Hiroshima, 19 May 2023 (dpa/MIA) - The US has announced a new package of sanctions in response to Russia's war on Ukraine ahead of the official opening of the G7 summit in Japan.

"All G7 members are preparing to implement new sanctions and export controls," a senior US government official said. "But the United States will be rolling out a substantial package of our own."

That includes cutting off about 70 companies from Russia and other countries from US exports, a senior US government official said shortly before the official start of the summit in Hiroshima.

"We're upping the economic pressure on Russia," he said. "We will continue to expand export controls to make it even harder for Russia to sustain its war machine among other things."

Th measures involve "extensively restricting categories of goods key to the battlefield, and also cutting off roughly 70 entities from Russia and third countries from receiving US exports by adding them to the Commerce blacklist."

Moreover, the US plans to announce 300 US sanctions against individuals entities, vessels and aircraft, he said.

"These will go after circumvention. These will go out for financial facilitators, as well as future energy and extractive capabilities of Russia and other actors helping to support the war."

He said the latest set of sanctions would include designations across Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and would also apply to digital sectors of the Russian economy key to its military industrial complex and employs new bands to prevent Russia from benefiting from US services.

Separately, several diplomats told earlier dpa that G7 countries together want to restrict the multi-billion dollar export of rough diamonds from Russia as punishment for the invasion of Ukraine.

The goal is to reduce Russia's revenues and thus limit Moscow's ability to wage war. The diamond trade is an important economic sector for the country and a significant source of income.

A joint G7 declaration on the diamonds is to be adopted at the G7 summit of leading industrial democracies in Hiroshima, Japan.

The G7 includes the United States, Germany, France, Italy, Britain, Canada and Japan, which currently holds the rotating chair. European Union leaders will also be at the meeting.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, just back from his two-day trip to Iceland for the first Council of Europe summit in 18 years, made a quick turnaround and headed to the G7 summit, touching down on Thursday before the official start of talks on Friday.

Scholz said the summit's joint declaration aims to close loopholes in trade restrictions imposed on Russia since the attack on Ukraine.

"I assume that we can come together very well on all the issues," Scholz said on Thursday after arriving in Hiroshima.

US President Joe Biden's security adviser, Jake Sullivan, also spoke of eliminating loopholes.

"There will be discussions about the state of play on sanctions and the steps that the G7 will collectively commit to on enforcement in particular, making sure that we are shutting down evasion networks, closing loopholes in the sanctions so that the impact is amplified and magnified," said Sullivan on his flight to Japan.

Some loopholes include Chinese companies accused of continuing to supply goods from the EU to Russia that could be used for warfare.

The European Commission recently proposed creating legal restrictions on selected exports of goods that could be used for military purposes in third-party countries.

According to diplomatic sources, the proposal is by no means welcomed by all EU states. The danger is that member states may not be sufficiently willing to put countries like China on such a list because of possible retaliatory measures.

For Germany, China has been the most important trading partner in the past seven years and a complete export ban to Russia is not expected, they said.

The war in Ukraine, the state of the global economy, denuclearization and the West's relationship with China are set to top the agenda of the leaders' discussions in Hiroshima.

The West has imposed far-reaching sanctions on Russia in response to the Kremlin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Photo: MIA archive