UK foreign secretary Liz Truss has called on the international community to tighten restrictions on Russian oil and gas exports as the conflict in Ukraine continues.
Western foreign ministers are meeting in Brussels on Friday to discuss the ongoing situation and how to further turn up the heat on Russia’s economy.
While favouring further curbs on Russian exports, Truss does believe that the existing sanctions structure is working.
She said: “You can see that on the Russian stock markets, the Russian money markets, the fact that people are having to queue for the bank or the metro station.”
According to the foreign secretary, harder sanctions around fuel exports would land a blow that would “cut off and cripple” Russia’s economy, following the previous waves of action.
The European Union imports half of its natural gas from Russia and around 25 per cent of its oil.
Truss will use the Brussels meeting to urge EU, G7 and NATO members to “embrace reliable partners” to provide energy “rather than be dependant and beholden on any one country”.
The foreign secretary said ahead of the meeting that western co-operation was “essential” to European security and that the UK would “work with fellow freedom-loving democracies to tighten the vice around [Russian president Vladimir] Putin's war machine and signal our strong support for Ukraine's territorial integrity”.
The UK has also targeted more oligarchs this week, with Putin’s former deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov, and billionaire Alisher Usmanov having had their assets frozen and been banned from entering the UK. British citizens and businesses have also been barred from any dealings with them or their companies.
There have been calls for the UK to act swifter on issuing sanctions to ensure oligarchs cannot sell local properties or move assets out of the country, with Westminster setting up a taskforce which will specialise in looking into individuals.
Justice secretary and deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab, has told the media that he is supportive of seizing the UK property of wealthy Russians with close ties to Putin, if there is sufficient evidence and legal claim to justify the move.
Raab also indicated that the government would look to prevent wealthy Russians from being able to use lawsuits to deter individuals from investigating their income sources.
Raab said: “It cannot be right that kleptocrats and those with links to Putin can silence those shining a light on those excesses, and use our courts to do so.”
Elsewhere, the UK has launched an extended visa scheme to help Ukrainian refugees seek shelter in the country, meaning that parents, grandparents and siblings of British nationals or those with settled status will also be eligible alongside children and partners.
Home secretary Priti Patel will meet with Ukrainians in Poland on Friday who are hoping to enter the UK using the scheme. The extended scheme has waived the requirement for salary and language tests.
The Home Office has also said that it will set out in the near future the details for a refugee scheme targeted toward Ukrainians with no links to the UK.
The UN has said that over a million Ukrainians have fled the country since the beginning of the invasion.
Meanwhile, although Russia’s military campaign has only seen one major city, - the Black Sea port of Kherson - fall under its control, Putin has insisted that the operation is proceeding as intended.
After Russian forces caused a fire at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant earlier this week, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has accused his adversaries of “nuclear terror”. In the aftermath, authorities at the scene said that the plant was secure and was displaying normal radiation levels.
Zelensky has asked Putin to engage in one-to-one talks in a bid to end the conflict, while also calling on NATO to provide further arms support to Ukraine's defensive forces.
Image taken from Wikimedia Commons
