The US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has imposed sanctions on two Russian individuals and three Russian organizations for facilitating arms transfers between Russia and North Korea, — US Department of the Treasury.

In this way, the Ministry is trying to prevent North Korea from supplying Russia with weapons, including ballistic missiles, which the Kremlin uses against Ukraine.

They explained that acting through networks located in Russia, the violators are trying to avoid sanctions by using shell companies to move military equipment to support Russia's illegal aggression against Ukraine.

In particular, it concerns Rafael Gazaryan, who cooperates with the sanctioned Ashot Mkrtychev and related companies. After the imposition of sanctions, Mkrtychev and his associates continued to facilitate the shipment of military equipment from North Korea to Russia. Gazaryan was the contact person and intermediary in the negotiations between the Russian government and the North Korea.

The companies involved in the arms transfer activities were “Verus”, “Rafort” and “Trans Kapital”.

Another person on the updated sanctions list is Aleksey Budnev. According to the Ministry of Justice, he facilitated the supply of North Korean military communications equipment to Russia to support the Russian military. Budnev is the sole owner of the Russian LLC “ Technologiya”.

As the Ministry of Justice emphasized, all property and interests of these persons located in the United States or owned or controlled by US persons are now blocked.

In addition, any entity that is directly or indirectly more than 50% owned by a sanctioned person is blocked. OFAC's regulations generally prohibit all transactions with or through the United States that involve sanctioned persons.