Ukraine prepares for war
Amid the spectre of war on Europe’s eastern flank, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has warned the world: “No one will be able to sit out this crisis if President Putin decides to move forward with his aggression against Ukraine. Your governments and people will face painful consequences.”
The warning comes as Kyiv took fresh action today to brace for the looming possibility of a full-blown Russian invasion.
The foreign ministry has issued a statement advising all three million Ukrainians living in Russia to leave the country immediately, and other citizens “to refrain from any travel to the Russian Federation.” Ukraine’s parliament is preparing to impose a state of emergency throughout the country, allowing the government to restrict movement and bring in curfews.
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of the council, has also confirmed that Ukraine is conscripting 36,000 reservists into the regular military.
It’s still unclear if any more Russian troops have crossed the border into the Donbas region, but US satellite imagery has highlighted new forces creeping further west within Russia and over 100 vehicles at an airfield in Belarus near Ukraine’s border.
In another ominous sign that Vladimir Putin is preparing for a war, Moscow has started evacuating diplomats from its missions in Ukraine.
This afternoon, Ukraine’s government was also hit by a large-scale cyber attack. A host of government websites including those of the health, security and foreign ministries have been taken offline. The outage was anticipated: Ukrainian authorities received warnings earlier this week that Russian hackers were preparing to launch major attacks on government agencies, banks and the defence sector.
So far, the Kremlin appears undeterred by the first round of Western sanctions. These measures will hurt global financial and energy markets but Russia is strong enough to withstand them, according to Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to the US: “I don’t remember a single day when our country lived without any restrictions from the Western world. We learned how to work in such conditions. And not only survive, but also develop our state.”
The EU is set to confirm more sanctions this evening, targeting above all Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu – since he is “ultimately responsible for any military action against Ukraine” – as well as the commanders-in-chief of the Russian Air Force and Black Sea Fleet, leading state “propagandists” and the 351 members of Russia’s state Duma who voted for the recognition of the two breakaway regions as independent.
Labour has called on Boris Johnson to go further on sanctions announced yesterday by considering cutting Russia out of the SWIFT financial system and do more to stop the flow of illicit Russian money into Britain. This tougher approach could, for instance, take Russian property in London into account. Sir Keir Starmer has also proposed banning “propaganda” channel Russia Today – although this would inevitably have repercussions for the BBC.
Then of course, there’s the uncomfortable question of how willing Europe is to punish Moscow – at quite some cost – by imposing further sanctions on Russia’s energy sector.