On list of 500 US citizens
Moscow imposes a travel ban on Barack Obama
05/19/2023 9:34 p.m
After the United States imposed further sanctions on Russian companies and organizations, Moscow countered with an entry ban for hundreds of influential Americans. The 44th US President, who once called Russia weak in the Crimean crisis, is particularly highlighted.
In response to a new US sanctions package against Russia, Moscow has imposed an entry ban on 500 US citizens. This is the response to the “regular anti-Russian sanctions” of the government of US President Joe Biden, whose intention is to inflict maximum damage on Russia, the State Department said in Moscow. In the listing Also at position 268 is former US President Barack Hussein Obama II, along with other current and former politicians. The list also includes “heads of companies in the military-industrial complex that supply weapons to the Kiev regime.”
However, Obama is one of only a few personalities who is expressly named and thus highlighted in an accompanying message. The 44th President of the United States and Putin have been said to have had a strained relationship since their first political encounter. In the Crimean crisis in 2014, the then US President merely called Russia a “regional power” and said the country was acting “not out of strength, but out of weakness.” In Moscow, that may have been taken as an insult. How Obama’s name gets on the list remains a matter of speculation. The Russian Foreign Ministry does not provide any justifications in individual cases – only the general one that it is a retaliation for US sanctions.
Just before the start of the G7 summit in Japan, the US announced a new package of sanctions against Russia over the war of aggression against Ukraine. Among other things, the plan is to cut off about 70 companies and organizations from Russia and other countries from US exports, said a senior US government official. In addition, more than 300 individuals, companies and organizations, ships and planes are to be subject to other punitive measures.