According to TASS, Russia's state-owned news agency, The UK authorities have imposed sanctions against head of the Bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina and also promised to ban Russia from accessing the services of its engineering, architectural, auditing, legal, advertising and IT companies. This is according to a statement on the website of the UK Foreign Office.
London will also expand the list of goods whose export to Russia is banned.
The document notes that the restrictive measures, which include a ban on Nabiullina's entry into the United Kingdom and a freeze of her assets if they are discovered, are applied due to the fact that "in her role, Nabiullina has been instrumental in steering the Russian economy."
Export of services
The export of IT services to Russia, including the development of applications and the design of IT systems, as well as the provision of legal advice to Russians in the field of transactional and a number of commercial services, should soon be banned in the UK. It is indicated that these and other measures were a response to the "illegal annexation of Ukrainian regions " after the "sham referendums".
"The UK is also working with international partners to cut off Russia from our engineering services and architectural services. Russia imports 77% of these services from the G7 and today’s measures will severely debilitate the future growth of Russia’s key industries. These measures will also prohibit Russia’s access to other world-class professional services, including auditing and advertising services. With estimates suggesting that 80% of Russian imports in accounting, audit, bookkeeping and tax consultancy come from the UK, EU and US, these measures will further disrupt and degrade the capability of Russian businesses to keep pace in the international market," the document says.
"The export of almost 700 goods from the UK to Russia are also being banned. The list includes hundreds of goods that are critical for production in Russia’s manufacturing sector, with imports from the UK totaling over 200 mln GBP ($223 mln - TASS) last year," the document says.
From September 23 to September 27, the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) as well as the Kherson Region and the Zaporozhye Region held a referendum where the majority of voters opted to join Russia.
On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the heads of the DPR and the LPR, the Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions signed treaties on their accession to Russia. In his speech at the signing ceremony, Putin called on Kiev to immediately cease hostilities and return to the negotiating table.
