President Obama on Thursday ordered assets frozen and U.S. visas blocked for all persons determined to have impeded democracy, contributed to violence or engaged in corruption in Ukraine.
An executive order signed Thursday morning does not specify who is included in the order, but senior administration officials said it would include both Russians and Ukrainians. Individuals of both nationalities have already been subject to visa bans prohibiting their entry into the United States. Obama asked the Treasury Department to implement the order.
Administration officials previously said sanctions would not apply to President Vladimir Putin or other top Russian officials. “It is an unusual and extraordinary circumstance to sanction a head of state, and we would not begin our designations by doing so,” one senior official said Thursday.
The measures are intended to “send a strong message that we intend to impose costs on Russia” for its military intervention in Crimea, the autonomous Ukrainian region, said a senior official who briefed reporters.
“It also gives us flexibility” to expand the measures in the event of further Russian actions, including the possible movement of military forces into pro-Russian areas of eastern Ukraine, the official said.
Obama has tasked the Treasury Department with determining who could be sanctioned under the economic measures, which would block all U.S. assets of any person or entity who led or assisted efforts to undermine the security or territorial integrity of Ukraine, or asserted control over any part of Ukraine without the authorization of the government of Kiev.
“The fact that we have not yet designated” the targets of the sanctions “should lead some of those individuals to be questioning whether they’re going to be finding their names on a list,” the senior administration official said.
The sanctions are the toughest measure yet as the United States and its European allies took steps to show their disapproval ofRussia’s military moves in Crimea. The European Union also approved sanctions against 18 Ukrainians.
The actions followed decisions Wednesday to send more money to Ukraine’s U.S.-backed interim government and to dispatch international observers to Ukraine.
Although a stalemate persisted in Crimea, with Ukrainian military forces refusing Russian demands to declare allegiance to the region’s pro-Russian government, Crimea’s legislature voted to hold a referendum on March 16 on whether to break away from Ukraine and join Russia, or remain part of Ukraine with increased autonomy.
Obama’s executive order authorizes “sanctions on individuals and entities responsible for activities undermining democratic processes or institutions in Ukraine,” threatening that nation’s security or sovereignty or misappropriating national assets.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said the steps “build upon the previous actions the United States has taken.” He added in a statement: “Depending on how the situation develops, the United States is prepared to consider additional steps and sanctions as necessary.”
At the same time, Carney said, “We call on Russia to take the opportunity before it to resolve this crisis through direct and immediate dialogue with the Government of Ukraine, the immediate pull-back of Russia’s military forces to their bases, the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and support for the urgent deployment of international observers and human rights monitors who can assure that the rights of all Ukrainians are protected, including ethnic Russians, and who can support the Ukrainian government’s efforts to hold a free and fair election on May 25.”
Carney called the executive order “a flexible tool that will allow us to sanction those who are most directly involved in destabilizing Ukraine, including the military intervention in Crimea, and does not preclude further steps should the situation deteriorate.”
Previous punitive measures from the Obama administration have included canceling planning meetings for the Group of Eight economic summit in Sochi, Russia, in June. The White House is also pressing Congress to support a $1 billion aid package for Ukraine’s interim government. The House will vote on that proposal Thursday.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State John F. Kerry held his first direct meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, since street protests in the Ukrainian capital turned deadly last month and led to the ouster of Kiev’s pro-Russia government. No progress was reported after the session, held at the home of Russia’s ambassador to France, but Kerry and Lavrov agreed to keep talking.
Kerry cautioned against assuming “that we did not . . . have serious conversations. We have a number of ideas on the table,” he told reporters, even as he reiterated the U.S. position that Russia’s military movement into Crimea is unacceptable.
Lavrov did not show up at a separate meeting with Kerry, British Foreign Secretary William Hague and Ukraine’s acting foreign minister, Andrii Deshchytsia, who flew to Paris from Kiev on Kerry’s plane after the top U.S. diplomat concluded a brief visit to the Ukrainian capital to show support for the new interim government.
Kerry later told reporters that he had “zero expectation” that Lavrov would accept an invitation to come to that meeting but that it would have been “inappropriate” for world powers to discuss Ukraine’s fate without that country’s representative.
Asked at a news conference about the Ukrainian minister — part of a government that Russia claims is illegitimate — Lavrov replied: “Who is it?”
A photo of Kerry and Lavrov tweeted by Russia’s Foreign Ministry showed the two looking in opposite directions, with a caption noting that although they didn’t always see eye to eye, communication was important.
No similar quips emerged from a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in Brussels. A NATO diplomat, describing the session as “tense,” said alliance members one by one confronted Alexander V. Grushko, Russia’s representative to NATO, with charges that Moscow was violating international law in Crimea and concocting threats against ethnic Russians there to justify its actions.
“It was quite an uncomfortable meeting,” said the diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity about the closed-door session. When it was over, NATO announced that it was suspending collaboration with Russian armed forces on several fronts, including planning for Russia to provide a maritime escort for the U.S. ship that is to destroy Syrian chemical weapons at sea in the spring.
Before meeting with the Russians, alliance ambassadors traveled from NATO headquarters across town in Brussels for a rare meeting with representatives of the European Union’s policy and security committee.
E.U. representatives gave preliminary approval to a $15 billion aid package of loans and grants to Ukraine over the next several years, on top of a U.S. announcement Tuesday of $1 billion in energy loan guarantees.
The European package, to be approved at an E.U. summit Thursday, would be partially conditioned on reforms to Ukraine’s tanking economy. Kiev estimates that it needs $35 billion in international rescue loans over the next two years.
The Pentagon also announced, in response to what officials said were requests from Eastern European NATO members over the past week, that it would more than double the number of aircraft it has based in Lithuania as part of a regular alliance air-defense patrol.
The patrols over the Baltic nations were initiated a decade ago and are rotated quarterly among NATO members that have the appropriate aircraft. The United States, by coincidence, is in charge of the patrols this quarter and is sending six F-15 fighter jets and a KC-135 tanker to add to the four F-15s already deployed at Lithuania’s Siauliai Air Base.
In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Gen. Martin Dempsey, said his Russian counterpart told him Wednesday that the troops in Crimea “were not regular forces. They were well-trained militia forces responding to threats to ethnic Russians in the Crimea.”
Dempsey said he could not “at this time” tell Congress “where the military forces inside the Crimea came from.” But “I did suggest” to Gen. Valery Gerasimov “that a soldier looks like a soldier looks like a soldier, and that the — that distinction had been lost on the international community.”
To emphasize that point, the State Department issued what it said was a “fact sheet” titled “President Putin’s Fiction,” disputing point by point the Russian leader’s claims that the troops in Crimea did not include newly deployed Russian forces, that in any case Russia’s actions were legal under international agreements, and that ethnic Russians and Russian bases in Crimea were under threat from Ukrainian “extremists.” Source: www.washingtonpost.com
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