President Biden condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as being “without justification or necessity” Thursday as he announced new sanctions and export restrictions against Moscow — but reiterated that no troops would be sent to Ukrainian soil and admitted that America’s European allies were opposed to kicking Russia out of a key global banking system.
In remarks from the East Room of the White House, a visibly angry Biden said Russian President Vladimir Putin “is the aggressor” in Europe’s worst conflict since World War II.
“Putin chose this war, and now he and his country will bear the consequences,” the president added.
Biden’s announcement of sanctions on four major Russian banks and several oligarchs followed a phone call that lasted more than an hour between the president and other leaders of the G7 group of nations to discuss the precise punishments that will be laid on Moscow’s government and economy.
Biden tweeted following the call that he and the leaders of Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, NATO and the United Kingdom had “agreed to move forward on devastating packages of sanctions and other economic measures to hold Russia to account.”
Reuters
However, the president acknowledged under questioning from reporters that blocking Russian access to SWIFT — the international payment system that is used to assist transactions by global banks — was “not the position that the rest of Europe wishes to take.”
Ukrainian officials, led by Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, had begged for the West to take the drastic step.
“I will not be diplomatic on this,” Kuleba tweeted Thursday morning. “Everyone who now doubts whether Russia should be banned from SWIFT has to understand that the blood of innocent Ukrainian men, women and children will be on their hands too. BAN RUSSIA FROM SWIFT.”
Putin said in a speech broadcast early Thursday local time that he had ordered operations to “demilitarize” Ukraine after recognizing as independent two pro-Russia separatist self-declared republics in eastern Ukraine.
EPA
The White House/AFP via Getty Im
AFP via Getty Images
Click the link below to continue…
