By David Lawder
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Treasury on Thursday confirmed that a license allowing a wind-down of energy transactions with Russian financial institutions expired as scheduled this week under stiff sanctions imposed in the final days of Joe Biden’s presidency.
A Treasury spokesperson said that General License 8L expired at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Wednesday. The Biden administration granted the license on January 10 to clear remaining transactions as it banned energy financing deals with Russian banks, including Sberbank, VTB and the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.
The financing ban was part of the Biden administration’s toughest sanctions against Russia’s oil and gas revenues over its invasion of Ukraine, an effort to improve Ukraine’s negotiating position as part of any peace talks.
The sanctions also banned dollar transactions with Russian energy firms Gazprom Neft and Surneftegas as well as 183 vessels that have shipped Russian oil, including many in the so-called shadow fleet of aging tankers operated by non-Western companies.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has criticized Biden’s sanctions on Russia as being ineffective because the effort was preoccupied with keeping oil prices low.
The Trump administration “remains focused on ending the fighting and fostering negotiations to end the war,” the Treasury spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We continue to implement our sanctions, which remain one of the levers to facilitate these goals.”
(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Leslie Adler and Diane Craft)
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