Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has reiterated calls for heavier weaponry to aid its defense against Russia at the start of talks with his counterparts from NATO countries. Kuleba described his agenda for the meeting in Brussels on Thursday: “It’s weapons, weapons, weapons”, reports news agency MIA.
The best way to help Ukraine is to provide the country with everything it needs to put Russian President Vladimir Putin in his place and defeat the Russian army, he added. Kuleba said that Germany could do more in terms of arms deliveries “given its reserves and capacities” and that decision-making was taking too long.
“While Berlin has time, Kyiv has none,” he said. The more and the faster Ukraine received weapons, the more lives would be saved and the fewer cities would be destroyed, he said. Meanwhile, the United States hit Russia with a new round of sanctions of Wednesday, this time going after two major Russian banks, Putin’s adult children and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The White House said the sanctions against Putin’s inner circle are a response to the atrocities committed by Russian forces in Ukraine, particularly in the town of Bucha, where hundreds of civilians were massacred in what several world leaders are calling a likely war crime. In another strike at the Russian economy, the country’s largest financial institution, Sberbank, and largest private bank, Alfa Bank, were blacklisted by the US.
The sanctions on them freeze any assets connected to the US financial system and prohibits US individuals from doing business with them.
“Sberbank holds nearly one-third of the overall Russian banking sector’s assets and is systemically critical to the Russian economy,” according to the White House statement.
Putin’s own family and some of the closest members of his political circle are also being frozen out of the US financial system, including Putin’s two adult daughters, Foreign Minister Lavrov’s wife and daughter and members of Russia’s powerful Security Council – including former president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev and current Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.
“These individuals have enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people. Some of them are responsible for providing the support necessary to underpin Putin’s war on Ukraine,” the statement said.
Washington also announced that President Joe Biden would sign an executive order that bans US citizens from making new investments in Russia, regardless of where they are located.
“Critical major Russian state-owned enterprises” will also be sanctioned, prohibiting US citizens from doing business with them and freezing their US assets. The Treasury Department was scheduled to provide more information on the companies on Thursday.
The US, the EU, Britain and other allies have already imposed numerous sanctions against Moscow because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. So far measures have mainly targeted Russia’s financial system, and the technology sector, as well as politicians and oligarchs who are considered to be close to Putin.
Meanwhile, Russia could be suspended from the UN’s premier rights body, the 47-member Human Rights Council. The UN General Assembly is scheduled to vote on the matter on Thursday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed tightened sanctions in a late Wednesday video message, saying they were “impressive” but not enough and repeated calls for an oil embargo and a complete exclusion of Russia’s banking system from international finance.
Zelensky also said Kyiv knew of thousands of missing people in the country and there were only two possibilities for what had happened to them – either they were deported to Russia or killed. He said Moscow was now changing tactics to remove bodies of those killed in areas occupied by Russian troops.
You sent Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 and has been struggling to make major gains in the face of strong Ukrainian resistance. Moscow is now moving troops to the east of the country as it refocuses its offensive. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk appealed to residents of the east on Wednesday, saying: “Get to safety while there is still the possibility.”“It has to be now, because later people will be shot at and threatened with death. They won’t be able to do anything about it and we won’t be able to help them.”
Vereshchuk said almost 5,000 civilians escaped hard-fought areas of Ukraine on Wednesday using escape corridors, with the Ukrainian railway transporting several thousand people from the threatened areas to the west of Ukraine.
Serhiy Haidai, governor of Luhansk, said he expected major attacks to be attempted in the next three to four days. In the Luhansk city of Severodonetsk, officials reported that more than 10 high-rise buildings were destroyed by Russian artillery fire along with five private residences, a school and a shopping centre.
According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Russia’s focus on the eastern Donbas region, which includes Donetsk and Luhansk, may just be a short-term change in strategy. Speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels, Stoltenberg said it was necessary to accept that the war could continue “for many months, for even years.”
Stoltenberg said that, for now, NATO intelligence suggested Russian troops would be pulled back from the north of the country and a major offensive in the east would be launched, with the ultimate aim of capturing the entire Donbas region to create a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Wednesday offered to host ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Budapest.
“I suggested to him to announce a truce [in Ukraine] as soon as possible,” he said. Negotiations to that end could be held in Budapest, with the participation of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, Orban added.
However, Putin had set conditions for the start of negotiations, said Orban, adding that he had no influence on their fulfilment.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu said he expected negotiating teams to be back in Turkey. Cavusoglu admitted that the atrocities had damaged “the relatively positive atmosphere” seen in face-to-face talks in Istanbul last week. “We are still hopeful and cautiously optimistic. At the same time, we are realistic,” he said.
