“Today we’re dramatically escalating the financial shock by imposing full blocking sanctions on Russia’s largest financial institution, Sberbank, and its largest private bank, Alfa Bank,” a senior administration official briefing reporters said.
Sberbank holds nearly one-third of Russia’s total banking sector assets, the official noted, adding that the US has now fully blocked “more than two-thirds of the Russian banking sector.”Second, the senior official announced, “In alignment with the G7 and the EU, we’re announcing a ban on new investment in Russia.” That will be implemented with an executive order signed by US President Joe Biden.
The United States won’t participate in G20 meetings that Russia is participating in, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Wednesday.
Speaking at the House Financial Services Committee, Yellen said she’d made that position clear to other finance ministers in the group.
src: click
Prevent USD from entering the russian economy, then (as the US) refrain from participating in G20 meetings for als long as the entire world (G20) doesnt shun russia.
Oh, and its not true anymore, that no one thinks that the Ukraine can win - the Pentagon now insists, that thats possible - in a war on which it is impossible to gage how long it will take:
Pentagon: “impossible” to know how long the war will go on, but Ukraine can win
[…]
The US Defense Department says it’s “impossible” to know how long the war in Ukraine will go on if not ended through diplomacy, but that Ukraine “of course” can win the war.
[…]
“Mariupol is still not taken. He’s moved his forces out of Kyiv. He’s moved his forces out of Chernihiv. They haven’t taken Kharkiv. They haven’t taken Mykolaiv in the south,” Kirby said. “So I think the proof is literally in the outcomes that you’re seeing every day.
src: click
Good news on Mariupol still not being taken, by the way - the city is now officially unrecoverable as an infrastructure: click
You can gage the unity of western positions by the fact, that the Atlantic council thinks, the Ukraine needs more heavy weoponry, or the war will be over soon, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell is still in favor of ending the war soon but not at all costs, and the Ukrainian government was literally telling the world for the first five weeks of the war, that for it to enter into high level peace talks all russian troops have to vanish from the Ukraine territory in the borders of 1991, and then refrained to “at least in the borders before February 22nd on US TV (CBS afair)” which then nobody cared to clarify what that would mean, while then stating they would need heavy weapons to drive the russians out entirely - or at least push them back significantly in the east, always while stating, that peace talks are under way of course. Oh, and that the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff thinks that the conflict will at least last several more years.
You see, with a unity of western positions as pronounced as this, one would think that an informed observer should be able to gage what the goals for entering meaningful peace talks would be in this scenario, before shipping in more tanks into Ukraine, as they would of course only be used in a defensive capacity, or that they at least would help to shorten the war in any meaningful sense but now that “winning” is on the table again, the Ukraine government can state more often, that it is interested in peacetalks again. While the Pentagon “doesnt know” how long the war will last. In front of congress statements like “at least three years” are uttered, and Borrell mentions, that we should end the war as soon as possible, but not at all costs. While a limited escalation will reduce the long term costs of war of course.
Measured in bloody gummy bears I think. Or world hunger.
One of the single greatest aspects about uttering that your opponent only understands displays of military power? It tilts any game theory configuration so far into the “self interested entity” range, that all responses become possible - while all of a sudden, you are playing a zero sum game. But Ukrainians could be winning though!
edit: Exclusion from the UN Human Rights Council. src: click
