“So far, our sanctions have had a crippling impact on those who feed and fund Putin’s war machine. This week we will announce that we’ve frozen over $350 billion of Putin’s war chest,” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said.
Britain has frozen some $350 billion (321 billion euros) in assets from the “war chest” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said during a visit to Warsaw on Tuesday.
“So far, our sanctions have had a crippling impact on those who feed and fund Putin’s war machine. This week we will announce that we’ve frozen over $350 billion of Putin’s war chest,” Truss said.
She said this action meant that “over 60 percent of the regime’s $604 billion foreign currency reserves” were now “unavailable” to the Russian government.
Truss said “coordinated sanctions are pushing the Russian economy back to the Soviet era.
“But we can and we must do more,” she said.
She called for a ban on Russian ships docking in Western ports and “agreeing a clear timetable to eliminate imports of Russian oil, coal and gas”.
She also urged Britain’s NATO and G7 partners to impose curbs on “industries that are filling Putin’s war chest, like gold”.
Truss said she had been “shocked” by the scenes in Bucha, a town northwest of Kyiv, where a number of bodies in civilian clothes have been found following the retreat of Russian forces.
“These are appalling acts of the kind we thought we’d left in the 20th century. We will hold those responsible to account for what they’ve done,” she said.
Close Story
Less time to read?
Try Quickreads
-
-
Sri Lanka economic crisis: Embassies shut, govt loses majority | Top points
The economic crisis in Sri Lanka has escalated into political turmoil, days after the public protested outside President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s house in the capital Colombo. Dozens of Sri Lankan lawmakers walked out of the ruling coalition on Tuesday, leaving Rajapaksa’s government with fewer than the 113 members needed to maintain a majority in the 225-member house.
-
EU mulls sanctioning Putin’s daughters amid outrage over Ukraine
Sanctioning Putin’s daughters, Katerina and Maria, is largely a symbolic move since it’s unclear they have significant assets outside of Russia, but it’s designed to get the president’s attention. His daughters’ lives are shrouded in secrecy, they have different maiden names and the Kremlin has never confirmed the names of his daughters or released photographs of them as adults.
-
‘One of many’: Zelenskyy slams Russia over Bucha killings in UNSC speech
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday said that the Bucha massacre is “only one” of many war crimes that the Russian troops have committed across the cities of the east European country. Addressing the United Nation’s Security Council for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine last month, Zelenskyy added that Russian forces killed “anyone who served our country”. He also demanded “accountability” at the UNSC for Russian crimes.
-
‘There can be a bloodbath…’: Sri Lankan ruling coalition MPs’ warning
A group of Sri Lanka lawmakers have backed the formation of an interim government to steer the nation out of its worst economic crisis in decades. “The first condition to solve this problem is that this government has to leave. In its place there should be an interim government,” Wimal Weerawansa, a former cabinet member, said Tuesday. The parliament met today for the first time since these protests began.