WARSAW — A massacre of civilians outside of Kyiv is just “the tip of the iceberg,” according to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who cited the apparent Russian war crimes while demanding additional economic sanctions on Russia and arms for Ukraine.
“Half-measures are not enough anymore,” Kuleba said after a meeting with British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss at the United Kingdom’s embassy. “I have heard dozens of arguments why this or that sanction cannot be imposed against Russia. It’s time to put all hesitation, reluctance, business-wise arguments aside and think about human sufferings and the need to stop the Russian war machine [before] it kills and destroys more on its way.”
U.S. and European powers have imposed severe sanctions on Russia and provided billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry to Ukraine, but that aid has been tempered by European dependence on Russian energy supplies and fear that certain military equipment would provoke a retaliatory response from Moscow. The withdrawal of Russian forces from around Kyiv this week permitted the discovery, just days before a NATO foreign ministerial, of mass graves and dead civilians lying in the streets of towns that Russia had occupied.
“We need to announce a tough new wave of sanctions,” Truss said during an appearance alongside Kuleba. “The fact is that being tough is the only approach that will work. Putin has escalated this war, and this approach is vital to ensuring he loses in Ukraine, and that we see a full withdrawal of Russian troops, and Ukraine’s hand is strengthened at the negotiating table.”
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The grisly scenes in the suburbs and commuter towns around Kyiv have provoked a wave of international outrage and spurred Western European officials, including from governments regarded as less inclined to intensify sanctions on Russia, to demand punishment.
“The cruelty of the massacres of unarmed civilians is appalling and unbearable,” Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said. “The Russian authorities must immediately cease hostilities, stop the violence against civilians, and be held accountable for what has happened. Italy condemns these horrors in the strongest possible terms and expresses its full solidarity with Ukraine and its citizens.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other diplomatic chiefs of NATO will descend on Brussels this week. That NATO ministerial will coincide with a gathering of the top envoys from the G-7, the economic bloc of the seven largest industrialized democracies, and the question of military and economic support for Ukraine is set to dominate the agenda.
“For many Western Europeans, this still seems so difficult … specifically for the Germans, you know, within 40 days, their way of thinking, their policy has been turned upside down,” a senior European official from a country that emerged from behind the Iron Curtain after the Cold War told the Washington Examiner. “I think it’s specifically difficult for Germans and Austrians. For French and Italians, it’s still geographically a bit [of a] faraway conflict. But I notice, Italians are quite swift to react now.”
Germany’s dependence on Russian natural gas has made it more difficult for Berlin to agree to the most severe economic sanctions, such as an embargo on Russian energy exports, to the growing frustration of Central and Eastern European officials.
“It’s Germany that is the main roadblock on sanctions,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Monday.
London’s enthusiastic support for Ukraine will reinforce Central and Eastern European demands for stiffer sanctions and better weaponry.
“The reality is that money is still flowing from the West into Putin’s war machine, and that has to stop,” Truss said. “I will be working with our partners to go further … in banning Russian ships from our ports, in cracking down on Russian banks, in going after new industries filling Putin’s war chest, like gold, and agreeing on a clear timetable to eliminate our imports of Russian oil, gas, and coal. We also need even more weapons of the type the Ukrainians are asking for.”
The footage of civilians tortured and killed outside of Kyiv could put hesitant policymakers in a difficult diplomatic position.
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“Those who still have doubts [about] whether to disconnect Russian banks from SWIFT or to continue buying Russian gas, oil, and coal or to receive Russian vessels in ports and process products either sold to Russia or bought from Russia — I invite all of them to visit Bucha without any delay,” Kuleba said, “to visit a small village and stand in front of the mass grave; to see the bodies of dead Ukrainian women who had been raped before being killed, and whom the Russians tried to set on fire to hide the traces of their crimes.”
