US President Joe Biden has announced what he called the first tranche of sanctions against Russia, including steps to starve the country of financing, saying Moscow had started an invasion of Ukraine.
He said they are implementing sanctions on Russia’s sovereign debt which means they have cut off Russia’s government from Western financing.
Biden added that the measures also would target financial institutions, and Russian elites.
Earlier, the US said Russia’s deployment of troops into two Moscow-backed, self-proclaimed republics in eastern Ukraine amounts to the beginning of an invasion.
The move came after the United Kingdom slapped sanctions on Russian banks and high net worth individuals while Germany, another of Kyiv’s Western allies, halted the approval process for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project.
Moscow has brushed aside the threat of retaliatory measures from the West, with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying Russia was accustomed to sanctions.
Meanwhile, Syria’s government says it supports Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to recognise two Moscow-backed separatist-held regions in eastern Ukraine as independent.
In comments carried by the state-run Syrian News Agency, Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad was quoted as saying that the government of President Bashar al-Assad will cooperate with the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR)
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