US President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, CIA chief William Burns, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and former US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton are in a 13-member 'stop list' announced by Russia prohibiting their entry into the country.
The move, said the Kremlin, comes in response to a series of unprecedented sanctions that prohibit, among other things, entry to the United States for top officials of the Russian Federation.
The list also includes the name of US Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, as well as several agency heads and other prominent US figures.
"This step, taken as a response measure, is the inevitable result of the extreme Russophobic policy of the current US Administration, which, in a desperate attempt to maintain American hegemony, has abandoned any sense of decorum and placed its bets on the head-on containment of Russia," said the Russian Foreign Ministry.
"However, we do not oppose maintaining official ties when it is in our national interests, and, if necessary, we will address the issues arising from the status of the black-listed individuals in order to organise high-level contacts," the statement added.
The list of US citizens in the stop list includes Joseph Biden, Antony Blinken, Lloyd Austin, Mark Milley, Jake Sullivan, William Burns, Jen Psaki (White House Press Secretary), Daleep Singh (Deputy National Security Advisor), Samantha Jane Power (Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development), Robert Hunter Biden (son of the US President), Hillary Clinton, Adewale Adeyemo (US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury) and Reta Jo Lewis (President and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States).
"More announcements will be made soon concerning the expansion of the sanctions list to include other top US officials, military leaders, lawmakers, business executives, experts and media personalities who promote Russophobia or contribute to inciting hatred of Russia or imposing restrictive measures," said the Russian Foreign Ministry statement.
These actions, said Moscow, will be taken in harmony with the major decisions of the government of the Russian Federation in finance, banking and other areas to protect the Russian economy and ensure its stable development.
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