The United States responded Tuesday to the Russian “invasion” of Ukraine, as the president called it, Joe Biden, with harsh economic sanctions on Russia and military reinforcement with US troops in the Baltic countries – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
In a brief speech from the White House, Biden thus reacted to the authorization of Russian President Vladimir Putin to send Russian troops to the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk and to the recognition of their independence.
In fact, this Tuesday, satellite images of the deployment of Russian troops near the border with Ukraine were released.
“To put it simply, Russia has just announced that it has taken a good piece of Ukraine,” the president explained.
As a consequence, Biden stressed that he approved “additional movements of forces and equipment, already located in Europe to strengthen our Baltic allies: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.”
This new deployment, which includes 800 more uniformed personnel, would be added to the 6,000 soldiers recently displaced by the United States temporarily to Europe (in countries on the eastern flank of NATO such as Romania, Germany or Poland) to respond to the crisis in Ukraine.
In all, there are currently more than 80,000 US military personnel on the continent on permanent or rotating missions.
Likewise, Biden announced the first direct economic sanctions against two large Russian financial institutions, the VEB (one of the main investment and development banks in Russia) and the military bank (PSB), considered essential for the Russian defense sector.
Western funding blockade
The US president also revealed “comprehensive” sanctions against Russia’s sovereign debt to block the Moscow government’s access to Western financing.
“(Russia) is no longer going to be able to get money from the West and is not going to be able to trade new debt in our markets or the European markets either,” the US president stressed.
In a call with reporters, a senior White House official stressed that today’s economic measures are “harsh,” while warning that they are not the last available.
Biden, in his forceful speech, announced that Washington has prepared future sanctions against Russia’s “elites” if Moscow continues its military escalation in Ukraine, since “they share the corrupt benefits of the Kremlin’s policies and must also share their pain.” .
Three charges appear on Tuesday’s sanctions list: Russian intelligence services (FSB) director Alex Bortnikov; Putin’s current deputy chief of staff, Sergei Keriyenko; and the CEO of the PSB, Piotr Fradkov.
The US president insisted, however, on the preference for diplomatic channels to resolve the confrontation with Moscow over its new military actions against Ukraine, after the annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014.
Washington promises unwavering support for Kiev
After weeks of tensions over the Russian military buildup on the Ukrainian border, Putin’s authorization to send soldiers to the Donbas regions of eastern Ukraine has triggered a barrage of sanctions from Western allies.
Both the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU) announced rounds of economic sanctions against Russia, and Washington has stressed that the measures were coordinated internationally to have the greatest possible impact on the Russian economy.
The United States also applauded Germany’s blocking of the certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which was expected to transport Russian gas to Germany.
A clear sign of the deterioration of the situation is the early morning trip of the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmitro Kuleba, to Washington, where he met on Tuesday with Biden himself, the head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin, and the Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
In a statement, the White House reported that the US president reaffirmed before Kuleba the “commitment of the United States to the defense of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
Blinken will not meet with Lavrov
On the other hand, Blinken announced in a joint conference with his Ukrainian counterpart the cancellation of the meeting scheduled for Thursday in Geneva (Switzerland) with the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov.
“Now that we see that the invasion begins and Russia has made clear its total rejection of diplomacy, there is no point in going ahead with that meeting,” said Blinken, who, even so, stressed that his country remains “open to diplomacy.”
In parallel, the White House spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, stated that Biden does not plan to meet with Putin at the moment, since “diplomacy cannot be successful, unless Russia changes direction.”
Psaki explained that the initial idea was for Blinken and Lavrov to meet first, to later hold a meeting between Biden and Putin.
“At this point, that is not in the plans,” settled the spokeswoman, who stressed that Russia should take action to reduce tension in Ukraine so that a meeting between the two leaders is back on the table.
EFE
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