Ukraine update – Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russian Officials Security Council chaired by President Vladimir Putin, warned that Moscow could restore the death penalty after Russia’s removal from Europe’s top rights group — a chilling statement that shocked human rights activists in a country that hasn’t had capital punishment for a quarter-century.
France has seized Russian ships, freezing their assets. President Joe Biden declared Tuesday that Russia’s latest moves amounted to “the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine,” announced new sanctions and said he would send additional U.S. troops to the region.
The president said the sanctions would target large Russian banks, Russia’s sovereign debt, and, starting Wednesday, the Russian elite and their relatives, and he threatened to add more if Russian President Vladimir Putin takes even more aggressive action.
Washington and its allies say that even tougher sanctions are possible, including kicking Russia out of SWIFT, the dominant system for global financial transactions.
In sarcastic comments posted on a Russian social platform, Medvedev dismissed the sanctions as a show of Western “political impotence” that will only consolidate the Russian leadership and foment anti-Western feelings.
“We are being driven out of everywhere, punished and threatened, but we don’t feel scared,” he said, mocking the sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies as an attempt to vindicate their past “shameful decisions, like a cowardly retreat from Afghanistan.”
Medvedev noted that the sanctions offer the Kremlin a pretext to completely review its ties with the West, suggesting that Russia could opt out of the New START nuclear arms control treaty that limits the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals.
Ukraine Update – Dmitry Medvedev – Russian officials
