Canada announces a “third series of concerted sanctions” which specifically targets President Putin and his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, but also the Belarusian regime “which facilitated this invasion”, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday.
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Ottawa “strongly supports” Russia’s withdrawal from the Swift banking system, he also said, after the new punitive measures launched by Washington and the European Union in particular.
“President Putin’s contempt for freedom, democracy, international law and human life must have consequences,” said the head of the Canadian government at a press conference.
The latter nevertheless noted that “the world reacted in an unprecedented, united and coordinated manner to the grave error of Vladimir Putin”, one of the men who, he said, “bear the greatest responsibility death and destruction in Ukraine”.
“The human cost of this crisis is enormous: the world is witnessing the tragic scenes of bombardments and massive displacements, President Putin is causing a refugee crisis in Europe”, he regretted.
These sanctions are in addition to those of the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, and come after a new meeting of the G7 countries on Friday.
Sanctions against Belarus target 57 people.
“Why are we doing this? Because we want to make sure we stifle the Russian regime!” declared Mélanie Joly, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Ottawa has 3,400 Canadian troops on “high alert” for possible deployment to Europe, but NATO has “not yet” asked Canada to deploy them, Defense Minister Anita Anand said.
On Thursday, Canada – which has the second largest Ukrainian diaspora in the world – sanctioned 58 Russian individuals and entities, and suspended all export permits for Russia.
And earlier this week, Ottawa announced a first salvo of sanctions: a ban on transactions with pro-Russian separatist territories, sanctions against Russian parliamentarians and banks and a ban on Canadians buying Russian debt.