LAST UPDATE: 12.20
The British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told a special meeting of the COBRA crisis management council, which he chaired earlier this morning, that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “determined for a large-scale invasion” of Ukraine, according to the BBC.
Britain will immediately impose harsh economic sanctions on Russia following Putin’s order to deploy troops to two breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced today.
An eyewitness told Reuters he had seen tanks and military equipment moving towards the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk following Putin’s official recognition of the breakaway regions and ordered the deployment of Russian forces to “maintain peace”.
“We will immediately impose a package of financial sanctions,” Johnson told reporters.
“This is, I must emphasize, only the first barrage of British financial sanctions against Russia because we expect, I am very afraid, that there will be more irrational behavior by Russia,” Johnson said.
He also said that he will announce the sanctions in the House of Commons today, probably at around 14:30 (Greek time).
The sanctions, Johnson said, would “target not only entities in Donbas and Luhansk and Donetsk, but Russia itself, targeting Russian economic interests as hard as we can.”
“They will hit Russia very hard and there is still a lot we can do in the event of an invasion.”
Britain has threatened to cut off Russian companies’ access to US dollars and British pounds by depriving them of the ability to raise capital in London.
London has not yet clarified to whom the sanctions will be imposed, but has promised that the Russian oligarchs will have nowhere to hide.
Johnson has indicated that the targets will include Russian banks.
Hundreds of billions of dollars have flocked to London and the British Overseas Territories from Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and London has become the western city of choice for the super-rich in Russia and other former Soviet republics.
“I think the tragedy of the current situation is that President Putin has advisers around him with similar ideas, who tell him that Ukraine is not the right country. And I think he will find that he has miscalculated,” Johnson told reporters. after the meeting.
Source: Capital
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