The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), in consultation with the Department of State, today designated seven Russian oligarchs and 12 companies they own or control, 17 senior Russian government officials, and a state-owned Russian weapons trading company and its subsidiary, a Russian bank.

"The Russian government operates for the disproportionate benefit of oligarchs and government elites," said Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin.

"The Russian government engages in a range of malign activity around the globe, including continuing to occupy Crimea and instigate violence in eastern Ukraine, supplying the Assad regime with material and weaponry as they bomb their own civilians, attempting to subvert Western democracies, and malicious cyber activities. Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government's destabilizing activities," the U.S. Treasury said in a press release on Friday, April 6, 2018.

Specifically, U.S. sanctions were imposed on the Tula region's Governor Alexei Dyumin, Russian Institute for Strategic Studies Director Mikhail Fradkov, Oleg Govorun, the head of the Russian presidential directorate on socio-economic cooperation with the CIS states, the Republic of Abkhazia and the Republic of South Ossetia, Konstantin Kosachyov, the head of the Federation Council international affairs committee, and Federation Council member Suleiman Kerimov.

The U.S. also added to the sanctions list Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, Roskomnadzor Director Alexander Zharov, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, State Duma deputy Vladislav Reznik, Russian presidential aide Yevgeny Shkolov, Russian presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District Vladimir Ustinov, Timur Valiulin, the head of the Russian Interior Ministry's Main Directorate for Extremism Prevention, and Russian Guard Director Viktor Zolotov.