New military aid to Ukraine, tightening of sanctions against Russia: Westerners harden their positions on Wednesday after the recent discovery of numerous corpses in Boutcha, near the capital of Ukraine where Russian bombardments continue in several strategically crucial regions .
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been calling for tougher sanctions and the banning of Russia from the international community in recent days.
He urged the UN on Tuesday to act “immediately” against Russia in view of its “war crimes” committed according to him in Ukraine, calling in particular for its exclusion from the Security Council of which it is one of the five permanent members with right of veto. .
He pleaded, as an alternative solution, for a reform of the UN system so that “the right of veto does not mean the right to kill”.
Moscow rejects any accusation of abuses, accusing the Ukrainian authorities of preparing “stagings” of civilians killed in several cities to condemn the Kremlin.
After the shock wave caused by the discoveries made in Boutcha, the European Union and Washington have intensified their economic and diplomatic pressure on Moscow, already targeted by a thick layer of sanctions decided on around the world.
And the United States plans to adopt new ones on Wednesday, in coordination with the European Union and the G7, aimed in particular at prohibiting “any new investment” in Russia, according to a source familiar with the matter.
– Goodbye Russian coal? –
The European Union has for its part promised new sanctions “this week” against Russia. The European Commission has proposed that the Twenty-Seven cease their purchases of Russian coal, which represents 45% of EU imports, and that they close their ports to ships operated by Russians.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plans to travel to Kyiv “this week” accompanied by EU Foreign Minister Josep Borrell, her spokesperson announced on Tuesday.
The US Treasury announced on Tuesday that it no longer allows Moscow to repay its debt with dollars held in US banks.
A few hours later, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby announced the release of additional security aid to Ukraine of up to $100 million. This brings to 1.7 billion dollars the American aid allocated since the invasion on February 24.
This is “to meet an urgent Ukrainian need for additional Javelin anti-tank systems, which the United States has provided to Ukraine and which it has so effectively used to defend our country”, he explained in a statement.
“The United States, alongside our allies and partners, strongly supports Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a separate statement.
The United Kingdom has frozen $350 billion in foreign currency from the Russian regime, President Vladimir Putin’s “war chest”, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said on Tuesday in Warsaw.
And the mass expulsions of Russian diplomats have been going on since Monday. From France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Slovenia, in all nearly 200 Russian diplomats were expelled from Europe in 48 hours.
The situation in Ukraine will also be on the program of the meeting Wednesday and Thursday in Brussels of the foreign ministers of the NATO countries, indicated Tuesday the secretary general of the Alliance Jens Stoltenberg, specifying that they would also discuss with their Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kouleba of the needs of the Ukrainian forces.
“I don’t want to give details, but the supply of anti-tank weapons and air defense systems is being considered,” he said.
NATO only intervenes militarily to defend its members when one of them is attacked or under UN mandate. Ukraine is not a member but nothing prevents the thirty member countries of NATO from providing military aid.
Russian President Vladimir Putin justified the invasion of Ukraine in part by the fear of seeing this former Soviet republic join the Western military alliance, which he considers an existential threat to Russia.
This new wave of sanctions stems from the discovery of dramatic scenes in Boutcha, where President Zelensky went on Monday.
– “Crushed” civilians –
People “were killed in their apartment, their house…civilians were run over by tanks while they were sitting in their car in the middle of the road,” Zelensky said. “They cut limbs, slit throats, raped and killed women in front of their children.”
AFP saw the bodies of at least 22 people wearing civilian clothes in the streets of Boutcha on Saturday.
According to the mayor of the city Anatoly Fedoruk, 280 people had to be buried there by the Ukrainians in recent days in “mass graves”.
Satellite images of the city released Monday by US firm Maxar Technologies appear to refute Russian claims that the bodies of people in civilian clothes found in Boutcha were placed there after Russian troops evacuated the area.
The head of Russian diplomacy Sergei Lavrov estimated Tuesday evening that the discovery of corpses in Boutcha was a “provocation” aimed at derailing the ongoing negotiations between kyiv and Moscow.
New reports have emerged from Ukraine that several localities have seen worse.
“Butcha is not the worst,” Oleksiy Arestovitch, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, told YouTube. “Anyone who has been to Borodianka says it’s even worse.”
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, the Russian bombardments continue and cause new victims.
Explosions were heard Tuesday evening in the small town of Radekhiv, 70 kilometers from Lviv, the large western city, a local official said, without giving further details.
Near kyiv, Russian artillery strikes killed 12 people in the villages of Velyka Dymerka and Bogdanivka, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said on Telegram.
– Donbass objective –
Following the recent withdrawal of Russian troops besieging kyiv and its region, Mr. Stoltenberg estimated on Tuesday that Russia was strengthening itself to “take control of the whole of Donbass”, in eastern Ukraine, and achieve “a land bridge with Crimea”, annexed by Moscow in 2014.
“We are in a crucial phase of the war,” he warned, saying he feared the discovery of “other atrocities” attributed to Russian forces in Ukraine.
The Russian army said on Tuesday evening that it had shot down two Ukrainian helicopters seeking to evacuate leaders of a nationalist battalion defending Mariupol (southeast), while once again calling on these defenders to lay down their arms.
Mariupol has “exceeded the stage of a humanitarian disaster”, Vadim Boïtchenko, mayor of this large port besieged by the Russian army, told AFP on the day, describing the situation of some 120,000 inhabitants who remained on the island as “unbearable”. square.
The city, which had nearly half a million inhabitants before the war, is “90% destroyed”, he said on Monday.
According to the latest count from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 4.24 million Ukrainian refugees have fled their country since February 24, the highest in Europe since the Second World War.
burx-elm / mav