New military aid to Ukraine on one side, tougher sanctions against Russia on the other: Westerners harden their positions on Wednesday after the recent discovery of numerous corpses near the capital of Ukraine, following a withdrawal Russian.
After the shock wave caused by the morbid discoveries made in Boutcha, the European Union and Washington have intensified their economic and diplomatic pressure on Moscow, already targeted by a series of sanctions decided on throughout the world.
The United States plans to adopt new ones on Wednesday, in coordination with the European Union (EU) and the G7, aimed in particular at prohibiting “any new investment” in Russia, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The EU has promised new sanctions “this week” against Russia. The European Commission has proposed that the Twenty-Seven cease their purchases of Russian coal, which represents 45% of EU imports, and that they close their ports to ships operated by Russians.
New US financial aid
The US Treasury has already indicated on Tuesday that it no longer allows Moscow to repay its debt with dollars held in US banks. A few hours later, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby announced the release of additional security aid to Ukraine of up to $100 million.
It brings to 1.7 billion dollars the American aid allocated since the invasion on February 24. This is “to meet an urgent Ukrainian need for additional Javelin anti-tank systems, which the United States has provided to Ukraine and which it has used so effectively to defend our country”, he explained.
The United Kingdom has frozen $350 billion in foreign currency from the Russian regime, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “war chest”, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said on Tuesday in Warsaw.
And the mass expulsions of Russian diplomats have been going on since Monday. From France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Slovenia, in all nearly 200 Russian diplomats were expelled from Europe in 48 hours.
Anti-tank weapons
The situation in Ukraine will also be on the program of the meeting Wednesday and Thursday in Brussels of the foreign ministers of the NATO countries. Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday that they would also discuss with their Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kouleba the needs of the Ukrainian forces.
“I don’t want to give details, but the supply of anti-tank weapons and air defense systems is being considered,” he said.
This new wave of sanctions stems from the discovery of dramatic scenes in Boutcha, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited on Monday. People “were killed in their apartment, their house…civilians were run over by tanks, while they were sitting in their car in the middle of the road,” Zelensky said.
“They cut limbs, slit throats, raped and killed women in front of their children,” he added. AFP saw the bodies of at least 22 people wearing civilian clothes in the streets of Boutcha on Saturday. According to the mayor of the city Anatoly Fedoruk, 280 people had to be buried there by the Ukrainians in recent days in “mass graves”.
New reports of horrors have emerged from Ukraine. “Butcha is not the worst,” Oleksiy Arestovitch, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, told YouTube. “Anyone who has been to Borodianka says it’s even worse.”
This article has been published automatically. Sources: ats / afp