Ukraine war: Bucha deaths 'not far short of genocide' - PM - BBC

Reuters

Attacks on civilians by Russian forces in the Ukrainian town of Bucha do not "look far short of genocide", Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said.

The UK has announced further sanctions against eight oligarchs and Russian banks, including the country's largest, Sberbank, and Credit Bank of Moscow.

Dozens of people have been found dead in the town - including some in a mass grave - after Russia's withdrawal.

Moscow denied involvement and described reports as fake news.

The Foreign Office announced its latest sanctions following the reports of attacks on civilians, and these include ending all imports of Russian coal and oil by the end of the year as well as action against strategic industries.

The latest sanctions come in step with those imposed by the US, which has also imposed sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin's two daughters.

Ahead of the new sanctions being announced, Mr Johnson said: "I'm afraid when you look at what's happening in Bucha, the revelations that we are seeing from what Putin has done in Ukraine doesn't look far short of genocide to me.

"It is no wonder people are responding in the way that they are. I have no doubt that the international community, Britain very much in the front rank, will be moving again in lockstep to impose more sanctions and more penalties on Vladimir Putin's regime."

• Could Putin be prosecuted for war crimes?
• What sanctions are being imposed on Russia?
• An execution-style killing on a street in Bucha
• Bucha satellite image contradicts Russian claims
• What is genocide?

As part of its sanctions response, the UK has pledged to stop importing Russian oil by the end of the year, while the EU is reducing its imports of Russian gas by two-thirds.

Mr Johnson praised the "enormous strides" the EU is taken to reduce dependence on Russian gas.

Among those added to the sanctions list is Viatcheslav Kantor, the largest shareholder of fertilizer company Acron, whose donations funded a new unit at a London hospital used by the royal family.

The Edward VII Hospital accepted a donation from the Kantor Charitable Foundation to fund the Kantor Medical Centre.

Getty Images

The other oligarchs added to the sanctions list include:

• Andrey Guryev - known close associate of Vladimir Putin and founder of fertiliser firm PhosAgro
• Sergey Kogogin, director of Kamaz, which manufactures trucks including for the military
• Sergey Sergeyevich Ivanov, president of the world's largest diamond producer Alrosa
• Leonid Mikhelson, founder, and chief executive of Russian natural gas producer Novatek
• Andrey Akimov, chief executive of Russia's third largest bank Gazprombank
• Aleksander Dyukov, chief executive of Russia's third largest and majority state-owned oil producer GazpromNeft
• Boris Borisovich Rotenberg, son of the co-owner of Russia's largest gas pipeline producer SGM.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the latest wave of sanctions would decimate Mr Putin's "war machine" and show the Russian elite could not wash their hands of the atrocities committed on his orders.

Sanctions are penalties imposed by countries intended to stop aggression, or punish breaches of international law, and often involve financial curbs.

Those taken by the UK so far include freezing assets, excluding Russian banks from the UK financial system, banning some exports to Russia, restricting visas for wealthy investors and banning flights.

By the end of the year, the UK has said it will also phase out Russian oil imports.

Along with the EU and US, it has frozen the assets of more than 1,000 individuals and companies, including politicians and wealthy business leaders thought to be close to the Kremlin.

Asset freezes prevent anyone in the UK or any UK company from dealing with any funds or resources that are owned or held by the designated person, and prevent resources being provided to or for the benefit of that person.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer had called for "even tougher sanctions" following the "horrific, harrowing images" of civilian deaths in Bucha.

He said we have to give Ukraine "every support we can" and said the international community must be clear "that these war crimes will end up with those responsible being hunted down".

The deliberate targeting of civilians, as has been alleged by residents of Bucha, is a war crime under the Geneva Convention.

But for a massacre to be considered genocide, the law also requires proof of the intent to destroy a particular national, ethnic, racial or religious group - whether entirely or in part.

The Genocide Convention, introduced after the Nazi Holocaust during World War Two, requires the 152 nations who are signatories to "prevent and to punish" genocide where it occurs.

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2022-04-06 16:42:37Z
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US imposes 'severe' sanctions on Russian banks after Bucha atrocities - Financial Times

The US has imposed its most severe level of sanctions on Sberbank, Russia’s largest financial institution, and Alfa-Bank, the country’s biggest private bank, escalating its economic punishment of Moscow in response to atrocities committed by Russian forces in Ukraine.

The announcement on Wednesday of “full blocking sanctions”, which prevent the lenders from transacting with any US institutions or individuals, came after top officials including President Joe Biden warned this week that they were planning to impose harsher restrictions on Russia.

“There’s nothing less happening than major war crimes,” Biden said at an event in Washington on Wednesday, during which he listed some of the atrocities committed in Ukraine.

“Responsible nations have to come together to hold these perpetrators accountable. And together with our allies and our partners, we’re going to keep raising economic costs and ratchet up the pain for [Vladimir] Putin,” Biden added.

A senior US official said the latest measures were in response to “the sickening brutality in Bucha”, a city near the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv where gruesome images of the bodies of civilians have emerged in recent days, indicating a possible massacre by Russian soldiers.

“Treasury is committed to holding Russia accountable for its actions so it cannot benefit from the international financial system,” Janet Yellen, the US Treasury secretary, told Congress during a hearing on Wednesday.

The US also imposed sanctions on Putin’s two adult daughters, Ekaterina Tikhonova and Maria Vorontsova; the wife and daughter of Sergei Lavrov, foreign minister; and members of Russia’s Security Council, including Dmitry Medvedev, former president; and Mikhail Mishustin, prime minister.

In addition, the US said it would prohibit any new American investments in Russia, and announce new sanctions on large Russian state-owned enterprises on Thursday.

Immediately after the invasion, the US prohibited debt or equity transactions with Alfa and Sberbank, but its “full blocking sanctions” amount to much stricter curbs.

“This is the most severe action we can take in terms of financial measures,” the US official said. “And in practice, the history of sanctions is when we impose full blocking sanctions . . . the rest of the world, even in other jurisdictions that have not yet imposed a full block, they respect the regime. So there tends to be a multiplier effect.”

The official added that the US and EU had chosen to target Putin’s daughters because they believed they were helping shield the Russian president’s wealth.

The UK government on Wednesday also announced additional sanctions against Putin’s regime, including full asset freezes against Sberbank.

The measures, which Liz Truss, UK foreign secretary, said marked “the toughest sanctions yet”, included a ban on imports of Russian iron and steel products alongside an outright ban on new investment in the country.

The UK also imposed sanctions on a further eight individuals linked to key Russian industries, including Andrey Akimov, chief executive of Gazprombank, and Leonid Mikhelson, founder and chief executive of Novatek.

The US and European allies had hoped that the initial burst of sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion in late February, including cutting off Moscow’s access to its foreign reserves by banning transactions with its central bank, would isolate the country financially without causing excessive spillovers into the rest of the global economy.

But as the conflict has continued, they have been forced to consider additional targets, widening the net to include companies and individuals in third countries continuing to do business with Russian entities and sharpening enforcement of existing sanctions.

Edward Fishman, a former Russia and Europe sanctions lead at the state department, called Wednesday’s measures “the most significant sanctions taken since the [Russian] central bank sanctions” imposed in late February.

“We’re headed towards Iran-style sanctions,” he added, referring to the decades-long measures against Tehran beginning in 1979. “This is a conveyor belt and it only leads in one direction.”

Despite the new sanctions, some US legislators on Wednesday criticised the Biden administration for not doing enough, noting that the package stopped short of levying the harshest penalties on certain oligarchs and still included exemptions for Russian energy.

David Scott, a Democrat on the House financial services committee, told Yellen that the Treasury department’s decision to issue a special licence for Alisher Usmanov — an oligarch he described as Putin’s “favourite” — which allowed him to continue doing business was becoming a “black mark” on the nation.

“Our reputation as the world leader is at stake when these types of things happen, and there’s no explanation for it,” Scott said.

Yellen said the US was prepared to wield further sanctions, including against China if it attacked Taiwan.

“We are concerned about Taiwan and will act as appropriate,” she said. “In the case of Russia, we’ve threatened significant consequences, we’ve imposed significant consequences, and I think that you should not doubt our ability and resolve to do the same in other situations.”

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2022-04-06 17:53:11Z
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Russia to make dollar bond payments in roubles after US blockade - Financial Times

Russia moved one step closer to a potential default on its foreign currency debt on Wednesday after the country’s finance ministry said it was forced to make payments to holders of its dollar-denominated bonds in roubles.

The decision to pay in the Russian currency comes after the US Treasury department blocked US banks from handling dollar payments from Russia, halting $649mn of interest and principal due on Monday. JPMorgan, the so-called correspondent bank responsible for handling the transaction, declined to process the cash after seeking guidance from US authorities, according to a person familiar with the matter.

“Due to the unfriendly actions of the US Treasury . . . the Russian Ministry of Finance was forced to involve a Russian financial institution to make the necessary payments,” the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. Payments will instead be made to rouble-denominated accounts in Russia and the proceeds can be converted into dollars following the “restoration of the Russian Federation’s access to foreign currency accounts”, it added.

The move reprises an earlier threat by Russia to make debt payments in roubles if western sanctions prevented it from getting dollars to bondholders. Foreign investors have generally viewed such a step as amounting to default, which would be Moscow’s first since the Russian debt crisis in 1998. Rating agency Fitch said last month an attempt to make dollar interest payments in the Russian currency would indicate “that a default or a default-like process has begun”.

“People can argue that they want to pay but they are being prevented from doing so, but I’m not sure that matters,” said Marcelo Assalin, head of emerging markets debt at William Blair. “I think it’s a default if the bondholders are not paid in dollars.”

Prices of Russia’s dollar bonds extended their recent declines. A bond maturing in 2042 traded at 23 cents on the dollar, down from 34 cents on Monday.

However, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov reiterated on Wednesday that the freezing of its foreign reserves following Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February constitutes an attempt to push it to an “artificial default”.

“Russia has all the necessary resources to service its debts,” Peskov said on a conference call with journalists.

“Significant amounts of our reserves are frozen in foreign countries, as you know. So if they continue to be blocked in this way and if transfers from the frozen amounts are then also blocked, then they will be serviced in roubles,” Peskov said.

“In other words, there is no basis for a real default. There are none, not even close.”

Some of Russia’s foreign currency bonds contain terms in their small print allowing payment in roubles if they cannot be made in dollars or euros, but the dollar bond that matured on Monday and a bond maturing in 2042 that was due to pay a coupon on Monday are not among them. Moscow has a 30-day grace period after Monday’s deadline in which to make the payments in order to avoid default.

One holder of Russian dollar bonds said he did not think it would be possible to set up the “type C” account at a Russian bank necessary to receive the rouble payments without contravening sanctions.

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2022-04-06 15:14:04Z
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Italy and Spain lead fresh round of European expulsions of Russian diplomats - Financial Times

The mass expulsion of Russian officials from embassies across Europe accelerated on Tuesday amid outrage over Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine and growing concern about spies masquerading as diplomats.

Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Estonia and Romania announced the expulsion of a total of 90 Russian diplomats, following similar moves in recent days by Germany, Poland and Slovakia.

The moves took the number of Russian diplomats ejected from the EU since the invasion of Ukraine to at least 311, according to Financial Times calculations. Lithuania on Monday expelled the Russian ambassador to the country in protest at the apparent deaths of Ukrainian civilians at the hands of Russian troops.

The large-scale, co-ordinated expulsions represent a further effort to isolate Russia internationally and will close down more communication channels between Moscow and the EU.

They also mark the biggest spate of expulsions of Russian diplomats since the poisoning in 2018 of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK, after which western countries ejected more than 100 Russian diplomats at London’s urging.

Cumulatively, the number of Russian diplomats now sent home from western countries in recent days far exceeds even the biggest of the tit-for-tat expulsions that were frequent events at the height of the cold war.

Nathalie Tocci, director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome, called the expulsions “late in coming” and a critical move in a confrontation with a rival using sophisticated disinformation campaigns.

“These were not just diplomats but they were there with a mission or a purpose that had to do with filtering into all the nooks and crannies of the fragilities of our systems,” Tocci said.

“It is not about spying in the sense of finding out confidential, classified information — that is just the tip of the iceberg,” she said. “It is all-pervasive work both in the public and private sphere that is aimed at creating and legitimising a particular kind of narrative.”

The latest action against the Russian diplomats came as EU finance ministers met in Luxembourg to discuss imposing even harsher sanctions on Moscow following the apparent killing of Ukrainian civilians by its troops in the Kyiv suburbs.

Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, addressed the UN Security Council about the alleged atrocities on Tuesday.

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said he had spoken to António Guterres, UN secretary-general, and urged him to make use of mechanisms “to collect evidence and hold Russian war criminals to account”.

Luigi Di Maio, Italy’s foreign minister, said during an official trip to Berlin that Rome had branded 30 Russian diplomats as unwelcome.

“This decision . . . was made necessary by reasons linked to our national security,” the official Italian news agency ANSA quoted Di Maio as saying. He added that the expulsions were spurred by “the current crisis situation caused by the unjustified attack on Ukraine by the Russian Federation”.

Denmark separately announced that it was expelling 15 Russian diplomats, with Jeppe Kofod, foreign minister, calling them “a threat to our national security”.

“It’s in our mutual interest to maintain diplomatic ties, but we will not accept Russian espionage on Danish soil,” Kofod wrote on Twitter.

Sweden also announced the expulsion of three Russian diplomats from the country. A senior Swedish security official said last year: “We know that every third Russian diplomat works under what we call ‘diplomatic cover’ and actually works for one of Russia’s intelligence services.”

Estonia and Latvia both said they were closing two Russian consulates each as of April 30, and expelling 14 and 13 staff, respectively.

Russian diplomats turned away from their postings in recent days include 40 from Germany on Monday, 45 from Poland and 35 from Slovakia.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that the expulsion of Russian diplomats narrowed the scope for diplomatic communication during already unprecedented times, Russian news agencies cited spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying. He described the decisions as “a short-sighted move”.

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2022-04-05 17:38:50Z
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Brussels prepares ban on Russian coal imports and transport operators - Financial Times

Brussels said it was ready to launch a new package of sanctions on Russia that will include a ban on coal imports from the country, a block on transactions with four of its lenders and the closure of its ports to Russian vessels.

Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said she would also propose to ban Russian and Belarusian road transport operators from the EU. “This ban will drastically limit the options for the Russian industry to obtain key goods,” she said.

The new penalties will be discussed by EU ambassadors this week with a view to obtaining a unanimous agreement among the 27 member states.

Pressure for the new sanctions has increased following claims that Russian forces committed atrocities against civilians around Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. Russia has dismissed the claims as fabrications.

Von der Leyen said the penalties will include a “full transaction ban” on four Russian banks including VTB, adding that these would now be “totally cut off from the markets”.

Among the other measures in the sanctions package — the EU’s fifth since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24 — are targeted export bans worth €10bn in areas including quantum computers and advanced semiconductors. There will also be specific new bans, worth €5.5bn, on products including wood, cement, seafood and liquor.

The package follows growing calls for the EU to directly target the Russian energy sector, given its contribution to the country’s economy and public revenues.

Among the ideas that are also under discussion are restrictions on oil imports, although these are not expected to be included in this week’s sanctions package.

The majority of Russian exports to the EU are hydrocarbons, Valdis Dombrovskis, commission executive vice-president, said separately following a meeting of EU finance ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday.

“If we really want to affect Russia’s economy, that is where we need to look, and that is exactly what is subject to discussions concerning this fifth package,” he said.

Bruno Le Maire, the finance minister of France, which holds the EU rotating presidency, confirmed that member states were ready to include the broader energy sector in sanctions under a timeline that is yet to be set out.

“Facing Russian aggression we have to be more unified than ever — and all member states reiterated their willingness to expand import restrictions and step up efforts against Russia, and we discussed extending the list of individuals under sanction and companies as well,” he said.

Work on a possible oil ban includes examining a phasing out of imports coupled with a release of strategic oil reserves.

Other options could include imposing tariffs on Russian oil or channelling some payments into an escrow account to be used to help pay for Ukrainian reconstruction.

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2022-04-05 13:41:16Z
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EU to Propose Banning Russian Coal Imports After Atrocities - Bloomberg

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1. EU to Propose Banning Russian Coal Imports After Atrocities  Bloomberg
2. Live Brussels to ban Russian coal imports - live updates  The Telegraph
3. EU to propose fresh sanctions including ban on Russian coal  The Guardian
4. French minister predicts EU will hit Russian oil and coal within days as officials weigh sanctions  POLITICO Europe
5. EU Commission proposes banning Russian coal imports, ships from entering EU ports  Reuters.com
6. View Full coverage on Google News

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2022-04-05 09:55:45Z
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North Korea will target South Korea if provoked, Kim Jong Un's sister Kim Yo Jong warns - Sky News

North Korea has warned that it will use nuclear weapons to strike South Korea if it was to launch an attack first.

The comments by Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, come after South Korea's defence minister said his country's military has missiles that could "accurately and quickly hit any target" in North Korea.

Ms Kim, a senior government official, said it was a "very big mistake" for Suh Wook to make the remarks, according to KCNA, a state news agency.

Pyongyang opposes war, which would leave the peninsula in ruins, and does not view South Korea as its principal enemy, she said on Tuesday.

Image: Suh Wook said South Korea could strike any target in the North

Read more:
Kim Jong Un's sister brands South Korean defence minister a 'scum-like guy' over missile remarks

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"But if South Korea, for any reason - whether or not it is blinded by misjudgement - opts for such military action as
the 'preemptive strike' touted by [Mr Suh], the situation will change," Ms Kim added.

"In that case, South Korea itself will become a target."

More on North Korea

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Both countries have increased displays of military strength this year, with North Korea test-firing a range of powerful missiles.

Officials in South Korea and the US also fear the North may be preparing the resume nuclear weapon tests for the first time since 2017.

On Sunday, North Korean officials condemned Mr Suh's comments Suh and warned that Pyongyang would destroy major targets in Seoul, the South's capital, if the country was to take any "dangerous military action".

Comments may be aimed at incoming president

Image: Analysts suggest Pyongyang could be attempting to reset relations before Yoon Suk-yeol takes office

It is thought Ms Kim's comments may be aimed at Yoon Suk-yeol, South Korea's incoming president, who has called for a more muscular defence against North Korean threats.

Rachel Minyoung Lee, an analyst with the US-based 38 North project, said: "North Korea has thus far refrained from criticising Yoon at an authoritative level, but it certainly seems to be laying the groundwork for it."

The statements suggest Pyongyang is preparing its people for a possible shift in Korean relations once Yoon takes office in May, she added.

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2022-04-05 06:02:27Z
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