WASHINGTON (AP) – The Biden administration on Friday declared its solidarity with Ukraine with new actions and strong words, imposed sweeping new sanctions on Moscow and approved a new $2 billion arms package to target Kiev a year after the Russian invasion to rearm.
Despite continued ambitious efforts by the US and its allies to strengthen the Ukrainians, there is no sign of an end to the war, which looks set to enter an even more complicated phase in the coming months.
On this somber anniversary, Biden and other leaders of the Group of Seven allies who have been on the front lines of support for Ukraine continued to focus on a united front.
“Our solidarity will never waver in standing with Ukraine, supporting countries and people in need and upholding the international order based on the rule of law,” G-7 leaders said in a joint statement after a virtual meeting President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
As Ukraine mourned its war dead and vowed it would ultimately emerge victorious, the Pentagon unveiled its latest weapons package. It includes more ammunition, electronic warfare detection equipment and other weapons to counter Russia’s unmanned systems, as well as several types of drones, including the upgraded Switchblade 600 kamikaze attack drone.
The latest aid package uses the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative to fund longer-term contracts to purchase arms and equipment. Unlike the Presidential Withdrawal Authority, which the Pentagon has used repeatedly over the past year to pull weapons from its own stockpiles and ship them quickly to Ukraine, it could take a year or two for the USAI-funded equipment to arrive the front arrives. As a result, preparing for an expected new offensive in the spring will do little to help Ukraine.
“Difficult times may lie ahead, but let’s see clearly what is at stake in Ukraine,” said US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, “to ensure that a world of rules and rights is not replaced by a world of tyranny and… of the riot is replaced. ”
Meanwhile, the White House said new sanctions, affecting over 200 people and entities, “will further damage Russia’s economy and reduce its ability to wage war on Ukraine.” The Biden administration will also further restrict exports to Russia and increase tariffs on some Russian products imported into the US
“Now not only does Ukraine stand, but the global coalition in support of Ukraine is stronger than ever, anchored by the G7,” Biden said on Twitter after Friday’s virtual meeting with Zelenskyy.
However, as the conflict enters its second year, there are no signs that President Vladimir Putin will withdraw from the conflict. And the avalanche of international sanctions that have been steadily hoisted against Moscow over the past year have yet to deal the knockout blow to the Russian economy that the White House – and independent economists – predicted at the start of the war.
Russia’s economy weathered sanctions better than expected in 2022, partly due to “the slow implementation of commodity sanctions,” according to a report by Moody’s Investors Service on Friday.
The Russian economy is expected to weaken in 2023, with GDP set to contract by 3% this year, according to Moody’s forecast. The economy shrank 2.2% in 2022, well short of forecasts of 15% or more that Biden administration officials made earlier in the war. Export controls and financial sanctions are gradually eroding Russia’s industrial capacity, but oil and other energy exports over the past year have allowed Putin to continue funding the war.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby acknowledged that Russia’s economy “is showing some resilience,” but he also said it’s not clear it “can be sustained over the long term.”
Of Putin, he said: “He had to take some drastic measures to support his economy and his currency, including playing quite aggressively with interest rates, for example.”
The new sanctions, introduced by the US Treasury Department on Friday, hit Russian firms, banks, manufacturers and individuals, targeting companies that have helped Russia dodge previous rounds. Russia’s metals and mining sector is among those targeted in what the Treasury Ministry called one of the “most significant sanctions actions yet.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, attending meetings with other finance chiefs from the Group of 20 top economies in India on Friday, called out Russian officials in attendance and insisted the world’s biggest economies must do more to support Ukraine.
“I urge Russian officials here at the G-20 to understand that by continuing to work for the Kremlin, they are complicit in Putin’s atrocities,” Yellen said. “They bear responsibility for the lives and livelihoods being taken in Ukraine and for the damage being caused around the world.”
The US Departments of State and Commerce and the Office of the US Trade Representative also issued plans on Friday to increase pressure on Russia. These moves impose visa restrictions on 1,219 Russian military personnel, increase tariffs on Russian products including around $2.8 billion worth of metal, and add nearly 90 Russian and third-country companies, including those from China, to a list of identified sanctions violators.
More than 30 countries, representing more than half of the global economy, have already imposed sanctions on Russia, making it the most heavily sanctioned nation in the world.
The sanctions have imposed price caps on Russian oil and diesel, frozen Central Bank funds and restricted access to SWIFT, the dominant system for global financial transactions.
The US and its allies have directly sanctioned about 2,500 Russian companies, government officials, oligarchs and their families. The sanctions deprive them of access to their American bank accounts and financial markets, and prevent them from doing business with Americans, traveling to the US, and more.
On Friday afternoon, the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, an international body setting standards on illicit finance, barred Russia from its membership. The removal occurred for the first time in the body’s 34-year history.
Britain also announced new sanctions on Friday against firms supplying Russia’s battlefield equipment and says it will ban the export to Russia of all items it used in the war, such as aircraft parts, radios and electronic components of weapons.
“We think the job is far from done,” said UK CFO Jeremy Hunt.
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Associated Press reporters Tara Copp and Aamer Madhani in Washington, Sibi Arasu in Bengaluru and Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.