Washington: United States President Joe Biden imposed sanctions on the two Russian-backed areas in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region.
A senior official, however, refused to draw a parallel whether Vladimir Putin’s order for Russian armed forces to conduct “peacekeeping” be counted as an invasion. This triggered much wider and more severe Western sanctions against Russia.
“We are going to assess what Russia’s done,” the official was quoted as saying reporters emphasising that Russian forces have already been deployed covertly in the separatist areas for eight years.
“Russian troops moving into Donbass would not be a new step. We’ll continue to pursue diplomacy until the tanks roll,” the official was quoted as saying by news agency AFP.
Putin said he was granting recognition of independence to the self-declared Donetsk and Lugansk enclaves during a speech accusing the West of turning Ukraine into an anti-Russian bastion.
Biden signed on the dotted lines of an executive order to “prohibit new investment, trade, and financing by US persons to, from, or in the so-called DNR and LNR regions of Ukraine,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was quoted as saying by the agency on Monday.
The order will “provide authority to impose sanctions on any person determined to operate in those areas of Ukraine,” Psaki said.
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