New Zealand adds 20 more Russia sanctions targeting cyber crime and payments

Winston Peters has announced a new range of Russia sanctions as the war in Ukraine enters its fifth year. Photo / Nanna Heitmann, The New York Times

The Government has implemented a new host of sanctions on malicious cyber actors and people believed to be supporting Russia in the war on Ukraine.

Today, Foreign Minister Winston Peters announced the 35th round of sanctions against Russia, with 20 new individuals and entities being designated.

These include several actors involved in the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare tactics of Russian cyber crime and the dissemination of anti-Ukraine propaganda.

Others designated are involved in Russia’s military-industrial complex, such as North Korean and Iranian actors supporting Vladimir Putin’s military campaigns.

New Zealand deemed Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine illegal in February 2022 and has taken various economic and political measures against Moscow in the years since the conflict began.

More than 2000 individuals, entities and vessels have been the subject of sanctions since the Russia Sanctions Act came into force in March 2022.

“Those who misuse online platforms to support Russia’s war against Ukraine will face real consequences, including sanctions,” Peters said.

The sanctions will also target an alternative payment provider being used in Russia to evade the existing sanctions in force.

“We are targeting the payment infrastructure that has helped enable Russia’s war against Ukraine,” Peters said.

Tensions between the two states first heightened in 2014, when Russia seized and annexed Crimea on the basis the territory’s population supported regional independence.

In 2021, Russian forces began mobilising at the borders, but leaders denied there were plans to invade the eastern European nation.

Early the following year, Putin launched a full-scale military operation, shelling tactical locations in Ukraine in a bid to “demilitarise and denazify” the country.

The ongoing attacks have been condemned as a breach of international law by Western powers.

Both declared separate ceasefires this week, following early peace talks between Putin and US President Donald Trump.

The Russian Defence Ministry declared a ceasefire would come into effect on May 8 with the “hope that the Ukrainian side will follow suit”.

“If the Kyiv regime attempts to implement its criminal plans to disrupt the celebration of the 81st anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War, the Russian Armed Forces will launch a retaliatory, massive missile strike on the centre of Kyiv.

“We warn the civilian population of Kyiv and employees of foreign diplomatic missions of the need to leave the city promptly.”

Yesterday, 21 Ukrainians were killed in a series of Russian strikes across the region, despite Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s declaration of a unilateral ceasefire, beginning on May 5.