UK to unveil sweeping sanctions against Russia

Ukrainian troops fire a 2S7 Pion self-propelled cannon toward Russian positions, at a front line in the Donetsk region, on Feb.22, 2025, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (AFP)
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Updated 23 February 2025
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UK to unveil sweeping sanctions against Russia

  • UK’s decision comes as US President Trump sought to sideline Kyiv and its European backers from talks with Russia on the future of the conflict
  • EU countries last week agreed a new round of sanctions which includes a ban on imports of Russian aluminum set to be formally adopted on Monday

LONDON: London will unveil a significant package of sanctions against Russia on Monday, which marks three years since the start of its war with Ukraine, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Sunday.
“This is also the time to turn the screws on (Vladimir) Putin’s Russia,” Lammy said in a statement.
“Tomorrow, I plan to announce the largest package of sanctions against Russia since the early days of the war — eroding their military machine and reducing revenues fueling the fires of destruction in Ukraine,” he added.

UK’s decision to ramp up sanctions comes as US President Donald Trump has in recent weeks sought to sideline Kyiv and its European backers from talks with Russia on the future of the conflict.
“This is a critical moment in the history of Ukraine, Britain and all of Europe... Now is the time for Europe to double down on our support for Ukraine,” said Lammy.
London has already imposed sanctions on 1,900 people and organizations with link’s to Putin’s government since the start of the war, as of January 2025.
Its sanctions target the Russian financial, aviation, military and energy sectors, including through bank asset freezes, travel bans, and trade restrictions.

EU countries last week agreed a new round of sanctions which includes a ban on imports of Russian aluminum set to be formally adopted on Monday.

In his statement, Lammy reiterated UK’s military backing, which includes a pledge to provide £3 billion ($3.78 billion) annually to Kyiv and “being ready and willing to provide UK troops as part of peacekeeping forces if necessary.”
“Off the battlefield, we will work with the US and European partners to achieve a sustainable, just peace, and in doing so, remaining clear that there can be nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” Lammy added.

On Saturday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer held separate phone calls with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, repeating a similar message to Lammy’s.
Starmer is headed to Washington to meet Trump on Thursday, hoping to act as a “bridge” between the US and Europe to ensure territorial and security guarantees for Kyiv in the event of a deal to end the war.
The task looks increasingly challenging following a public spat in the last week between Zelensky and Trump, who called the Ukrainian leader a “dictator” and hailed “good talks” with Russia.
Trump also accused Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron of doing nothing to end the war in a Fox News interview on Friday.
European countries fear that if Ukraine is forced into a bad deal by Washington then that will leave Putin claiming victory and the continent at the mercy of an emboldened Moscow.
 


Pro-Palestinian protesters arrested after occupying University of Washington building

Updated 3 sec ago
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Pro-Palestinian protesters arrested after occupying University of Washington building

  • Students demanded that the university sever all ties with Boeing, including returning any Boeing donations and barring the company’s employees from teaching
  • The arrests come amid a Trump administration crackdown on international students who took part in pro-Palestinian protests at US colleges and universities

SEATTLE: Police arrested about 30 pro-Palestinian protesters who occupied a University of Washington engineering building and demanded the school break ties with Boeing.
Students from the group Super UW moved into the Interdisciplinary Engineering Building in Seattle on Monday evening and unofficially renamed it after Shaban Al-Dalou, a teenage engineering student who was killed along with his mother after an Israeli airstrike caused an inferno outside of a Gaza hospital.
The students demanded that the university sever all ties with Boeing, including returning any Boeing donations and barring the company’s employees from teaching at or otherwise influencing the school. Boeing has a factory in nearby Renton that makes commercial and military aircraft, according to its website.
“We’re hoping to remove the influence of Boeing and other manufacturing companies from our educational space, period, and we’re hoping to expose the repressive tactics of the university,” Super UW spokesperson Eric Horford told KOMO News.
Another group dressed in black blocked the front of the building with furniture and used dumpsters to block nearby Jefferson Road.
UW police worked with Seattle police to clear the building at around 10:30 p.m., UW spokesperson Victor Balta said in a statement. About 30 people were taken into custody and charged with trespassing, property destruction and disorderly conduct, he said. Their cases will be referred to the King County prosecutors.
Any students identified will be referred to the Student Conduct Office, Balta said.
The arrests come amid a Trump administration crackdown on international students who took part in pro-Palestinian protests at US colleges and universities.

More than 1,000 students at 160 colleges, universities and university systems have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated since late March, according to an Associated Press review of university statements, correspondence with school officials and court records.


Appeals court to hear cases of 2 university students, one detained, the other recently released

Updated 6 min 42 sec ago
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Appeals court to hear cases of 2 university students, one detained, the other recently released

  • Immigration court proceedings for Ozturk and Mahdawi are being conducted separately
  • The appeals court paused that order last week in order to consider the government’s motion

NEW YORK: A federal appeals court is scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday in the cases of a Turkish Tufts University student who has been detained by immigration authorities for six weeks and a Palestinian student at Columbia University who was recently released from detention.
A three-judge panel of the US 2nd Circurt Court of Appeals, based in New York, is expected to hear motions filed by the US Justice Department regarding Rumeysa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi. The department is appealing decisions made by two federal judges in Vermont. It also wants to consolidate the students’ cases, saying they present similar legal questions.
Immigration court proceedings for Ozturk and Mahdawi are being conducted separately.
A district court judge in Vermont had ordered that Ozturk, a 30-year-old doctoral student, be brought to the state from a Louisiana immigration detention center by May 1 for hearings to determine whether she was illegally detained. Ozturk’s lawyers say her detention violates her constitutional rights, including free speech and due process.
The appeals court paused that order last week in order to consider the government’s motion.
Congress limited federal-court jurisdiction over immigration matters, the Justice Department said. It said an immigration court in Louisiana has jurisdiction over Ozturk’s case.
Immigration officials surrounded Ozturk as she walked along a street in a Boston suburb March 25 and drove her to New Hampshire and Vermont before putting her on a plane to the detention center in Basile, Louisiana.
Ozturk was one of four students who wrote an op-ed in the campus newspaper, The Tufts Daily, last year criticizing the university’s response to student activists demanding that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” disclose its investments and divest from companies with ties to Israel.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in March, without providing evidence, that investigations found that Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group.
The government is also challenging another judge’s decision to release Mahdawi from detention in Vermont on April 30. Mahdawi led protests at Columbia University against Israel’s war in Gaza. He was arrested by immigration officials during an interview about finalizing his US citizenship.
Mahdawi, 34, has been a legal permanent resident for 10 years. He was in a Vermont state prison since April 14. In his release order, US District Judge Geoffrey Crawford said Mahdawi has raised a “substantial claim that the government arrested him to stifle speech with which it disagrees.”
Mahdawi’s release allows him to travel outside his home state of Vermont and attend graduation next month in New York. He recently completed coursework at Columbia and planned to begin a master’s degree program there in the fall.


PM Carney tells Trump Canada is ‘not for sale’

Updated 59 min 24 sec ago
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PM Carney tells Trump Canada is ‘not for sale’

  • Carney, speaking in front of reporters alongside Trump at the White House, said Canada was ‘not for sale, won’t be ever’

WASHINGTON: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday told his US counterpart Donald Trump that Canada was not for sale and would not become the 51st state of the United States.
Carney, speaking in front of reporters alongside Trump at the White House, said Canada was “not for sale, won’t be ever.”


Ukraine’s Zelensky says Russian artillery fire has not subsided

Updated 06 May 2025
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Ukraine’s Zelensky says Russian artillery fire has not subsided

“Therefore, there is no trust in words coming from Moscow,” Zelensky said

KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that, according to his top commander, Russian artillery fire had not subsided despite the Kremlin’s proclamation of an Easter ceasefire.
“As of now, according to the Commander-in-Chief reports, Russian assault operations continue on several frontline sectors, and Russian artillery fire has not subsided,” Zelensky wrote on the social media platform X.
“Therefore, there is no trust in words coming from Moscow.”
He recalled that Russia had last month rejected a US-proposed full 30-day ceasefire and said that if Moscow agreed to “truly engage in a format of full and unconditional silence, Ukraine will act accordingly — mirroring Russia’s actions.”
“If a complete ceasefire truly takes hold, Ukraine proposes extending it beyond the Easter day of April 20,” Zelensky wrote.

Kyiv calls on foreign troops not to take part in Russia’s May 9 parade

Updated 06 May 2025
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Kyiv calls on foreign troops not to take part in Russia’s May 9 parade

  • “The Russian army has committed and continues to commit atrocities in Ukraine,” Kyiv’s foreign ministry said
  • “These people are not liberators of Europe, they are occupiers and war criminals“

KYIV: Ukraine warned Tuesday against any foreign troop participation in Russia’s May 9 parade to mark 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany, saying it would be “unacceptable” and seen as helping Moscow “whitewash its war crimes.”
A handful of countries have in recent years sent their militaries to take part in Russia’s traditional May 9 parade — a showpiece event that has become the country’s most important public holiday under President Vladimir Putin’s quarter-century in power.
“The Russian army has committed and continues to commit atrocities in Ukraine on a scale that Europe has not seen since World War II,” Kyiv’s foreign ministry said.
“It is this army that will march on Red Square in Moscow on May 9. These people are not liberators of Europe, they are occupiers and war criminals.”
Kyiv said marching with Russian soldiers would be considered as “sharing responsibility” for Moscow’s actions during its three-year Ukraine invasion.
“To march side by side with them is to share responsibility for the blood of murdered Ukrainian children, civilians and military, not to honor the victory over Nazism.”
Ukraine was one of the most devastated countries during World War II, with Kyiv saying it “touched every Ukrainian family.”
The foreign ministry also said that six million Ukrainians fought in the Red Army — with five million Ukrainian civilians killed and three million Ukrainian troops.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin attributed the victory over Nazism in Europe as a feat primarily achieved by the Russian nation.
Central Asian troops have often taken part in the Moscow parade.
The Kremlin has this year not ruled out that North Korean soldiers could take part for the first time, after Pyongyang’s troops helped Moscow oust Ukrainian soldiers from Russia’s Kursk region.