According to Johnson, the sanctioned banks are Rossiya, IS Bank, General Bank, Promsvyazbank, and the Black Sea Bank. Gennady Timchenko, Igor Rotenberg, and Boris Rotenberg are the three individuals whose assets they have in the UK will be frozen; they will be barred from entering the country, and all UK individuals and organizations will be prohibited from engaging with them, said Johnson.
Following a pre-dawn Cobra meeting on Tuesday, the Prime Minister stated that Putin has “completely torn up international law” by recognizing separatist areas and now must face an “immediate” response.
Following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recognition of two breakaway territories of east Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk, Prime Minister Johnson revealed that Britain would penalize five Russian banks and three high-net-worth individuals.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced penalties on five Russian banks and three of Vladimir Putin’s ‘cronies’ in response to the invasion of Ukraine, Daily Mail reported.
Appreciating German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for his bold decision to pull the plug on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and declining to send weapons to Kiev, Johnson said backs the stoppage of the Champions League football finals to take place later this year.
Chancellor Scholz has taken steps to halt the process of certifying Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The decision represents a significant step forward for the German government, which had long resisted cancelling the project despite pressure from some European countries and the United States.
For years, Washington has argued that building another pipeline bringing Russian natural gas to Germany increases Europe’s reliance on Russian energy supplies.
Many British legislators demanded that Johnson be harder on Russian money, including requesting that Russian oligarchs be expelled from the country and Russian money be dug out of London’s City.
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, hundreds of billions of pounds have flooded into London and Britain’s overseas territories from Russia, and London has become the city of choice for the super-rich of Russia and other former Soviet republics.
If a full-scale invasion occurs, the larger package, which is being coordinated with Washington and the EU, will be implemented.
Meanwhile, according to reports, the announcements seem to have had no effect on any major oligarchs based in the United Kingdom. Labour has urged Johnson to go further, claiming that a threshold had been crossed and demanding the imposition of a full package of measures right away so Putin did not believe the benefits outweighed the costs.
Johnson accused Putin of deliberately plotting the destruction of a 44-million-person nation using absurd and mystical justifications. He said that Putin, in his speech, had denied that Ukraine had any genuine statehood tradition, had claimed a direct threat to Russian security, and made other false accusations and aspersions.
And in the meantime, Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers, as many 10,000 Russian troops, had been “seen” in the breakaway regions, reports said. The PM’s official spokesman has reportedly stated that President Putin has sent troops in, violated international law, and reneged on the Minsk agreement.
According to a Guardian analysis of payments to governments disclosures, London-listed Russian oil, gas, and mining companies paid their government £39 billion in taxes in 2020. Revenue from such businesses is extremely important to the Putin regime: Russia spent £41.7 billion on its military in 2019, accounting for 11.4 percent of total government spending, according to the World Bank’s most recent figures.
