Justin Trudeau Announces Additional Sanctions on Russia in Response to Ukraine Invasion

Watch: Justin Trudeau Announces Additional Sanctions on Russia in Response to Ukraine Invasion

 

Russian forces invaded Ukraine on Thursday in a massed assault by land, sea and air, the biggest attack by one state against another in Europe since the Second World War.

Missiles rained down. Ukraine reported columns of troops pouring across its borders from Russia and Belarus and landing on the coast from the Black and Azov seas.

Ukrainian troops fought Russian forces along practically the entire border, and fierce fighting was taking place in the regions of Sumy, Kharkiv, Kherson, Odessa and at a military airport near Kyiv, an adviser to the presidential office said.

Explosions were heard before dawn and throughout the morning in the capital Kyiv, a city of three million people. Gunfire rattled, sirens blared, and the highway out of the city choked with traffic as residents fled.

The assault brought a calamitous end to weeks of fruitless diplomatic efforts by Western leaders to avert war, their worst fears about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions realized.

“Russia treacherously attacked our state in the morning, as Nazi Germany did in the WW2 years,” tweeted Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

“Russia has embarked on a path of evil, but Ukraine is defending itself & won’t give up its freedom no matter what Moscow thinks.”

Calling on Ukrainians to defend their country, he said arms would be given to anyone prepared to fight. He also urged Russians to take to the streets to protest against their government’s actions.

 

U.S. President Joe Biden called the Russian action an “unprovoked and unjustified attack”. EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc would impose a new round of sanctions that would hit Russia’s economy severely.

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said: “These are among the darkest hours of Europe since the Second World War.”

 

Russian Bombing

 

In an early-morning declaration of war, Putin said he had ordered “a special military operation” to protect people, including Russian citizens, subjected to “genocide” in Ukraine — an accusation the West calls baseless propaganda.

“And for this we will strive for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine,” Putin said. “Russia cannot feel safe, develop, and exist with a constant threat emanating from the territory of modern Ukraine”

He added: “All responsibility for bloodshed will be on the conscience of the ruling regime in Ukraine.”

A resident of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-biggest city and close to the Russian border, said windows in apartment blocks were shaking from constant blasts.

Blasts could be heard in the southern port of Mariupol, near a frontline held by Russian-backed separatists. On a highway leading out, a Ukrainian armoured column thundered along the road, with soldiers atop turrets smiling and flashing victory signs to cars which honked their horns in support.

Civilians in Mariupol packed bags: “We are going into hiding,” a woman said.

Ukrainian officials said Russian helicopters attacked Gostomel, a military airport near Kyiv, and Ukraine downed three of them. Ukrainian border officials said the Russians were trying to penetrate Kyiv region and the Zhytomyr region on the Belarusian border, and they were using Grad rockets.

 

Initial unconfirmed reports of casualties included Ukrainian civilians killed by Russian bombardment and border guards defending the frontier. Regional authorities of Ukraine’s southern Odessa region said 18 people were killed in a missile attack. At least six people were killed in Brovary, a town near Kyiv, authorities there said. Ukraine reported five people killed when one plane was shot down.

Ukraine’s military said it had destroyed four Russian tanks on a road near Kharkiv, killed 50 troops near a town in Luhansk region and downed six Russian warplanes in the east.

Russia denied reports its aircraft or armoured vehicles had been destroyed. Russian-backed separatists claimed to have downed two Ukrainian planes.

 

“Russia Alone is Responsible”

 

Even with a full-blown invasion under way, Putin’s ultimate aim is obscure. He said he did not plan a military occupation, only to disarm Ukraine and purge it of nationalists.

The outright annexation of such a vast hostile country could be beyond Russia’s military capabilities. But if the aim is just to replace Zelenskiy’s government, it is hard to see Ukrainians accepting any new leadership Russia might try to install.

“I think we must fight all those who invade our country so strongly,” said one man stuck in traffic trying to leave Kyiv. “I would hang every single one of them from bridges.”

Biden has ruled out sending U.S. troops to defend Ukraine, but Washington has reinforced NATO allies in the region with extra troops and planes. The West has pledged to impose severe sanctions.

“Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its Allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way,” Biden said.

 

Russia is one of the world’s biggest energy producers, and both it and Ukraine are among the top exporters of grain. War and sanctions will disrupt economies around the world already facing a supply crisis as they emerge from the pandemic.

Stocks and bond yields plunged; the dollar and gold soared. Brent oil surged past US$100/barrel for the first time since 2014. [MKTS/GLOB]

At least three major buyers of Russian oil said they had been denied letters of credit from Western banks, needed for shipments to go ahead.

A democratic country of 44 million people, Ukraine is Europe’s biggest country by area after Russia itself. It voted overwhelmingly for independence at the fall of the Soviet Union, and aims to join NATO and the European Union, aspirations that infuriate Moscow.

Putin, who denied for months he was planning an invasion, has called Ukraine an artificial construct carved from Russia by its enemies, a characterisation Ukrainians see as an attempt to erase their more than 1,000-year-old history. While many Ukrainians, particularly in the east, speak Russian as a native language, virtually all identify as a separate nationality.

 

“We’re Afraid”

 

Queues of people waited to withdraw money and buy supplies of food and water in Kyiv. Cars stretched for dozens of kilometres on the highway leading from the capital west towards Poland, where Western countries have prepared for the likelihood of hundreds of thousands of refugees.

“We’re afraid of bombardments,” said Oxana, trying to flee and stuck in her car with her three-year-old daughter on the backseat. “This is so scary.”

Three hours after Putin gave his order, Russia’s defence ministry said it had taken out military infrastructure at Ukrainian air bases and degraded its air defences.

Earlier, Ukrainian media reported that military command centres in Kyiv and Kharkiv had been struck by missiles, while Russian troops had landed at Odessa and Mariupol.

Russia announced it was shutting all shipping in the Azov Sea. Russia controls the strait leading into the sea where Ukraine has ports including Mariupol. Ukraine appealed to Turkey to bar Russian ships from the straits connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.

In Russia, where state media have for weeks been airing footage of purported Ukrainian attacks that Western countries call crudely staged fakes, the broadcast regulator said all news outlets must cite only official Russian sources on Ukraine. An activist who called for anti-war demonstrations was detained.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

 

Canada Responds

 

Justin Trudeau released a statement late Wednesday calling on Russia “to immediately cease all hostile and provocative actions against Ukraine and withdraw all military and proxy forces from the country. ”

“Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected,” he goes on to say in the statement.

Trudeau also announced plans to meet with G7 partners to discuss further sanctions on Russia.

“These reckless and dangerous acts will not go unpunished,” he said.

“In the face of these attacks on Ukraine, Canada will take additional action to stop Russia’s unwarranted aggression. We continue to stand with Ukraine, its people, and the Ukrainian Canadian community here in Canada. Russia’s brazen acts will not go unpunished,” Trudeau’s statement concludes.

On Tuesday, Trudeau announced a first round of economic sanctions on Russia after Moscow recognized the Ukraine separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as Independent.

So far Trudeau has banned Canadians from all financial dealings with the two  “independent states” and from purchasing Russian sovereign debt. Plans to sanction two state-backed Russian banks and members of the Russian parliament who supported the recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent were also announced on Tuesday.

Trudeau also announced that Canada will be sending more troops to the troubled area. Besides the 800 Canadian Armed Forces members already in Latvia as part of Operation Reassurance — NATO’s effort to deter Russian expansion — Canada is sending 120 extra artillery troops as well as the the HMCS Montreal frigate.

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