What the April 2018 US sanctions on Russian firms signalled
A look back at the US sanctions announced under CAATSA, which named Ukraine among several stated grounds.
What did Washington's sanctions package mean for Ukraine on 12 April 2018? The measures had been announced a few days earlier, on 6 April 2018, and were still the backdrop to the day.
Under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, the United States sanctioned twelve Russian-owned companies, a Russian arms exporter and a bank. Among the reasons the US cited were Russian meddling in the 2016 elections and military engagements in Ukraine, Crimea and Syria, among others.
The legal basis
CAATSA is a US federal law that imposed sanctions on Iran, North Korea and Russia, working by preventing US companies from doing business with sanctioned entities. The Senate passed it on 27 July 2017 by 98 votes to 2, after the House approved it by 419 to 3. President Donald Trump signed it on 2 August 2017, though he believed the legislation was seriously flawed.
What the listing shows
For Kyiv, the notable point was that Ukraine and Crimea appeared among the stated grounds, alongside Syria and election interference. The sanctions were framed as a response to a range of Russian actions rather than to a single one. The targets were commercial: companies, an arms exporter and a bank.
The broad support in Congress for the underlying law, set against the president's reservations when signing it, is the clearest indication of the political setting in which the April 2018 measures were taken.
