The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyyhe asked his American counterpart Joe Bidenwhich include Russia in the List of countries that sponsor terrorisma measure that would further deepen the economic and financial siege of the aggressor country.
The Ukrainian president’s request was announced this Friday and came during a recent phone call between the two leaders, according to The Washington Post (WP), in which both addressed the West’s multifaceted response to the Russian president-ordered invasion of Ukraine Wladimir Putin.
Designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism would mean turning the screw on economic sanctions, where Washington is leading the non-military response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Adding Russia to the list of state sponsors of terrorism would be the nuclear economic option,” said Jason Blazakis, a former State Department official and expert on terrorism designations, in a recent essay.
Considering the United States of Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism would represent one of the strongest sanctions with the greatest impact on the Putin regime, according to the above media.
If passed, it could justify imposing economic sanctions on dozens of other nations that continue to do business with Russia, freezing Moscow’s assets in the United States, including real estate, and banning a wide range of exports, both commercial and domestic serve military purposes.
However, some analysts felt that acceptance of the application will be difficult for the United States, since the country’s various administrations have used this designation sparingly since 1979, including only a handful of states with which the United States does not have strategic interests .
For the WP, Washington refrained from calling the Soviet Union that way even during the Cold War, despite Moscow’s support for groups considered terrorists in the 1970s and 1980s.
“The application [de Zelenski] it’s not without argument,” said Ariel Cohen, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Eurasia Center. However, he added: “The question is, what is the economic impact?”
At a time when Washington is trying to keep its delicate web of alliances together amid soaring energy prices and rising inflation, exacerbated by sanctions against Moscow, adding Russia to the list of terrorism-sponsoring countries could anger the US alliance scheme. The difficulty of delisting a state once on the list would be another reason to consider using this sanction.
For their part, other analysts believe it may be easier to label Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism than it was for the nations currently on the list: North Korea, Cuba, Iran and Syria.
Russia’s murder of civilians in Ukraine and Syria, its suspected murders and attempted murders of dissidents and spies abroad, and its support for separatists in Ukraine accused by the United States of murder, rape and torture could be more easily mitigated The State Department agrees criteria for designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Asked about the issue, Foreign Minister Antony Blinken said: “We are and we will see everything.” Asked by journalists at a press conference last month, Blinken said that “our approach is first and foremost to do everything we do to help end this war quickly and end the suffering of the Ukrainian people.”
As world leaders seek to use increasingly powerful military, economic and diplomatic means to support the Ukrainian president, Zelensky’s plea to Biden is increasing the pressure on the Putin regime.
However, the WP recalled that since the invasion began, some of its requests have been rejected, such as the request to Poland for MiG-29 fighter jets, something NATO saw as incompatible with its vision of the conflict; or asking European countries to close their ports to Russian ships or stop buying Russian oil that has not been successful.