The US is set to unveil hundreds of sanctions mostly targeting Vladimir Putin’s “war machine” on Friday, the undersecretary of state, Victoria Nuland, has said, ahead of the second anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine on 24 February. Further sanctions will also be imposed in response to the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny after being imprisoned by the Kremlin, and to close gaps in existing sanctions.
US President Joe Biden said he had met with Navalny’s wife and daughter. Speaking to reporters afterwards, he said: “ We are going to announce sanctions against Putin, who is responsible for his death, tomorrow. We are not letting up.” The White House said the sanctions were in response to “Alexei’s death, Russia’s repression and aggression, and its brutal and illegal war in Ukraine”.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, called the west’s reaction to the death of Navalny “hysteria”, and said that western countries had no right to meddle in Russia’s affairs.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on the US Congress to approve additional aid for Kyiv, saying in an interview broadcast on Thursday that a failure to do so would cost Ukrainian lives. Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives have stalled the approval of $60bn in new aid for Ukraine, and Zelenskiy made his appeal for action during an interview with Fox News – a favoured channel for US conservatives. “Will Ukraine survive without Congress’ support? Of course. But not all of us,” he said in an interview near a frontline in Ukraine. The Ukrainian leader also warned that the price of helping Kyiv now is much lower than the potential cost of confronting Putin later if he succeeds in Ukraine.
The International Monetary Fund and Ukraine’s government has reached a staff-level agreement, paving the way for the release of about $880m once approved by the IMF’s board, the fund said. The agreement came after six days of meetings between Ukrainian officials and IMF staff in Warsaw as part of a third review of Ukraine’s $15.6bn four-year Extended Fund Facility Arrangement. The IMF said Ukraine’s progress on the program was “broadly on track”, and that its economy demonstrated strong growth, declining inflation and strengthening reserves in 2023, though the outlook for 2024 remained highly uncertain.
The UK has added 50 new entities to its Russia sanctions list, with the foreign secretary, David Cameron, saying “our sanctions are starving Putin of the resources he desperately needs to fund his struggling war”. The government claims the targets of the sanctions are people and businesses supplying munitions such as rocket launch systems, missiles and explosives.
The UK defence secretary, Grant Shapps, has announced the UK will send 200 more anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. PA Media reports he added that the UK would train more Ukrainian troops alongside other allies, adding: “Together we will train a further 10,000 in the first half of 2024.”
Biden endorsed the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, to be the next Nato head, a US official told Reuters. The official said: “President Biden strongly endorses PM Rutte’s candidacy to be the next secretary general of Nato.” Rutte would be succeeding the current Nato chief, Jens Stoltenberg, a Norwegian national.
Putin has described as “rude” Biden’s comments in which the American president called the Russian leader a “crazy SOB”. On Thursday, after a flight onboard a strategic bomber that is capable of carrying nuclear warheads, Putin agreed with a reporter’s suggestion that the remark was rude, while Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said the remarks were “probably some kind of attempt to look like a Hollywood cowboy”.
Alexei Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, said she has been shown her son’s body. Navalnaya has accused Russian investigators of “blackmailing” her over the funeral of her son, claiming they are trying to force her to hold a private burial ceremony without mourners. She quoted one of the investigators as saying: “Time is not on your side, corpses decompose.”
