The CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, and its CEO LinkedIn, Ryan Roslansky, are the latest two US citizens to be added to the increasingly strange list of Russian authorities.
We are talking about the Russian list of sanctions on individuals and companies, from the opposing camp.
The Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday added the two chief executives, along with United States Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff, several ministry officials Defenses, ABC personalities, former adviser to President Bill Clinton George Stephanopoulos and more than 20 others. The Kremlin's "stop list" prohibits entry into Russia indefinitely.
Moscow says it will add more names to the list.
Amid Russia's ban on Facebook "boss", the US Treasury Department announced this week the first sanctions against a cryptocurrency mining company, BitRiver. According to Washington, the company is helping the Kremlin avoid previous sanctions.
"By operating huge servers that sell virtual currency mining capacity internationally, these companies are helping Russia make money," the finance ministry said in a statement.
"The United States is committed to ensuring that no assets, no matter how complex, become a mechanism for the Putin regime to offset the impact of sanctions."
Bitriver was founded in Russia in 2017 and transferred its legal ownership to a portfolio company based in Switzerland last year. It has three more offices in Russia and 10 subsidiaries in this country, which are also included in the list of the Ministry of Finance.
Sanctions hold up well and the list continues to grow as the US and its allies send more money and weapons to Ukraine, increasingly isolating Russia for invading the neighboring country. In addition to government sanctions, several private technology companies, such as Apple, Dell, HP, Intel, SAP, Microsoft, Nokia and Ericsson, have reduced or stopped operating in the country.
Other major tech companies such as Meta and Google, are fighting Russian disinformation.
Since the beginning of the war, Meta security teams have been busy blocking propaganda and deleting fake news and accounts on its social media platforms, according to the company's quarterly threat report.
Of course the war of propaganda continues and of course it does not come from only one part…
