West unveils sanctions with more ready if Russia launches full-scale Ukraine invasion
A close up of a field hospital and troop deployment in western Belgorod, Russia. Picture: Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies via AP
Western nations and Japan on Tuesday punished Russia with new sanctions for ordering troops into separatist regions of eastern Ukraine and threatened to go further if Moscow launched an all-out invasion of its neighbour.
The European Union, the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan announced plans to target banks and elites while Germany halted a major gas pipeline project from Russia in one of the worst security crises in Europe in decades.
Bitter about Ukraine's long-term goal to join NATO and claiming it as historic Russian land, Russian President Vladimir Putin has amassed more than 150,000 troops near Ukraine's borders, according to U.S. estimates, and ordered soldiers into the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk regions to "keep the peace".
The United States dismisses that justification as "nonsense".
"To put it simply Russia just announced that it is carving out a big chunk of Ukraine," US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday.
Satellite imagery over the past 24 hours shows several new troop and equipment deployments in western Russia and more than 100 vehicles at a small airfield in southern Belarus, which borders Ukraine, according to US firm Maxar.
The Ukrainian military said early on Wednesday one soldier had been killed and six wounded in 96 incidents of shelling by pro-Russian separatists in the east over the previous 24 hours. It said separatist forces used heavy artillery, mortars and Grad rocket systems.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Tuesday said he was introducing the conscription of reservists for a special period but ruled out a general mobilisation.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian cancelled separate scheduled meetings with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday as weeks of frantic diplomacy failed to end the crisis.
Plans announced by Biden to bolster Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania include sending 800 infantry soldiers and up to eight F-35 fighter jets to locations along NATO's eastern flank, a U.S. official said, but are a redistribution, not additions.
Putin did not watch Biden's speech and Russia will first look at what the United States has outlined before responding, according to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, cited by Russian news agencies.
Putin said he was always open to finding diplomatic solutions but that "the interests of Russia and the security of our citizens are unconditional for us."
Moscow is calling for security guarantees, including a promise that Ukraine will never join NATO, while the United States and its allies offer Putin confidence-building and arms control steps to defuse the stand-off.
In perhaps the most significant measure announced on Tuesday, Germany halted the bn (€9.7bn) Nord Stream 2 pipeline owned by Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom, a move likely to raise gas prices in Europe.
Built and awaiting German approval, the pipeline had been set to ease the pressure on European consumers facing record energy prices but critics including the United States have long argued it would increase Europe's energy dependence on Russia.
US sanctions target Russian elites and two state-owned banks, excluding them from the US banking system, banning them from trading with Americans, and freezing their US assets. They also seek to deny the Russian government access to Western financing.
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