LIVE – War in Ukraine: Joe Biden wants to ban imports of vodka, seafood and Russian diamonds


On the sixteenth day of the invasion of Ukraine launched by Vladimir Putin, Moscow maintains pressure on the Ukrainian army. On Wednesday, a pediatric hospital was hit by a Russian bombardment in Mariupol. Follow live all the information about the war in Ukraine.

5:14 p.m.

The US Department of Commerce on Friday announced a ban on luxury goods exports to Russia and Belarus in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

“We will not allow (Vladimir) Putin and his friends to continue to live in opulence while causing enormous suffering throughout Eastern Europe,” said US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

This new announcement comes after Joe Biden announced the exclusion of Russia from the normal reciprocity regime governing world trade. The ban also targets Russian and Belarusian oligarchs who live abroad.

4:37 p.m.

US President Joe Biden announces a ban on the import of several Russian products including vodka, seafood and diamonds.

Joe Biden also explained that the Russian oligarchs must be sanctioned and that the sanctions package will “destroy the Russian economy”. The American president also announced that the G7 would “isolate Russia”.

“The United States and its allies will exclude Russia from the reciprocity regime in trade”, detailed Joe Biden.

“The United States has also helped to the tune of 2.3 billion dollars (2.1 billion euros)”, continued the resident of the White House.

4:05 p.m.

Europe and Africa “will be very deeply destabilized in terms of food” in the next 12 to 18 months due to the war in Ukraine, warned French President Emmanuel Macron after the European summit in Versailles.

“We need to reassess our production strategies to defend our food and protein sovereignty, in Europe, but also reassess a strategy with regard to Africa, otherwise several countries in Africa will be affected in the 12 to 18 month period. “, he specified. Ukraine is a major wheat producer.

3:52 p.m.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday announced new sanctions against Russian oligarchs, including Roman Abramovich, owner of English football club Chelsea, in retaliation for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Today we are announcing sanctions against five additional people, including Roman Abramovich,” Justin Trudeau told reporters in Warsaw after a six-day trip to Europe. “These people will be prevented from doing business in Canada and their assets will be frozen,” he added.

3:45 p.m.

French President Emmanuel Macron has announced a support plan for Ukraine, which has been hit by war since the Russian invasion.

3:25 p.m.

Emmanuel Macron warned on Friday, after the EU summit in Versailles, that the Europeans were ready to take “massive sanctions” against Russia if the war in Ukraine continued.

“If things continue on the military level, (…) we will take new sanctions, including massive sanctions”, declared the French president in front of the press, by affirming that the EU would support Ukraine “until at the end”.

3:23 p.m.

3:14 p.m.

Russia restricts access to Instagram.

2:19 p.m.

Russia is hiring “Syrian assassins” to “destroy” Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has denounced, after Moscow said it favored sending Syrian mercenaries to fight alongside Russian forces in the country.

“It is a war with a very stubborn enemy (…) who has decided to hire mercenaries against our citizens. Assassins from Syria, from a country where everything has been destroyed by the occupiers, as they tell us inflict on us,” Zelensky said in a video posted on Telegram.

2:00 p.m.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the European Union should “do more” for Ukraine, after the leaders of the 27 had ruled out any rapid accession of Ukraine to the EU the day before.

“You have to go harder. This is not what we expect,” Zelensky said in a video on Telegram. “The decisions of politicians must coincide with the mood of their peoples, the European peoples (…) The European Union must do more for us, for Ukraine.”

1:16 p.m.

Russia has announced that it is prosecuting Meta for “calling for the murders” of Russians, as the parent company of Facebook and Instagram relaxed its rules on violent messages aimed at the military and Russian leaders.

Russia’s powerful investigative committee said it was launching its investigations “because of illegal calls for the murders of Russian nationals by employees of the American company Meta”. The Russian Prosecutor’s Office has asked him to classify the internet giant as an “extremist” organization and block access to Instagram in the country.

1:14 p.m.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday he saw “positive progress” in talks with Ukraine, during a meeting with his Belarusian ally Alexander Lukashenko. “I will inform you (…) how the negotiations are going, which are taking place almost every day now. There are some positive developments,” he said, without giving further details.

12:35 p.m.

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss announced sanctions against 386 Russian Duma deputies who supported the invasion of Ukraine.

In a press release, the minister specifies that these elected officials, who had voted to recognize the independence of the pro-Russian separatist regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine, are being hit with a travel ban and a freezing of their assets in the UK.

12:24 p.m.

US President Joe Biden will announce that he wants to exclude Russia from the normal regime of global trade relations by depriving it of its “most favored nation” status, which would open the way to higher customs tariffs, an official said. source close to the case.

11:46

Syrians can volunteer to fight, Moscow announces.

11:44 am

The Kremlin said Friday that Syrian nationals could volunteer to fight Ukrainian forces.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu “said that above all those who want, who asked (to go to fight) are citizens of the Middle East, Syrians”, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov shortly after Vladimir Putin endorsed the idea of ​​facilitating the sending of volunteer fighters to conflict zones in Ukraine.

10:26

Brussels offers 500 million additional euros to finance weapons for Ukraine.

10:24 a.m.

More than 2.5 million people have fled Ukraine, 116,000 of whom are third-country nationals, since the Russian invasion began on February 24, the United Nations said on Friday.

“The number of refugees from Ukraine – tragically – has reached 2.5 million today. We also estimate that around two million people are internally displaced in Ukraine,” said the head of the UN refugee agency Filippo Grandi in a tweet.

9:41 a.m.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his army on Friday to facilitate the dispatch of “volunteer” fighters to Ukraine in response to the delivery, according to him, of “mercenaries” by the West.

“If you see that people want to go there voluntarily, moreover not for money, and help those who live in the Donbass (eastern Ukraine, editor’s note), then you have to meet them and help them. to join the combat zone,” said Vladimir Putin, in response to a proposal from his defense minister.

9:27

The Russian prosecutor’s office orders strict control of foreign companies leaving Russia.

6:44

Airstrikes fell on civilian areas on Friday, killing one person in Dnipro, central Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian emergency services, a city spared so far from Russian forces.

Early in the morning, “there were three airstrikes in the city, hitting a kindergarten, an apartment building and a two-storey shoe factory where a fire then broke out. One person died” , Ukrainian relief said in a statement.

5:24

Japan will freeze the assets of three Belarusian banks, the Tokyo government announced on Thursday, days after the European Union decided to toughen sanctions against Minsk over its support for the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

Tokyo’s sanctions on Belarus, which will be imposed from April 10, come as Japan acts in concert with its Western partners to pressure Moscow by imposing a series of measures on financial institutions and on exports to Russia. , especially semiconductors.

Japan had previously announced targeted sanctions against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, an ally of Moscow.

5:23

The UN Security Council will meet on Friday at 4:00 p.m. GMT urgently on the alleged manufacture of biological weapons in Ukraine, at the request of Moscow, whose credibility in the field of chemical weapons has been called into question by Washington and London. during a session on Syria.

Russia accuses Washington and Kiev of managing laboratories intended to produce biological weapons in Ukraine, which has been denied by the two capitals. Moscow had already accused in 2018 the United States of secretly carrying out biological experiments in a laboratory in Georgia, another former Soviet republic which, like Ukraine, aims to join NATO and the European Union

5:22

Russian tanks arrived on Thursday at the northeastern edge of the Ukrainian capital Kiev, which they threaten to encircle after having already reached its northern and western suburbs.

Half of the population of the Kiev agglomeration fled in two weeks, according to the mayor of the capital Vitali Klitschko, who estimates the remaining population at “a little less than two million inhabitants”.

5:18

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday accused the Russian army of preventing the evacuation of civilians from the encircled cities of Mariupol and Volnovakha (southeast) and of carrying out an attack on the planned route of a humanitarian corridor.

“The Russian troops did not stop firing. Despite everything, I decided to send a convoy of vehicles to Mariupol, with food, water, medicine (…) But the occupants launched a tank attack exactly where this corridor was supposed to pass,” he said, in a video address published by the presidency.

“This is assumed terror, brazen terror, from experienced terrorists. The whole world needs to know that,” he continued.

The Ukrainian leader said that around 100,000 people had been able to leave in the past two days from other Ukrainian cities plagued by fighting, including 40,000 people on Thursday alone, via humanitarian corridors.

5:02

“We officially announce that humanitarian corridors for the Russian Federation will now be opened unilaterally, without coordination, every day from 10:00 a.m.”, while those going “in other directions will be negotiated with the Ukrainian side”, has said the Russian Defense Ministry on Thursday.

A decision made public shortly after the end of the first high-level direct talks between the belligerents since the start, on February 24, of the invasion of Ukraine.





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