Amid tough global sanctions over the Ukraine war, Russia has published an updated “stop list”, permanently banning 963 Americans – including US president Joe Biden, vice president Kamala Harris, and secretary of state Antony Blinken – from entering the country. Hollywood celebrities – including Morgan Freeman and actor-filmmaker Rob Reiner – also make the list, American news network CNN has reported.

Moscow said the list includes people who “incite Russophobia and those who serve them” and not the common Americans “who have always been respected by us”.

According to a Washington post report, Biden’s name figured in the March list too but this updated version has his deputy Harris’s name too. 

US speaker Nancy Pelosi, senate majority leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and house minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif) were among those who have been barred from entering the country.  

“Russia is publishing the list of American citizens, who are permanently barred from entering the Russian Federation, as countermeasures to the constant imposition of sanctions against Russia by the US and in response to inquiries about individuals included in our national stop list,” a statement by the Russian foreign ministry reads, news agency ANI reported. 

“Washington’s hostile actions, which boomerang on the US itself, will be further met with an appropriate response,” the ministry said, adding that “the Russian counter-sanctions have been forced and are aimed at pressuring the ruling American regime, which is trying to push the rest of the world into neo-colonial ‘rules-based world order,’ to change its behaviour by recognizing the new geopolitical realities”.

While former secretary of state Mike Pompeo also figures in the Russia “stop list”, many on social media pointed out that Donald Trump’s name was missing. 

Joe Biden has been making sharp comments against Russian president Vladimir Putin ever since the Ukraine war started. In exasperation, he even said in March: “This man cannot remain in power”. The remark had prompted an explanation from the White House. 

(With inputs from ANI)