Background Press Call by a Senior Administration Official on the U.S. and G7 Actions to Impose Additional Severe Costs for Putin’s War Against Ukraine
MAY 08, 2022
Via Teleconference
7:21 A.M. EDT
MODERATOR: Thank you. And thanks everyone for joining us. I know it’s pretty early on a Sunday morning.
So we’re going to turn it over to [senior administration official] who is going to be our speaker for your awareness.
But this call is on background, and it’s attributable to a “senior administration official.” The contents of this call are going to be embargoed until 12:00 p.m. today.
So with that, I’m going to turn it over to [senior administration official] to give some remarks, and then we’ll take some questions.
Over to you, [senior administration official].
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thanks, [moderator]. Good morning. Thanks, everybody, as well for joining early. And Happy Mother’s Day.
Our sanctions design from the start has been predicated on applying economic pressure where we have an asymmetric advantage, where we and our allies produce something Russia needs and can’t easily get from anywhere else. And in doing so, we strengthen Ukraine’s position on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. That was the premise for cutting off Russia from the leading financial centers of the world — New York, London, Tokyo, Switzerland, Singapore. The oxygen of any market-based economy is financial capital, and that’s been deprived for — that’s been taken away from Russia.
That’s why we’ve denied critical technology inputs and investment capital Putin needs to replenish his weaponry and diversify growth away from just oil and gas. That’s why we’ve denied access to critical markets that Putin needs to sell his goods. No export is more important to Putin than oil; it’s the main artery of his economy. And the EU is now on the cusp of joining the U.S., Canada, and the UK in cutting off this trade.
And the same logic applies to the services ban we are announcing today. Russia has long relied on services provided by G7 countries to operate a modern economy, especially services provided by the United States and the United Kingdom, which are the dominant service providers in the world.
So today we’re banning the provision of accounting services, management consulting, marketing — all services that are used to operate multinational businesses, but also to potentially create workarounds from sanctions or to hide ill-gotten wealth. That’s why we’re shutting down these services.
We’re also announcing today that U.S. advertising dollars, broadcast technology, video cameras, microphones, equipment for sound will no longer be available to the three most watched state-owned or -controlled Russian TV stations that enable Putin’s propaganda machine.
Some of you have reported on the lies upon lies that are spread on these mouthpieces of the Kremlin, such as claiming the people of Bucha were not killed until days after Russians left the region, or that the placement of dead Ukrainian bodies was staged, or that the brave Ukrainians defending their country are actually the aggressors.
