President Joe Biden and other leaders of the G-7 nations will roll out a new initiative Thursday to ensure “enforcement” of the West’s sanctions against Russia and prevent China and other countries from helping the Kremlin work around the financial penalties.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan briefly previewed the announcement while meeting with reporters flying with Biden to Brussels on Wednesday.
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“The G-7 leaders tomorrow will agree on an initiative to coordinate on sanctions enforcement so that Russian efforts to evade the sanctions or other countries’ efforts to help Russia evade the sanctions can be dealt with effectively and in a coordinated fashion,” Sullivan said.
He noted that the initiative is “not specifically about China, but it will apply to every significant economy and the decisions that any of those economies take to try in an intentional and active way to undermine or weaken the sanctions that we put in place.”
Biden spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday and outlined specific actions the United States would take if China sought to provide Russia military support in its war in Ukraine.
“We’ve sent a clear message to China about the implications and consequences of any such provision of military equipment,” Sullivan said Wednesday. “The same thing goes for systematic efforts to undermine, weaken, or circumvent the sanctions regime that we have put in place, and we’ve communicated on that as well to China, and we expect similar communication by the European Union and individual European countries.”
Biden will also announce another tranche of sanctions during his trip to Belgium, and this latest round of financial penalties is expected to target “hundreds” of Russian lawmakers.
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You can listen to Sullivan’s entire Wednesday briefing below.
