Biden announces sanctions on Russia after moves against Ukraine

When Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a speech to the nation Monday night, setting the stage for a new Russian military intervention in neighboring Ukraine, he characterized sanctions as a weapon Western powers would use against Moscow no matter what.

“They have one goal: to restrain the development of Russia,” Putin said, arguing that the West will always find a new false pretext for sanctions. He then signed orders recognizing the independence of two separatist regions in Ukraine and sent Russian forces onto their territory for “peacekeeping” purposes — in what President Biden called the beginning of an invasion.

The defiant actions by the Russian leader demonstrated the limits of relying on the threat of economic pain to change behavior by a government such as Putin’s — a highly personalist regime that has weathered Western sanctions for eight years, elevated hard-liner members of the security services to its most influential positions and clamped down on domestic dissent.

U.N. leader António Guterres on Tuesday stepped up his criticism of Moscow’s recognition of two separatist-held enclaves as independent — calling it a “a violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine.”

“Our world is facing the biggest global peace and security crisis in recent years — certainly in my tenure as secretary-general,” said Guterres, who became secretary general in 2017. “We face a moment that I sincerely hoped would not come.”

Cutting short an overseas trip to return to the U.N. headquarters in New York, Guterres said Russia’s action constituted a “death blow” to the Minsk agreements — a peace accord signed in 2014 and 2015 designed to end fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed militants in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

“The principles of the UN Charter are not an a la carte menu,” Guterres said. “They cannot be applied selectively. Member states have accepted them all and they must apply them all.”

In a scathing response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Monday announcement — in which he ordered Russian forces into the breakaway territories for “peacekeeping” purposes — Guterres said he was “concerned about the perversion of the concept of peacekeeping.”

“When troops of one country enter the territory of another country without its consent, they are not impartial peacekeepers,” he told reporters “They are not peacekeepers at all.”

The secretary general also called for “an immediate cease-fire and the re-establishment of the rule of law.”

“We need restraint and reason,” he said. “We need de-escalation now. I urge all to refrain from actions and statements that would take this dangerous situation over the brink.”

In a late-night Monday speech before the U.N. Security Council, Kenya’s U.N. ambassador, Martin Kimani, drew parallels between Russian President Vladimir Putin’s acknowledgment of two territories within Ukraine’s borders as independent with Africa’s long history of colonialism.

“This situation echoes our history,” Kimani said. “Kenya and almost every African country was birthed by the ending of empire. Our borders were not of our own drawing. They were drawn in the distant colonial metropoles of London, Paris and Lisbon, with no regard for the ancient nations that they cleaved apart.”

Comparing the historical contexts, Kimani warned that fanning the “embers of dead empires” would never lead to peace. The ambassador also said Putin’s rejection of diplomacy in favor of military force had put the international norm of multilateralism “on its deathbed.”

“Rather than form nations that looked ever backward into history with a dangerous nostalgia, we chose to look forward to a greatness none of our many nations and peoples had ever known,” he said.

Given the usual comity between Moscow and the African Group at the United Nations — stemming from the Soviet Union presenting itself as a friend to the continent’s anti-colonial movements — Kimani’s powerful speech went down as one of the sharpest rebukes against Russia. The video of his remarks has elicited mountains of praise and thousands of views across social media.

“I’ve covered the UN since 2005,” Mark Leon Goldberg, editor of U.N. Dispatch, wrote on Twitter. “This is the single best speech I’ve ever seen delivered at the Security Council.”

“In a way no western country could do, this Kenyan statement basically demolishes Putin’s argument that Russia’s historical grievances justify its recent actions,” posted Tanvi Madan, director of the India Project at the Brookings Institution.

TORONTO — Denouncing the “further invasion” of Ukraine, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday announced what he called a “first round” of economic sanctions against Russia and the deployment of 460 additional troops to a NATO mission in Latvia.

Trudeau said Canadians will be banned from financial dealings with the “so-called independent states” of Donetsk and Luhansk and from buying Russian sovereign debt. Russian lawmakers who voted in favor of recognizing those states and two state-backed Russian banks will also be hit with sanctions.

“Russia’s flagrant disregard for the independence of a sovereign nation is a serious threat to security and stability in the region and around the world,” Trudeau said at a news conference in Ottawa. “Canada and our allies will defend democracy, and we are taking these actions today to stand against authoritarianism.”

The prime minister said the sanctions would remain in place “until the territorial integrity of Ukraine is restored.” In addition to the troops, Canada plans to deploy a frigate and a maritime patrol aircraft to a NATO mission in the region.

Former president Donald Trump on Tuesday hailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s move to recognize two breakaway regions of Ukraine and deploy troops into the rebel-held territory as “genius.”

In an interview with the conservative “Clay Travis and Buck Sexton” radio show, Trump said he was impressed by news of Putin’s actions.

“Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful,” Trump said. “So Putin is now saying, ‘It’s independent,’ a large section of Ukraine. I said, ‘How smart is that?’ ”

Trump said Putin will now “go in” to Ukraine “and be a peacekeeper.”

“That’s strongest peace force. … We could use that on our southern border,” he said. “That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy. … I know him very well. Very, very well.”

The former president then went on to say that Russia’s incursion “would have never happened” if he had been in office, and accused Biden of not having a proper response to Putin’s moves.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki dismissed Trump’s comments Tuesday evening.

“As a matter of policy, we try not to take advice from anyone who praises President Putin and his military strategy, which I believe is what happened there,” Psaki said. “So there’s a bit of a different tactic. … And that’s probably why President Biden and not his predecessor was able to rally the world and the global community and taking steps against Russia’s aggression.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that President Biden has no plans to participate in a summit with Putin, hours after Secretary of State Antony Blinken called off a meeting with his Russian counterpart that was to be held later this week.

“Diplomacy can’t succeed unless Russia changes course,” Psaki said. “And as [Blinken] said, it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to have a meeting with his counterpart at this point in time, Foreign Minister [Sergei] Lavrov. And it was always intended that any engagement with President Putin would follow that. So at this point, that is certainly not in the plans.”

Biden had previously agreed “in principle” to meet with Putin. But Psaki said Tuesday that Russia would have to de-escalate its actions in Ukraine to put a meeting between Biden and Putin back on the table.

“De-escalation means moving troops,” Psaki said when asked to specify what actions the United States would need to see from Russia to host a meeting. “It means de-escalating from … the steps they continue to take on a daily basis.”

Psaki noted that the Blinken’s decision to call off the Geneva meeting with Lavrov did not signify an end to a diplomatic approach to the crisis.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday canceled a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov scheduled for later in the week, saying the Kremlin’s moves against Ukraine demonstrated that it is not “serious” about diplomacy.

“It does not make sense to go forward with that meeting at this time,” said Blinken during a news briefing at the State Department alongside Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

The top U.S. diplomat said the State Department would continue to try to avert “an even worse” situation, such as an “all-out assault of Ukraine,” including major cities and the capital of Kyiv. But Blinken said he would not meet Lavrov unless Moscow changes its “approach.”

The move signals a pivot for the Biden administration from seeking dialogue with the Kremlin to pursuing punitive measures for sending troops into eastern Ukraine’s separatist-controlled regions.

Ukraine’s foreign minister praised the sanctions the United States imposed on Russia on Tuesday but implored the West to put in place even more-punishing measures. “Hit Russia’s economy now, and hit it hard,” Kuleba said.

When asked whether Ukraine has verified that Russia has compiled a list of Ukrainians to kill or send to camps after an invasion, Kuleba said Ukraine didn’t have the list but said “I wouldn’t exclude that such a list can exist.”

Blinken’s decision to call off the meeting appeared likely after Tuesday’s cancellation of another appointment between Lavrov and the foreign minister of France, the European power that has worked the hardest to encourage dialogue between Russia and the West.

The meeting was set to take place in Geneva.

LVIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced Tuesday night that he was calling up the country’s military reservists after Russian lawmakers voted to give President Vladimir Putin the authority to send troops into eastern Ukraine.

Zelensky emphasized that this was not a general mobilization and would affect only members of Ukraine’s “operational reserve.” He did not elaborate on how many reservists the call-up involved.

“We must increase the readiness of the Ukrainian army for all possible changes in the operational situation,” Zelensky said in a video posted on social media.

Zelensky said the Russian decision to deploy troops on Ukrainian territory “gave a clear answer” to the question of “who wants peace on earth, and who redistributes the land.”

Likewise, he criticized the Kremlin’s insistence that until now it has not been involved in Ukraine’s eight-year conflict with militants in its eastern Donbas region, despite evidence from Western intelligence agencies and independent experts that Moscow supplies and directs the separatists.

“'We’re not there’ has been replaced by an official ‘actually, we’re here,’ [which was] adopted at the highest level, unanimously,” Zelensky said, in reference to a vote Tuesday by Russian lawmakers.

Zelensky also announced a program of “economic patriotism” of tax breaks and other stimuli to boost the Ukrainian economy, which has suffered from the uncertainty brought on by the threat of a Russian invasion.