The Russian army is concentrating on Friday, March 11, on Kiev and eastern Ukraine, where it has extended its offensive to the large city of Dnipro. Emmanuel Macron assured that the EU was ready to “adopt other sanctions” at the end of the Versailles summit (Yvelines) where European leaders tried to adopt a common strategy. Joe Biden has announced new economic sanctions against Russia, ending imports of vodka, diamonds and seafood.
Russian forces seek to encircle Kiev and shell Dnipro
The Ukrainian capital, Kiev, is still resisting against the Russians who are continuing their encirclement maneuver. After reaching its outskirts, they seek to eliminate the defenses in several localities to the west and north of the capital for the “to block”said the Ukrainian General Staff.
Russian forces are also concentrating on eastern Ukraine. Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, Kryvy Rig, Kremenchug, Nikopol and Zaporizhia are the main areas where they operate, the Ukrainian army said in a statement.
In Kharkiv, in the northeast, a facility for the disabled was hit by a strike, which however did not cause any casualties. According to the head of the regional administration, 330 people – including 10 in wheelchairs and 50 with reduced mobility – were on the scene at the time of the attack.
So far spared by the advance of Russian soldiers, Dnipro, an industrial city of a million inhabitants in the center of the country, has been the target of raids which have left at least one person dead, local authorities said. The city is however supposed to be the place of arrival of a humanitarian corridor set up by Moscow. Adding its procession of images of desolation to those of Kharkiv and Mariupol (southeast), of which 1,582 inhabitants perished during its siege, Dnipro woke up dazed, in a setting of charred, gutted or blown up buildings.
EU ready to adopt ‘massive sanctions’ against Russia if war continues
An envelope of 500 million euros in aid has been granted to Ukraine, which is added to the first envelope of the same amount, following the EU summit in Versailles. Emmanuel Macron also warned that the Europeans were ready to take “massive penalties” against Russia if the war in Ukraine continues.
“If things continued on the military level (…), if [le président russe Vladimir] Putin steps up bombing, lays siege to Kyiv, if he escalates the scenes of war again, we know we’ll have to take massive sanctions again.”he assured the press, saying that the EU would support Ukraine “until the end”.
“A fourth package will come. As the President [Emmanuel Macron] said, we are determined to respond appropriately to the atrocious aggression carried out by Vladimir Putin and we will be forceful in our response”, for her part assured the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.
Joe Biden wants to ban Russia from international trade
Still on the economic front, the American president announced that the United States and its allies had decided to exclude Russia from the normal reciprocity regime governing world trade, which opens the way to severe customs tariffs. Joe Biden also announced a ban on imports of “flagship sectors of the Russian economy, including seafood, vodka and diamonds”.
The US president, who has stacked sanctions, is under intense domestic political pressure to do more. It is in this context that he has already decided to ban imports of Russian oil into the United States, a measure demanded of him by Congress and which, for the first time, was taken without coordination with the Europeans.
During this speech, Joe Biden pledged on Friday to “to avoid” a “direct confrontation between NATO and Russia”because it would cause “The Third world war”. He also issued a warning to Russia: it “will pay a high price if it uses chemical weapons” in Ukraine.
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