian oil exports,” she added.

In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday praised the United States for imposing sweeping sanctions on Russia’s energy sector, saying they were a serious blow to Moscow’s war machine.

“These actions deal a major blow to the financial foundation of the Russian war machine by disrupting its entire supply chain,” he wrote on X.

US officials said the measures were aimed at giving the United States additional leverage to help broker a just peace between Ukraine and Russia.

“Today, the United States imposed the most significant sanctions yet on Russia’s energy sector, the largest source of revenue for Putin’s war effort,” Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics Dalip Singh said in a statement.

“These sanctions will hit hard every key node in Russia’s oil production and distribution chain,” he added.

The sanctions also include a ban on services provided by American companies specializing in the oil sector to the companies concerned, especially in the field of assistance in extracting and producing oil products.

The US Treasury Department said the ban would go into effect on January 27.

More broadly, the US is giving itself the power to impose sanctions on anyone who wants to work or has worked in the Russian energy sector, the statement said.

“It’s entirely up to them to decide whether, when, and under what circumstances they can lift the sanctions we have imposed,” a senior US official told reporters when asked about the fate of these sanctions under the next administration.

He added that these measures would provide – by weakening Moscow – significant leverage for both the Trump administration and Ukraine to negotiate a just and lasting peace.