President Joe Biden has restricted American business in Ukraine’s Russia-backed breakaway regions, but his administration has a separate raft of long-threatened sanctions for Russia that it soon could deploy.
“If Putin does escalate militarily to the point where Biden deems there to be an invasion, a core element of the sanctions plan will reportedly be to prohibit U.S. financial institutions from processing transactions for major Russian banks including VTB Bank (JSCVL) and Sberbank (SBRCY), which would make it difficult for these entities to transact in U.S. dollars,” analysts at Beacon Policy Advisors said in a note on Tuesday.
Related: Russia moves to secure hold on Ukraine’s rebel regions
Below are other sanctions that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his country soon could face.
- “The U.S. will also likely ban all trade in new issues of Russian sovereign debt, apply export controls to key sectors, and use its Specially Designated Nationals list against an array of specific Russian individuals and companies, which would effectively kick them out of the U.S. banking system, ban their trade with Americans, and freeze their U.S. assets,” Beacon’s analysts said.
-
“Sanctions are also expected to address the Nord Stream 2 [natural gas
NG00,
+2.44%
] pipeline, although German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said early this morning that the pipeline is now halted,” Beacon wrote. The offshore pipeline runs under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. - “While it was under consideration for some time, it is not expected that the initial sanctions package will include kicking Russia out of SWIFT [the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication], which would effectively limit Russian banks’ ability to process financial transactions in most currencies, not just U.S. dollars,” the analysts added.
In addition, there are some expectations that Congress might cut short its break in order to take actions against Russia.
Analysts at Height Capital Markets said in a Tuesday note that they’re “watching to see if Congress scrambles to return to Washington, D.C., to attempt yet again to pass a sanctions bill.”
Related: In bipartisan vote, Senate approves resolution backing Ukraine, warning Russia
A senior Biden administration official told reporters on Monday that the U.S. will take additional steps as soon as Tuesday.
Biden is slated to speak at 1 p.m. Eastern on the Ukraine crisis.
SPX,
fell Tuesday as investors reacted to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to order troops to breakaway regions of Ukraine, escalating tensions and raising fears of a full-scale invasion.
This post was originally published on Market Watch
