The United Kingdom has announced fresh sanctions on Russia on May 8, 2022. targeting £1.7bn worth of trade with Russia to ” further weaken Putin’s war machine.”
These include increasingly high tariffs on £1.4bn worth of imports from Russia and restrictions on exports into the country, worth £250m a year.
The UK’s Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyn announced the new measures, which mean that the total value of products subject to full or partial import or export sanctions since the invasion of Ukraine is more than £4bn.
The United Kingdom has declared to increase tariffs on goods like palladium and platinum; Russia is the leading producer of both the articles by 35 percentage points.
Although the export bans include more than £250m worth of goods in sectors of the Russian economy, the government says are highly dependent on UK goods, targeting chemicals, plastics, rubber, and machinery.
Chancellor Sunak said, “Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine is causing suffering on an enormous scale. His barbaric war must be stopped.”
He said Britain’s sanctions would cause “significant damage to Putin’s war effort”.
Ms Trevelyan said the latest measures were “part of a wider coordinated effort by the many countries around the world who are horrified by Russia’s conduct and determined to bring to bear our economic might to persuade Putin to change course”.
The latest sanctions are the third wave of trade sanctions imposed by the UK and mean that, excluding gold and energy, the proportion of goods imports from Russia hit by restrictions will rise to more than 96%. The UK said it would suspend Russian oil imports by the end of the year.
Moreover, the UK has informed that it would now impose more than 60 percent of goods exports to Russia under whole and partial restrictions.
The British government imposed the UK’s previous trade sanctions on the bans of silver, wood products and high-end goods from Russia, for instance, caviar and higher tariffs on diamond and rubber and bans on exports from the UK to luxury goods from Russia.
