Russia bars entry to Biden, Blinken and other top US officials

LONDON (REUTERS) - Russia said on Tuesday (March 15) it had put US President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other top officials on a "stop list" that bars them from entering the country.

Their names, together with Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, CIA chief William Burns, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and others, were included on a list of 13 individuals banned from Russia in response to sanctions imposed by Washington on Russian officials. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was also named.

But the foreign ministry said it was maintaining official relations with Washington and if necessary would make sure that high-level contacts with the people on the list could take place.

The US on Tuesday imposed sanctions on Russians it accused of gross human rights violations and slapped fresh measures on Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, increasing pressure on Moscow and its close ally amid the war in Ukraine.

The US Treasury Department said it was imposing sanctions on four people and one entity it accused of playing a role in concealing events around the death of whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky or of being connected to human rights violations against human rights advocate Oyub Titiev.

The Treasury statement also said it was adding to its sanctions against Lukashenko and also targeting his wife.

They were the latest US sanctions imposed on Moscow since Russian forces invaded Ukraine nearly three weeks ago in the biggest assault on a European state since World War II. Moscow calls the assault a “special operation”.

“Today’s designations demonstrate the United States will continue to impose concrete and significant consequences for those who engage in corruption or are connected to gross violations of human rights,” the head of the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, Andrea Gacki, said in the statement.

“We condemn Russia’s attacks on humanitarian corridors in Ukraine and call on Russia to cease its unprovoked and brutal war against Ukraine.”

Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer arrested in 2008 after alleging that Russian officials were involved in large-scale tax fraud. Magnitsky died in a Moscow prison in 2009 after complaining of mistreatment.

In 2018, Oyub Titiev, head of the Memorial human rights centre in Chechnya, was detained and accused of possessing illegal drugs. Titiev said the police had planted the drugs on him during a shake-down. He was sentenced to four years in a penal colony.