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February 22, Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said that “no sanctions will be enough” until Russian forces leave Ukraine.
“No sanctions will be enough until Russian boots withdraw from Ukrainian soil,” Dmytro Kuleba told CNN.
This position was voiced a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized two separatist regions in the country as independent and announced he would deploy “peacekeeping” forces there.
“He is not interested in parts of Ukraine. He is not interested in even keeping the entire country in his control. He wants idea of the Ukrainian statehood to fail,” the foreign minister continued.
He said Kyiv has two plans: diplomacy, and, if that fails, fighting to defend itself: “Plan A is to utilize every tool of diplomacy to deter Russia and prevent further escalation. And if that fails, plan B is to fight for every inch of our land, in every city and every village – to fight until we win, of course.”
“The world must respond with all its economic might to punish Russia for the crimes it has already committed and ahead of the crimes it plans to commit. Hit Russia’s economy now and hit it hard,” Ukraine’s MFA head stated.
Earlier, US State Secretary Anthony Blinken announced full blocking sanctions on two large Russian financial institutions, VEB and Promsvyazbank, both of which have close links to the Kremlin and the Russian military. Collectively, they hold more than $80 billion in assets.
In January 2022, Bloomberg reported that the sanctions that are applied to Moscow due to the threat of a military invasion of Ukraine are causing serious damage to the Russian budget. A ban on Western funds buying state-issued debt, costing Russia $10 billion a year A retroactive ban on foreign participation in local state debts, costing $60 billion Halting access to the Swift payment system, which would make it much more difficult for Russia to collect payments on $535 billion of exports a year.
According the analysts’ estimations, in the event of an attack on Ukraine and the imposition of US sanctions proposed by the Democrats, the outflow of capital from the debt and stock markets of Russia may approach the indicators of 2014-2015, and the ruble will lose up to 20%.
Read also: Ukraine calls on tough sanctions against Russia, disconnection from SWIFT
