UK and US agree on possible joint sanctions against Russia – restricting access to dollars and pounds
The United Kingdom and the United States have agreed to impose sanctions on Russia, more far-reaching than those discussed earlier, if it invades Ukraine, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said in an interview with the BBC on Feb. 20.
These “toughest possible” restrictions, according to the British PM, will include a ban on Russian companies trading in pounds and dollars. Johnson claims that this is a step that will "hit very, very hard."
Previously, sanctions under discussion to be applied in the event of a further Russian invasion of Ukraine have included disconnecting Russia from the international payment system SWIFT, personal sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin, and sanctions against the operation of the Nord Stream-2 pipeline.
"The lesson of (the Russian seizure of Crimea from Ukraine in) 2014 is that you can't just let Vladimir Putin get away with it," Johnson said.
He added that a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine would strengthen, rather than weaken, NATO, and that Western countries could not allow "opposition forces to come to the false conclusion that might is right.”
The U.S. ambassador to the OSCE, Michael Carpenter, said on Feb. 21 that Russia has arrayed between 169,000 and 190,000 troops on the Russian-Ukrainian and Belarusian-Ukrainian border, and in the temporarily occupied territories of Crimea and the Donbas.
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