US imposes sanctions on Russian-backed entities and individuals

<p>The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) stated last week they are imposing sanctions on three individuals and nine entities backed by Russia.&nbsp;</p> <p>The individuals named, Andriy Volodymyrovych Sushkov, Aleksandr Basov, and Vladimir Nikolaevich Zaritsky are alleged to support Russia’s attempt to “reintegrate” Crimea through private investments and privatisation projects and by doing so have endorsed serious human rights abuses.&nbsp;</p> <p>According to the US treasury Sushkov is as an officer in Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) and is accused being involved in the 2017 abduction and torture of a Crimean activists opposed to Russia’s occupation.&nbsp;</p> <p>Zaritsky is a former commander-in-chief of Russia's missile and artillery forces, who is now involved with a hotel venture in Simferopol. Basov, deputy minister of state security of Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), is said to have played an important role in exercising Russian control over Luhansk and conducting human rights abuses such &nbsp;as “threatening severe physical violence or rape against detainees who refused to cooperate”. As well as engaging in “mock executions, electrocution, and beatings”; with particular harm falling upon Jehovah’s Witnesses.&nbsp;</p> <p>The companies listed are Mriya Resort and Sp, Garant-SV, Infrastructure Projects Management, Sanatorium AY-Petri, Dyulber, Sanatorium Miskhor, KRIMTETS, and Southern Project.&nbsp;</p> <p>Mriya Resort and Spa were opened in Yalta following the annexation of Crimera.</p> <p>“As a result of today’s announcement, all of these individuals’ and entities’ property and interests in property that are subject to the U.S. jurisdiction are blocked, and U.S. individuals and entities are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them," the spokesperson for the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public affairs said on November 8.&nbsp;</p> <p>The decision precedes Sunday's local elections in East Ukraine being held by separatists.&nbsp;</p> <p>The US alongside many other western countries and Ukraine itself has denied the legitimacy of these elections.</p> <p>Sergei Ryabkov, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, responded stating the sanctions were "doomed to fail" and Moscow "won’t take them into account.”&nbsp;</p> <p>US Special Envoy, Kurt Volker, told journalists last week that these elections were "something we would call on Russia to halt and not go forward with. […They]do not have legitimacy in the local area nor are they consistent" with the September 2014 and February 2015 agreements signed in Minsk which hoped to resolve this conflict.&nbsp;</p> <p>Russian authorities insist however that the local elections “fill the vacuum in power” left by the August killing of Donetsk separatist leader Aleksandr Zakharchenko.<br> &nbsp;</p>