KYIV: Ukraine s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that Kyiv is requesting fast-track NATO membership after Russia formally annexed four Moscow-held regions of Ukraine.
“We have already proven our compatibility with (NATO) alliance standards,” Zelensky said in a video posted by the Ukrainian presidency on social media. “We are taking a decisive step by signing Ukraine s application for accelerated accession to NATO,” he added.
He also said that Kyiv would not negotiate with Russia — which sent troops into Ukraine on February 24 — as long as President Vladimir Putin was in power. “Ukraine will not hold any negotiations with Russia as long as Putin is the president of the Russian Federation. We will negotiate with the new president,” Zelensky said.
His remarks come after Putin signed treaties to annex four Moscow-occupied Ukrainian regions — Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia — at a grand ceremony in the Kremlin.
The pro-Kremlin leaders of the annexed territories claimed the regions voted in favour of becoming part of Russia in referendums that Western capitals and international organisations did not recognise.
The U.S. on Friday sanctioned more than 1,000 people and firms connected to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including its Central Bank governor and families of Security Council members, after President Vladimir Putin signed treaties absorbing occupied regions of Ukraine into Russia in defiance of international law.
The Treasury Department named hundreds of members of Russia’s legislature, leaders of the country’s financial and military infrastructure and suppliers for sanctions designations. The Commerce Department added 57 companies to its list of export control violators, and the State Department added more than 900 people to its visa restriction list.
President Joe Biden said of Putin’s steps: “Make no mistake: These actions have no legitimacy.” He said the new financial penalties will impose costs on people and companies inside and outside of Russia “that provide political or economic support to illegal attempts to change the status of Ukrainian territory.”
“I look forward to signing legislation from Congress that will provide an additional $12 billion to support Ukraine,” he said. The U.S. and European Union are stepping up the intensity of sanctions after Russia announced it was mobilizing up to 300,000 more troops to join the invasion of Ukraine and Putin ratified the results of Kremlin-orchestrated annexation “referendums” that Kyiv and the West call sham elections.
Putin warned that Russia would never give up the absorbed regions —the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions— and would protect them as part of its sovereign territory. Both houses of the Russian parliament will meet next week to approve the treaties for the regions to join Russia. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said, “We will not stand by as Putin fraudulently attempts to annex parts of Ukraine.”
“The Treasury Department and U.S. government are taking sweeping action today to further weaken Russia’s already degraded military industrial complex and undermine its ability to wage its illegal war.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. “unequivocally rejects Russia’s fraudulent attempt to change Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.” “This is a clear violation of international law and the United Nations Charter,” he said.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan also spoke with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. A readout of the conversation outlined the U.S. and NATO’s “firm commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Democratic and Republican lawmakers this week accused the Biden administration of overpromising and under-delivering on how hard and quickly initial rounds of sanctions would hit Russia and hurt Putin’s ability to keep waging his war in Ukraine.
Pressed by lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to identify sanctions that could force an end to Russia’s invasion, assistant Treasury Secretary Elizabeth Rosenberg, one of the architects of the administration’s sanctions regime, said the U.S. must focus above all on curbing the record oil and gas profits that are allowing Russia to ride out the world’s financial punishments and keep fighting. –Agencies
