Eduardo González
The foreign ministers of the European Union yesterday included Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on their blacklist of individual sanctions in retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine.
This was decided yesterday in Brussels during the extraordinary meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council of the European Union, which gave the go-ahead to the second package of sanctions approved the night before by the extraordinary summit of heads of state and government, in which the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, participated.
“We have approved a new package of sanctions agreed yesterday at the European Council by the Heads of State and Government”, declared the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, at the press conference following the extraordinary Council.
These are “unprecedented sanctions covering the financial, energy, transport and trade sectors, as well as individual sanctions reaching the top of Russia’s political and economic leadership, including the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, and the Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov,” Albares continued. “Putin has to be clear that this war is going to cost him dearly,” he warned.
“These measures, we have assessed it and I myself have raised it, can have an impact on us and on our economies and that is why, I have also requested it at the meeting, we are going to work on the adoption of compensatory measures to minimize the impact of the sanctions on our economies,” the minister assured. “The cost of the sanctions will be high, but let there be no doubt, the cost of inaction would have been much higher,” he said.
Regarding the possible approval of a third package of sanctions that would include the expulsion of Russia from the SWIFT banking telecommunications system, the mechanism that facilitates financial transactions, Albares assured that “it has not been discussed but it has been pointed out that there could be a third package, but hopefully the second package of sanctions will be enough”. “It is impossible to know the content of the third package of sanctions, we will have to discuss that when the time comes, but I have conveyed Spain’s acceptance that SWIFT would be included in those sanctions”, he announced.
During the meeting, Albares explained, they also discussed “how to assist Ukraine”, with “very specific measures on what the Ukrainians need and what we can do to help them and to safeguard the European order”. In this regard, the Minister announced that “Spain’s support to Kiev will include the sending of humanitarian material, medicines, medical equipment, and also defensive material, which the Ministry of Defense will be in charge of”. The minister himself will attend today the reception of the medical material for the first shipment of humanitarian aid to Ukraine, which will take place at the Torrejón de Ardoz Air Base at 12:30 p.m., according to Moncloa.
According to Albares, the heads of European diplomacy had a conversation yesterday with the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, who in his speech from Kiev (“charged with emotion”) “named some countries to which he specifically thanked for their support, and specifically thanked Spain for its support in humanitarian aid”.
On the other hand, the minister wanted to make “an appeal to the Spaniards for peace of mind”, because “their defense is fully guaranteed together with our European partners and our transatlantic allies”. “We will take all the necessary measures to guarantee that Spain and the EU remain a land of peace, freedom and prosperity,” he assured. In any case, he admitted, “there is no indication that there will be any aggression against EU territory”, although “if that were to occur in NATO territory, of course solidarity among all the allies is beyond any doubt”.
