The US on Thursday sanctioned four Ukrainian officials, including two members of parliament the US claims are working with Russia to spread disinformation.
The Treasury Department said the sanctions targeted parliament members Taras Kozak and Oleh Voloshyn and two former government officials. All four are accused of working with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).
The US accused the officials of working with the Russians to “destabilize” Ukraine, but a closer look at the allegations makes it clear the sanctions were more about internal politics.
According to the Treasury Department, Kozak supported Russia’s “plan to denigrate senior members of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s inner circle, falsely accusing them of mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The sanctions came a day after Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other officials in Kyiv.
President Biden has been threatening to hit Russia with severe economic sanctions if it invades Ukraine. The Treasury Department said Thursday’s sanctions were “separate and distinct” from the sanctions the US and its allies would impose “in order to inflict significant costs on the Russian economy and financial system if it were to further invade Ukraine.”
There must be a whole forever-bureaucracy devoted to managing sanctions and dreaming up more.
In 2018 there were 1,487 separate sanctions. According to Center for a New American Security:
https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/sanctions-by-the-numbers-2021-year-in-review
Well, OK.
They’ve realized the technocratic dream, an endless vista of more-pointless-than-usual government jobs devoted to screwing people over.
And every corporation has to hire staff to vet every transaction so as not to trip over them or the other corporations that are cheating on them. It’s all become a big-data management virtuosic demo for Washington inspiring darkness-at-noon dreams for international commerce.
Ever since the Clinton administration.
I wonder if any of these “officials” in the USA have children, and do nothing but punish them to get them to obey any orders they are given. This method usually is not successful in the long term, though looking at the US society and its violence perhaps that is the idea. Among nations this is not conducive to peace, and the USA is frantic when it sees how many leaders have excellent relations of respect, courtesy and cooperation with Russia, China, Iran and also with some of USA’s “friends” who also appreciate freedom to choose eg India, Saudi Arabia, even Israel. Respect goes a long way to get cooperation, and the USA seems to have none for those it decides to designate “enemies”.
Let’s just go ahead and sanction everybody in the world. That would save an immense amount of time checking to see if some one is on the list or not.
Including ourselves. That covers it.
Last September there were 132 cargo ships waiting off Long Island and Los Angeles ports thanks to COVID restrictions.
The US is close to essentially blockading itself from its own ports.
By New Years that number was only down to 100.
Normally, no ships ships are left hanging.
TL:DR: Ukrainian lawmakers need to follow orders!
(And not a peep from the United States about Zelenskii’s attacks on opposition press and politicians….)