USA and Europe increase sanctions pressure on Russia – German industry supports

Dusseldorf The US and its allies want to increase the pressure on Russia with further sanctions. Another package agreed with the G7 countries and the EU is to be presented today, Wednesday, announced the spokeswoman for the US President’s Office, Jen Psaki. Any new investment in Russia should be banned.

In addition, penalties already in place against banks and state-owned companies would be tightened. Government officials and their families are also affected by additional punitive measures. The sanctions cost Russia and will further isolate the country economically, financially and technologically.

A French government official had previously said that the European Union was likely to present new sanctions on Wednesday. Two European diplomats said the package was still being voted on and would be announced in a coordinated manner on Wednesday.

The tightening comes in response to the deaths of hundreds of civilians in the Kiev suburb of Bucha, for which Ukraine and the West blame Russia. Russia rejects the accusation of war crimes raised in this context and speaks of a falsification to discredit Russia.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had previously discussed a new round of sanctions against Russia with Western heads of state and government. “After what the world saw in Bucha, the sanctions against Russia must be proportionate to the seriousness of the war crimes committed by the occupiers,” Zelensky said in his video message to the nation early Wednesday morning.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Zelensky discussed measures to ensure that Bucha’s atrocities do not go unpunished. France had made a special payment of 490,000 euros to the International Criminal Court to help solve the crimes, according to sources in the Élysée Palace in Paris after the approximately one-hour conversation between the presidents on Tuesday evening. In addition, France could provide the court with two judges and ten gendarmes.

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German industry supports the sanctions course of the federal government and the European Union against Russia. “The atrocities in Bucha call for a decisive, unequivocal response from the West,” Siegfried Russwurm, President of the Federation of German Industries, told the German Press Agency in Berlin.

“A complete, pan-European embargo on Russian coal goes well beyond the reduction in Russian coal deliveries that companies have already implemented. The implementation is not easy and has its price, but the decision is more than understandable against the background of the escalation of violence.”

Russia announces new attacks in Ukrainian port city of Mariupol

The Russian Defense Ministry, meanwhile, announced new clashes against Ukrainian troops in the port city of Mariupol. The “regime” in Kyiv is constantly ignoring requests to stop fighting, ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in Moscow on Tuesday evening. The troops were to lay down their arms and withdraw from the city through the agreed corridors. However, Kyiv has no interest in protecting the lives of its soldiers or the people in the city, according to two statements by the ministry.

“Mariupol is being liberated from the nationalists by units of the Russian Armed Forces and the Donetsk People’s Republic,” Major General Konashenkov said. His colleague Mikhail Mizintsev said the humanitarian corridors were barely functioning. The Russian and Ukrainian sides repeatedly accuse each other of violating the ceasefire. Russian forces said they shot down two Ukrainian attack helicopters in the city. This information could not be verified.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian media are reporting on explosions in the Lviv (Lemberg) regions in the west and Dnipropetrovsk in the southeast of the country. The head of the Lviv military administration, Maxym Kosyzkyj, has confirmed explosions near the city of Radekhiv, northeast of Lviv, Ukrajinska Pravda reported on Wednesday night. There is still no information about victims or damage, it said.

According to Ukrajinska Pravda, eyewitnesses in the Dnipropetrovsk region reported explosions in Novomoskovsk, an industrial city about 25 kilometers northeast of the regional capital, Dnipro.

Lavrov warns Ukraine against sabotaging negotiations with Russia

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned against sabotage of the talks between Moscow and Kyiv to end the fighting in Ukraine. Russia will not engage in a “cat-and-mouse game” like in previous years with the peace plan for eastern Ukraine, Lavrov said on Tuesday in a video distributed by the ministry.

Specifically, Lavrov said Russia does not want a referendum on a possible Moscow-Kyiv treaty to resolve the conflict. There is “a very high probability” that the negotiation process will start all over again in the event of a “negative result” in the referendum, Lavrov warned.

The Ukrainian negotiators recently agreed to negotiate a neutral status for the country, including renunciation of NATO membership. In return, Kyiv is demanding security guarantees from third countries. According to Ukraine, a possible treaty on the country’s neutrality should still be put to the vote at the end of the population – after the Russian troops have withdrawn. Lavrov openly rejected this for the first time.

Other recent reports on the war:

US supplies Ukraine with protective equipment against chemical and biological weapons

The US wants to supply Ukraine with protective equipment that can be used in the event of a Russian use of chemical or biological weapons. That said a representative of the US government. The equipment that Kyiv has asked for is being sent to Ukraine on an ongoing basis. A part has already been sent.

The US approved an additional $100 million (€91.3 million) in weapons for Ukraine. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday night that Kiev’s urgent need for armor-piercing weapons could be met. At the same time, he reaffirmed continued US support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.

At the end of last week, the US approved $300 million for weapons for Ukraine. The package was intended for drones, missile systems, armored vehicles, ammunition, night vision goggles, secure communications systems, machine guns, medical supplies and the provision of commercial satellite imagery.

SPD leader Lars Klingbeil announced that the federal government wants to examine further arms deliveries. “We have just seen in these days what a terrible war criminal Putin is, that must not remain without consequences,” said Klingbeil in “RTL Direkt”. One has to say “that with February 24th, the beginning of the war, a rethinking took place in the government”. Germany is now one of the largest arms suppliers to Ukraine. “Now we have to check every day at great speed what we can still deliver. We always have to check whether this is necessary, whether it makes sense,” says Klingbeil. “But Germany has to deliver, the Ukrainians have to be strengthened.”

Video shows alleged war crimes in Bucha

The New York Times has published video footage of the death of a civilian by Russian soldiers in the Kiev suburb of Bucha. The Bellingcat research network first showed the recordings on Twitter. The video shows a civilian pushing his bike through Bucha and being killed on a street corner by shots fired from the turrets of two Russian armored personnel carriers, the newspaper reported on Wednesday night.

The video from late February came from the Ukrainian military and was independently verified by the newspaper. After the Russian troops withdrew, the man’s body was finally found in the exact spot that can also be seen in the video.

The day before, the “New York Times” had published satellite images from Bucha. Their date overlays show that the bodies of several people were already on the streets in mid-March – before the Russian troops left. However, the cause of death of the people was not clear from this, it said.

More than 3800 evacuations from contested areas

According to information from Kyiv, more than 3,800 people were evacuated from contested areas of the country on Tuesday. Around 2,200 people had been brought to Zaporizhia from the heavily contested and largely destroyed city of Mariupol and nearby Berdyansk, said Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Wereshchuk in a video message published on Telegram on Tuesday. More than 1,000 people were brought to safety from the Luhansk region.

A convoy of seven buses, which was supposed to evacuate people from Mariupol and which, according to information from Kyiv, was briefly detained by Russian troops in the Ukrainian town of Manhush together with Red Cross employees, finally had to turn around. On the way back, these buses could have picked up residents of Mariupol and Berdyansk, Vereshchuk said. The bus convoy was also followed by more than 40 private cars. It is therefore expected that another 400 people will be safe in Zaporizhia in the near future.

Moscow said that within 24 hours more than 18,600 people had been evacuated from “dangerous districts” of Ukraine, the Luhansk region and Donetsk. This was reported by the state agency TASS on Tuesday evening, citing information provided by Major General Mikhail Mizintsev from the Russian Defense Ministry. In addition, there would be increased shelling of a section of a humanitarian corridor belonging to Mariupol, it said.

That’s going to be important today

• The Bundestag debates the atrocities in Bucha. Before that, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) will be questioned by Parliament.
• In the evening, the foreign ministers of the 30 NATO countries meet in Brussels. Among other things, it is about strengthening NATO’s eastern flank. The US Chief of Staff Mark Milley had already campaigned for this in the US Congress. Russia categorically rejects this.

With agency material

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