sanction timeline russ
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THOM GOOD RUSSIA SUMMARY
AN 10 26
Clandestine Kremlin meetings just sent tremors through CIA headquarters
THOM
Clandestine Kremlin meetings just sent tremors through CIA headquarters
Thom Hartmann October 13, 2026
Is Putin running America through Trump, is Trump just a “useful idiot” for the Russians, or is he the worst traitor America’s seen since the days of Benedict Arnold?
Yesterday morning, Trump took to his Nazi-infested social media site to announce to the world (and a bit earlier to people who give him $100,000 a month for market-moving information) that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an “energy ceasefire,” telling the world “Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!”
Ukrainian President Zelenskyy responded that the deal was “news for me,” and the Kremlin spokesman said three days earlier that Russia wasn’t interested in any sort of a limited truce like Trump announced. But Trump made an identical announcement back in September, which was also a lie, and the night of his announcement both countries continued to bomb each other’s refineries and power plants.
I’m guessing that Trump’s announcement was designed to shift the news cycle away from reporting on the most nakedly pro-Russia act by any American president in our nation’s history that happened on Friday.
After one of his regular roughly-every-two-weeks-since-he-was-inaugurated phone calls with Putin, Trump announced that he’d just suspended our worldwide sanctions against any country that buys oil or refined products from Russia so that country could put millions of tons of diesel on the world market.
Every past sanction suspension — there have been a few — have lasted just 30 days, but Trump extended this one for six months, giving Russia billions they’re desperate for to keep up their violent, illegal war against our democratic ally, Ukraine.
As if to give Ukraine, Europe, the free world, and every American who believes in democracy instead of naked autocracy, Trump stood in front of the White House and told reporters:
“I want to thank President Putin.”
This won’t do a thing for American diesel prices, although Trump is hoping that angry truckers and farmers believe it will. Even if every drop of that diesel ended up here — and most of it won’t — it would only cover about nine days of what we burn here.
But in reality this is simply Trump bailing out his mentor, owner, blackmailer, or whatever Putin is. Russia’s diesel output right now is down 30 percent and Putin’s hold on the country is getting shaky, as Terrence Goggin (The West Point History Professor) argues so cogently. With prices this high, this deal will give Putin billions.
Following Trump’s announcement, Putin showed America and the world exactly how seriously he took Trump’s Friday statement: Saturday morning, Russian guided bombs killed at least 20 people, three of them children, in a residential neighborhood in Zaporizhzhia.
Trump’s response that afternoon, instead of calling Putin out, was to blame our diesel prices on Zelenskyy for hitting Russian refineries and to declare:
“I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president.”
In fact, diesel is high because refinery capacity in the Gulf states has crashed due to being hit over and over again by both Iranian and Houthi missiles. While Ukraine’s strikes are hurting Russian diesel supplies, as Putin noted two weeks ago at his annual Valdai forum in Moscow, that has nothing to do with America; we refine virtually all of our diesel right here at home.
Prices are high here because of scarcity-driven pricing around tight international supplies, and our oil companies are using those international rates to price-gouge American drivers on both diesel and gasoline. The industry that Trump said he’d do anything for if they gave him a billion dollars is now making tens of billions in windfall profits every week.
But this is just the beginning of Trump’s most recent anti-American crime spree.
Remember the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act? It passed and was signed into law a mere three weeks ago and gives the Trump administration until Sunday of this week to begin punishing countries that still buy Putin’s oil.
He’s breaking that law right in front of us all.
And that’s on top of the Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act that flat-out banned all imports of any Russian energy products to the United States. If Trump wanted to issue waivers in a way that would comply with that law — which has been on the books for four years now, dating back to the Biden years — he’d first have to give Congress 45 days advance notice, certify in writing that Russia has withdrawn all of its troops from Ukraine and stopped all bombing, and then wait a full 90 days for Congress to give him a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.
As Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen noted, Trump and his lickspittles have totally bypassed every one of those requirements; Republican Senator Thom Tillis said yesterday that the deal is both illegal and will put more American lives at risk.
Which provoked former Illinois Republican Congressman Joe Walsh — a frequent guest on my radio/TV program — to say:
“Trump is a traitor to the free world.”
Walsh used to be a lonely voice in his old party, but now he’s rapidly getting company. Mike Pence called the deal a “betrayal” of Graham’s legacy. Senator Lisa Murkowski and Congressmen Don Bacon and Michael McCaul have all condemned it.
Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick has warned Mike Johnson that he’ll use a discharge petition to force a vote on a bill he’s calling the Ronald Reagan Peace Through Strength Act that would block any purchase of Russian oil (even though two other laws already make it illegal).
Which caused Democratic Senator Mark Kelly to ask out loud the question a lot of Americans are wondering:
“Whose side is Trump on?”
I can think of two possible answers, and both are insane.
The first is that Putin is actually steering Trump’s presidency. First, weaken America and gut our military, and then give Putin whatever he wants:
Put an alcoholic B-list weekend TV guy in charge of the Pentagon, a plumber in charge of DHS, a fracking guy in charge of Energy, a wrestling billionaire in charge of Education, a brain-worm-disabled former heroin- and sex-addicted lawyer in charge of our nation’s health, let a ketamine-addled trillionaire rip apart our federal government and destroy our soft power around the world by taking down USAID, shut down our pro-democracy propaganda operations (VOA, etc.), put a weight-loss “miracle pill” hawker in charge of Medicare and Medicaid, a C-list former reality TV star in charge of our airlines, his own criminal defense lawyer to run the coverup of Epstein at the Department of Justice, etc. The list is virtually endless.
The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee documented that Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was also passing internal campaign data to a Russian intelligence officer while running the campaign and the two of them worked on a plan to hand eastern Ukraine to Moscow. Then there was Helsinki where Trump humiliated our intelligence service while all but shining Putin’s shoes on live TV.
In his first months in office, Trump outed an Israeli spy to the Russian Ambassador in what he thought was going to be a “secret Oval Office meeting” (the Russians released the photo to the press), resulting in MOSAD having to “burn” (relocate, change identity of) that spy.
The undercover agent was apparently working in Syria that year against the Russians, who were embroiled in the midst of Assad’s Civil War and indiscriminately bombing Aleppo into rubble.
That, in turn, prompted the CIA to worry that a longtime American spy buried deep in the Kremlin was similarly vulnerable to Trump handing him over to Putin.
As CNN noted (when the story leaked two years later):
“The source was considered the highest level source for the US inside the Kremlin, high up in the national security infrastructure, according to the source familiar with the matter and a former senior intelligence official.
“According to CNN’s sources, the spy had access to Putin and could even provide images of documents on the Russian leader’s desk.”
The CIA concluded that the risk Trump had burned or was about to burn our spy inside the Kremlin was so great that — at massive loss to US intelligence abilities that may even have otherwise helped forestall the invasion of Ukraine — they pulled our spy out of Russia in the first year of Trump’s first presidency, 2017.
Similarly, when they met in Helsinki on July 16, 2018, Trump and Putin talked in private for several hours and Trump ordered his translators’ notes destroyed; there is also concern that much of their conversation was done out of the hearing of the US’s translator (Putin is fluent in English) who may have been relegated to a distant part of the rather large empty ballroom in which they met.
The Washington Post reported, after a leak six months later, that when Trump met privately for those two hours with Putin the CIA went into “panic mode.” A US intelligence official told the Post:
“There was this gasp’ at the CIA’s Langley, Virginia headquarters. You literally had people in panic mode watching it at Langley. On all floors. Just shock.”
Things were picking up in 2019, as Putin was planning his invasion of Ukraine while Trump was preparing for the 2020 election.
In July 2019, Trump had conversations with five foreign leaders during and just before a presidential visit that month to Mar-a-Lago; they included Putin and the Emir of Qatar.
In one of those conversations, according to a high-level US Intelligence source, Trump “made promises” to a “world leader” that were so alarming it provoked a national security scramble across multiple agencies.
As The Washington Post noted in an article titled “Trump’s communications with foreign leader are part of whistleblower complaint that spurred standoff between spy chief and Congress”:
“Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson determined that the complaint [against Trump] was credible and troubling enough to be considered a matter of ‘urgent concern,’ a legal threshold that requires notification of congressional oversight committees.”
On the last day of that month, July 31, Trump had another private conversation with Putin.
The White House spokespeople told Congress and the press that Trump said that he and Putin discussed “wildfires” and “trade between the nations.” No droids in this car…
But the following week, on August 2nd, The Daily Beast’s Betsy Swan reported that Trump had that week asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for a list of all its employees (including all our “spies”) who had worked there more than 90 days, and the request had intelligence officials experiencing “disquiet.”
Perhaps just by coincidence, months after Trump left office with cases of classified documents, The New York Times ran a story with the headline Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants:
“Top American counterintelligence officials warned every C.I.A. station and base around the world last week,” the Times’ story’s lede began, “about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said. (emphasis added)
Then there was the red carpet in Alaska last year, where Russia’s foreign minister showed up in a sweatshirt reading “CCCP,” as if to announce who’d won the Cold War after all. There’s the invitation to Putin, a man under indictment for war crimes and stealing children from Ukraine, to come to Mar-a-Lago for the G20 in December. Historian Heather Cox Richardson walked through that whole history Saturday night and closed by asking “how much more evidence is necessary” before we conclude that this president is working for Russia.
The second possibility is that nobody’s blackmailing or threatening Trump and he’s doing all of this of his own free will because he thinks it’ll make him richer.
The midterms were 25 days off when he made that call, diesel prices are killing Republican candidates, and Trump desperately needed a positive-sounding headline.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that Putin personally pitched Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner at the Kremlin on the sale of Lukoil’s $20 billion in overseas assets to a group led by a Trump megadonor and including business partners of both the Kushner and Witkoff families.
Selling out your country for money and advantage has a name in American history, Benedict Arnold, who offered to hand West Point to the British for 20,000 pounds because — like with Trump and the Nobel Prize — he felt underappreciated.
But Arnold, at least, had been a real patriot before he turned. He’d been shot in the left leg storming Quebec and then had that same leg shattered leading the charge that won the Battle of Saratoga. There’s a monument on that battlefield today, a single carved boot honoring the leg while pointedly leaving off the name of the man it was attached to.
Unlike Arnold, Donald Trump used a diagnosis of bone spurs to stay out of Vietnam that the podiatrist’s own daughters say was a favor to Fred Trump, who just happened to be the doctor’s landlord and patron.
My dad was a Republican activist in Michigan. The Republican Party he loved defined itself by standing up to the Kremlin.
I can’t imagine what he’d make of a Republican president publicly thanking the man in the Kremlin for suggesting that America bankroll his bloody, unprovoked war, or of the Senate’s number two Republican going on Sunday television to defend this insanity.
US intelligence agencies have determined — and told Trump — that Putin has provided Iran with the satellite data and intelligence that country’s IRGC used to attack our bases and troops in the Gulf, killing at least 21 and sending hundreds of others to the hospital. And now Trump’s handing him billions while cutting off our ally Ukraine from American-made Patriot missile interceptors?
I’ll leave it to the lawyers and the impeachment committees to determine if that fits the definition of treason in the Constitution, which says:
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”
But whatever it is, when a president knowingly breaks his own country’s laws to send billions to a hostile nation’s dictator who’s slaughtering the people of a nation we promised — in writing in 1994 — to protect, most Americans know in their gut what to call it.
Whether Putin is giving the orders or Trump is freelancing to hustle more money into his kids Uday and Qusay’s investments, Ukraine’s children end up just as dead and America’s word and reputation ends up just as worthless.
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A Timeline Of All Russia-Related Sanctions
A detailed look at all the sanctions levied against Russia, and its countersanctions, since 2014.
By Ivan Gutterman, Wojtek Grojec, and RFE/RL's Current Time
September 19, 2018
2014
March 3
The United States suspends trade and investment talks with Russia as well as military-to-military cooperation.
Reason: Ukraine
financial economic
March 17
The EU imposes visa restrictions and asset freezes on 21 Russian and Ukrainian/Crimean officials.
Reason: Ukraine
personal
March 17
The United States imposes visa restrictions and asset freezes on 11 Russian officials, including the speaker of the Federal Council Valentina Matviyenko, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, and presidential aide Vladislav Surkov.
Reason: Ukraine
personal
March 20
EU-Russia summit cancelled.
Reason: Ukraine
diplomatic
March 20
Moscow bars nine U.S. officials from entering Russia in response to American sanctions on itself and Crimea. Those sanctioned include former House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Senator John McCain.
Reason: Ukraine
personal
March 20
Sixteen Russian officials and Bank Rossia added to the U.S. Treasury sanctions list.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate personal
March 21
Twelve individuals added to the EU sanctions list: the speaker of the Federation Council, Valentina Matviyenko; presidential adviser Sergei Glazyev; Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin; State Duma speaker Sergei Naryshkin; the head of the Rossia Segodnya news agency Dmitry Kiselyov, Deputy-Commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Rear Admiral Aleksandr Nosatov; Deputy-Commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Rear Admiral Valery Kulikov; presidential aide Vladislav Surkov; Crimea Electoral Commission Chair Mikhail Malyshev; Sevastopol Electoral Commission Chair Valery Medvedev; the commander of Russian forces in Crimea, Lieutenant General Igor Turchenyuk; and State Duma deputy Yelena Mizulina.
Reason: Ukraine
personal
March 25
EU embassies in Russia ordered not to issue visas to residents of Crimea.
Reason: Ukraine
diplomatic
March 27
The United States announces a ban on the issuance of export licenses for defense products or services to Russia.
Reason: Ukraine
economic
March 28
Russia announces it has imposed a ban on entering Russia on more officials from the United States and other countries in response to Western visa bans and asset freezes, but does not disclose the names of the designated individuals or how many of them there are.
Reason: Ukraine
personal
March 28
Bilateral U.S.-Russia presidential commission is reported to have been temporarily suspended.
Reason: Ukraine
diplomatic
APRIL 2014
UKRAINE CRISIS BEGINS
On April 7, pro-Russian protestors storm and barricade the offices of Ukraine's security service, the SBU, in the eastern cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. This effectively marked the beginning of the Ukraine Crisis which has continued until this day. (Photo: AFP)
April 11
Seven Crimean officials and the Crimean Chernomorneftegaz oil company are added to the U.S. Treasury sanctions list.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate personal
April 28
The EU imposes sanctions on 15 individuals, including Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s General Staff.
Reason: Ukraine
personal
April 28
Sanctions imposed on seven individuals and 17 companies linked to President Vladimir Putin. Restrictions placed on Russia’s import of U.S. goods deemed to contribute to its military capabilities.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate economic personal
May 12
Thirteen individuals as well as Chernomorneftegaz and Feodosia, two Crimean energy companies that were expropriated by the de facto authorities on the peninsula, are added to the EU sanctions list. This brings the total number of Russian and Ukrainian nationals targeted with EU asset freezes and visa bans to 61.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate personal
June 20
The U.S. Treasury imposes sanctions on seven separatists, including military commander Igor Strelkov.
Reason: Ukraine
personal
July 12
The EU imposes sanctions on 11 more individuals.
Reason: Ukraine
personal
July 16
The U.S. Treasury imposes sanctions on two major banks (Gazprombank and VEB) and energy companies (Novatek and Rosneft), eight arms companies including the Kalashnikov concern, and several officials and separatists.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate economic personal
JULY 17, 2014
MH17 SHOT DOWN
Debris from Malaysia Airlines flight 17 in eastern Ukraine. (AFP)
Malaysia Airlines flight 17 is shot down over the conflict zone in Ukraine's Donetsk region on July 17, 2014. All 298 people on board are killed. (Photo: AFP)
July 18
European Investment Bank suspends funding for projects in Russia.
Reason: Ukraine
financial
July 26
EU adds 15 individuals and 18 entities to sanctions list, bringing the total to 87 individuals and 20 organizations. Individuals added in this round include Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and the director of Russia’s FSB security service, Aleksandr Bortnikov.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate personal
July 29
The United States imposes sanctions aimed at sectors of the Russian economy, including armaments, energy, and finance. Those specifically targeted include VTB, Bank of Moscow, and the Russian Agricultural Bank.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate financial
July 29
EU restricts access to capital markets for Russian state-owned banks, imposes an embargo on trade in arms, and restricts exports of dual-use goods and sensitive technologies, especially in the oil sector.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate financial
July 29
Eight individuals and three entities added to the EU sanctions list. The list now includes the Russian National Commercial Bank, defense manufacturer Almaz-Antey, and Dobrolet, a subsidiary of Aeroflot. A partial ban is also imposed on investment in Crimea.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate financial economic personal
July 31
EU adds Arkady Rotenberg, Yury Kovalchuk, and Nikolai Shamalov, three Putin “cronies,” as well as Putin’s first deputy chief of staff, Aleksei Gromov, and Bank Rossia to the sanctions blacklist.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate financial
August 6
The United States places restrictions on the export of various oil and gas technologies to Russia.
Reason: Ukraine
economic
August 6
Russia bans the import of most foodstuffs from the United States, the EU, and other countries that imposed sanctions on it.
Reason: Ukraine
economic
September 12
Financing of Rosneft, Transneft, and Gazpromneft banned. Loans to five Russian state banks restricted.Financing of Uralvagonzavod, Oboronprom, and United AIrcraft Corporation (defense manufacturers) banned. Nine Russian defense concerns and 24 individuals added to sanctions list.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate financial economic personal
September 12
The U.S. Treasury bans U.S. companies from supplying goods and technologies to Gazprom, Lukoil, Transneft, Gazprom Neft, Surgutneftegaz, Novatek, and Rosneft. Assets of five Russian defense companies frozen, including Almaz-Antey. Capital market restrictions imposed on six Russian banks: Sberbank, Bank of Moscow, Gazprombank, Russian Agricultural Bank, VTB, and Vneshekonombank.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate economic
December 19
Export of goods and services to Crimea banned; imports from Crimea banned.
Reason: Ukraine
financial
December 20
Export of goods and services to Crimea banned, imports from Crimea banned.
Reason: Ukraine
financial
2015
FEBRUARY 11, 2015
MINSK II TALKS BEGIN
The leaders of the Russia-backed so-called 'Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics,' Igor Plotnitsky (left) and Alexander Zakharchenko leaving Ukraine peace talks at the Palace of Independence in Minsk, Belarus. Oksana Manchuk/BelTA/TASS, February 12, 2015
The leaders of the Russia-backed so-called 'Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics,' Igor Plotnitsky (left) and Alexander Zakharchenko leaving Ukraine peace talks at the Palace of Independence in Minsk, Belarus. (Oksana Manchuk/BelTA/TASS, February 12, 2015)
February 16
Nineteen individuals and nine entities added to the EU sanctions list, including the Sparta, Somali, Zarya, Oplot, Kalmius, and Smert’ separatist battalions, as well as Russian singer and lawmaker Iosif Kobzon.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate personal
March 4
All U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia in 2014 extended by one year.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
March 11
The United States imposes sanctions on 14 individuals, the Russian National Commercial Bank, and the Eurasian Union of Youth.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate financial personal
March 14
EU sanctions against 151 individuals and 37 entities extended until September 15, 2015.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
June 22
EU economic sanctions against Russia extended to January 31, 2016.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
June 24
Law allowing punishments for foreign banks doing business with sanctioned Russian individuals and entities comes into force.
Reason: Ukraine
economic
June 24
Russia extends food import ban to August 6, 2016 in response to EU extension.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
July 30
The U.S. Treasury sanctions 11 individuals and 15 entities.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate personal
August 7
The United States imposes sanctions on the Yuzhno-Kirinskoye oil field.
Reason: Ukraine
economic
September 14
EU visa bans and asset freezes against 149 individuals and 37 entities are extended until March 15, 2016. People who have died are excluded from the list.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
December 21
EU economic sanctions against Russia extended to July 31, 2016.
Reason: Ukraine
economic extension
December 22
The U.S. Treasury targets 34 individuals and entities for sanctions.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate personal
2016
March 2
The United States extends economic sanctions by one year.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
March 10
EU sanctions against 146 individuals and 37 entities extended to September 15, 2016.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate extension
June 17
EU sanctions on Crimea extended to June 23, 2017.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
June 1
EU economic sanctions extended to January 31, 2017.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
August 6
Russia extends food import ban to December 31, 2017.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
September 1
The United States designates 17 individuals and a number of entities for sanctions, mostly local subsidiaries of Gazprom.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate personal
September 6
The United States adds 11 entities to its sanctions list. The list now includes 81 entities in total.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate
September 15
EU sanctions against 146 individuals and 37 entities extended to March 2017.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate extension personal
SEPTEMBER 28, 2016
MISSILE FROM RUSSIA BLAMED FOR MH17 TRAGEDY
An international criminal investigation into the MH17 tragedy in eastern Ukraine in 2014 determines that Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was shot down by a Buk antiaircraft missile fired from separatist-controlled territory in Ukraine. (Photo: AFP)
November 9
The EU imposes visa bans and asset freezes on 6 Duma lawmakers from Crimea.
Reason: Ukraine
personal
November 15
The United States imposes sanctions on six Duma lawmakers from Crimea.
Reason: Ukraine
personal
December 19
EU extends economic sanctions to July 31, 2017.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
December 20
The United States imposes visa bans and asset freezes on seven individuals and a number of companies involved in construction and logistics in Crimea.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate personal
December 23
The United States designates 23 Russian companies for sanctions.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate
2017
January 13
U.S. economic sanctions extended by one year.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
15 March
EU sanctions against 150 individuals and 37 entities extended by six months.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
June 19
EU sanctions on Crimea extended to June 23, 2018.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
June 20
The United States imposes sanctions on 38 individuals and entities, including the military company PMC Wagner.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate personal
June 29
Economic sanctions extended to January 31, 2018.
Reason: Ukraine
economic extension
July 5
Russia extends food import ban to end of 2018.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
August 4
EU designates three Russian citizens and three companies for sanctions in connection with the delivery of Siemens gas turbines to Crimea.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate personal
AUGUST 31, 2017
CLOSING OF RUSSIAN CONSULATE IN CALIFORNIA
The Russian Consulate General building in San Francisco, California. (AFP)
The United States orders the closure of Russia’s consulate in San Francisco. Two other diplomatic buildings in Washington and New York used as trade annexes will also be shuttered. (Photo: AFP)
September 14
Sanctions against 149 individuals and 38 entities extended to March 15, 2018.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
November 21
The EU imposes sanctions on Dmitry Ovsyannikov, the Russia-installed governor of Sevastopol.
Reason: Ukraine
personal
December 22
EU extends economic sanctions on Russia to July 31, 2018.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
2018
January 26
The United States imposes sanctions on 21 individuals and nine companies.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate personal
January 30
The United States publishes the “Kremlin dossier,” a list of 210 people close to Vladimir Putin who might be designated for sanctions. The list includes all members of the Russian government, members of the presidential administration, heads of state firms, “siloviki” (former and current state-security officers), and oligarchs.
Reason: Elections
March 2
U.S. economic sanctions extended by one year.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
MARCH 4, 2018
SKRIPAL POISONING
Sergei and Yulia Skripal are found unconscious on March 4 on a bench in the southern English town of Salisbury. They were seriously ill but later made a full recovery after spending several weeks in a hospital. British authorities determined that the Skripals had been poisoned with Novichok, a military-grade chemical weapon that was developed in the Soviet Union. (Photo: AFP)
March 12
EU sanctions against 150 individuals and 38 organizations extended to 15 September 2018.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate extension personal
March 14
The United Kingdom orders 23 Russian diplomats, who Theresa May said were identified as “undeclared intelligence officers,” to leave the country after accusing Moscow of using a nerve agent in the attempted murder of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal on British soil.
Reason: Skripal
diplomatic
March 15
The United States makes first use of CATSAA law to impose sanctions on 19 Russians, including 13 indicted in Robert Mueller’s investigation into Moscow’s alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election and Internet Research LLC, commonly known as the Russian “troll factory.”
Reason: Elections
corporate personal
March 17
Russia declares 23 British diplomats personae non gratae.
Reason: Skripal
extension diplomatic
March 26
More than 20 Western states order dozens of Russian diplomats expelled, including 60 from the United States, which also ordered Russia to close its consulate in Seattle.
Reason: Skripal
diplomatic
March 29
Russia orders 60 U.S. diplomats to leave the country.
Reason: Skripal
extension diplomatic
March 30
Russia orders diplomats from 16 EU countries out.
Reason: Skripal
diplomatic
April 6
The United States designates 38 Russian businessmen for visa bans and asset freezes to punish Russian “malign activity” worldwide.
Reason: Syria
personal
May 14
The EU imposes visa bans and asset freezes on 5 individuals linked to Russian presidential elections in Crimea.
Reason: Ukraine
personal
June 18
EU sanctions on Crimea extended to June 23, 2019.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
July 9
EU economic sanctions on Russia extended to January 31, 2019.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
July 5
Russia extends food import ban to end of 2019.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
July 31
The EU sanctions six companies involved in the construction of the Kerch Strait Bridge.
Reason: Ukraine
corporate
August 27
The United States imposes a ban on arms sales, arms-sales financing, U.S. government credit or other financial assistance, exports of national-security-sensitive goods, and most foreign assistance to Russia under the terms of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Elimination Act.
Reason: Skripal
financial
September 13
EU individual and corporate sanctions extended until March 15, 2019.
Reason: Ukraine
extension
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