Russia-Ukraine live updates: Kremlin warns Americans will face financial ‘consequences’ of U.S. sanctions

The United Kingdom will impose more sanctions on Russia if President Vladimir Putin launches a “full-scale invasion” of Ukraine, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said Wednesday.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced what he called a “first barrage” of British sanctions on Tuesday, after Putin ordered Kremlin forces into two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine that Moscow formally recognized as independent.

The escalation, which U.S. and European officials saw as the opening stages of a wider invasion, triggered British measures against five Russian banks and three Russian billionaires who are members of Putin’s inner circle. The British move came as the White House announced a round of sanctions to limit Moscow’s access to financial markets. The European Union, meanwhile, said it would target people and entities including members of Russia’s State Duma who voted for formally recognizing the disputed territories.

“The message that we are sending to Vladimir Putin and his regime is that we will inflict even more pain in the event of a full incursion into Ukraine,” Truss said in an interview with Sky News. She also said that Britain would stop the Russian government from raising sovereign debt in London’s financial markets.

“We have more individuals that we will target … to make sure that these people can’t travel, that their assets are frozen, and that they will have nowhere to hide,” she said.

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.

TOKYO — Japan announced Wednesday that it would join its Western allies in imposing economic sanctions on Russia, as it called on the Kremlin to return to diplomatic negotiations to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

Japan will suspend the issuance of visas and freeze the assets of individuals connected to the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, ban imports and exports for the two regions, and ban the sale of Russian sovereign debt in Japan, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Wednesday.

The specifics of the new sanctions have not been announced, but they are expected to be largely symbolic. Several analysts struggled to identify whether, or how much, Russian debt is issued in Japan. In addition, Japan currently is not issuing new visas to foreigners due to its coronavirus border lockdown, so the visa ban is not unique to the two breakaway regions.

Still, the measures reflect Japan’s desire to show it is in lock-step with the international community in responding to Russia, similar to its decision in 2014 to issue symbolic sanctions after Moscow annexed Crimea. Kishida had said Tuesday that the Japanese government would coordinate a “tough” response with Western allies.

At a news conference Wednesday, Kishida said he does not see a significant impact from the Ukraine crisis on energy supplies in the short term, and that the government plans to take further action if the situation worsens.

Kishida declined to answer when asked if the Japanese government views Russia’s actions as an invasion. He has said that Japan “strongly condemns” Russia’s actions, which he also called a “violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Early Russian reaction to new sanctions imposed by the Biden administration was defiant, with the country’s ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, saying that the measures “cannot solve a thing" regarding Russia.

“I can’t recall a single day when our country lived without any restrictions from the Western world,” Antonov said in a Tuesday night post on the Russian Embassy’s Facebook account. “We learned to work in such conditions. And not only survive, but also develop our state.”

He also hinted that the United States might face possible retaliation, writing that “the sanctions introduced against us will hit global financial and energy markets. The United States will not be left out, with its ordinary citizens feeling the consequences of the price increase in full.”

The White House on Tuesday imposed what it said was the “first tranche” of sanctions targeting Russia for its actions against Ukraine. The measures include freezing the assets of two state-owned banks that service the Kremlin and Russia’s military. They also target Kremlin “elites” close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the country’s sovereign debt, strictly limiting the government’s ability to access Western financing.

But the United States stopped short, for now, of putting in place the most severe of the measures it had previewed. “Russia will pay an even steeper price if it continues its aggression, including additional sanctions,” President Biden said in a televised address Tuesday.

Antonov, like other senior Russian officials, continued to blame the United States for stoking tensions. Instead of forcing Kyiv “to sit at the table of negotiations with their compatriots” from the two breakaway enclaves, Antonov said, Washington has chosen “to pump the [Kyiv] regime with ‘weapons’ and push it to war.”

Antonov attempted to justify Putin’s recognition of the separatist-held territories’ independence by saying it would prevent “further death” in the region. The United States and its allies have called the move a violation of Kyiv’s sovereignty and a bid to create a pretext for a renewed Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Putin’s actions followed a sharp increase in violence in eastern Ukraine over the weekend. Russia has assembled some 190,000 troops in and around Ukraine, according to recent U.S. assessments.

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.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued orders Tuesday to deploy a few thousand more U.S. troops to Eastern Europe, responding to a new invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

The forces include an infantry battalion task force of about 800 soldiers from the elite 173rd Airborne Brigade that will deploy from Vicenza, Italy, to the Baltic region, a battalion of 20 AH-64 Apache helicopters moving from Germany to the Baltics, 12 additional Apaches shifting from Greece to Poland, and up to eight F-35 fighters responding to more than one location in Eastern Europe, the Pentagon said in a statement.

“These additional personnel are being repositioned to reassure our NATO allies, deter any potential aggression against NATO member states, and train with host-nation forces,” the Pentagon said.

The moves are temporary, the Pentagon said, and part of the 90,000 U.S. troops who are assigned to U.S. European Command on either deployments or multiyear assignments. They come after the United States already has deployed thousands of soldiers to Poland, Romania and Bulgaria in recent days as Russia built up its combat power along the Ukrainian border to more than 150,000 troops.

The latest deployments were announced as Biden detailed new sanctions against Russia. Biden said the United States will continue to provide “defensive assistance” to Ukraine — typically weapons — but has ruled out American troops fighting in Ukraine.

“Today, in response to [Russia’s] admission that it will not withdraw its forces from Belarus, I have authorized additional movements of U.S. forces and equipment already stationed in Europe to strengthen our Baltic allies, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania,” Biden said.