The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions against a subsidiary of Russian state-controlled oil giant Rosneft over its key role in Venezuela, stepping up international pressure to break leftist President Nicolas Maduro’s grip on power. Rosneft Trading SA, which has helped sell Venezuelan oil despite unilateral US sanctions, and Rosneft vice president Didier Casimiro were targeted by the US Treasury Department.
“As the primary broker of global deals for the sale and transport of Venezuela’s crude oil, Rosneft Trading has propped up the dictatorial Maduro, enabling his repression of the Venezuelan people,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement. Pompeo added in a tweet: “Those who prop up the corrupt regime and enable its repression of the Venezuelan people will be held accountable.”
The sanctions will block any assets of Rosneft Trading or the Belgian-born Casimiro that come through the United States. It also makes transactions with them a crime for anyone under US jurisdiction. Opposition leader Juan Guaido, who recently returned from a global tour that included a White House meeting with President Donald Trump, hailed the new US pressure on Maduro’s regime. “This news is a victory!” Guaido tweeted.
“Whoever supports the dictator, no matter who they are or where they come from, must bear the consequences,” he said. Russia denounced what it described as a US attempt to “bend the world to its will” as well as Washington’s “banal desire to create advantages for American businesses that cannot stand up against fair competition from Russian companies on the world stage.”
“The destructive US policy of sanctions is increasingly undermining global freedom of commerce, which the Americans say they defend, and raises international tensions,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, whose government espouses socialism, said the sanctions “violate the rights to free trade and free enterprise.
