EU to freeze Putin’s assets as Coveney warns of ‘war crimes’ in Ukraine

The European Union is to freeze the assets of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in fresh sanctions set to be agreed by the 27 today, Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney has said.

“I think both of those names will be added to a long list of other names,” Mr Coveney said as he arrived for an emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers to hash out further sanctions.

“I think that’s the right thing to do because they are the key decision makers in terms of what’s happened.”

He warned that he believed Russia to be perpetrating war crimes in Ukraine, after the Kyiv government accused Moscow of bombing hospitals.

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“I have no doubt that war crimes are currently being committed in Ukraine as we speak,” Mr Coveney told journalists.

EU leaders gave their political backing to sanctions hitting Russian energy, transport, financial services and imports overnight, with officials working to formalise the legal text on Friday.

There are expected to be some controversial carve outs to the sanctions, such as excluding the diamond trade and luxury goods.

The big-hitting measures of freezing energy imports and booting Russia from the international financial payments system Swift were also put on ice after major European countries including Germany and Italy are said to have opposed the move.

But the EU is now preparing yet another fresh round of sanctions, in which Russia’s exclusion from the Swift system could still go ahead, Mr Coveney said.

“I understand that there is already a third package of sanctions that includes the Swift system, which may well be passed in the next few days,” the foreign minister said.

“This is a big package. Yes, we want to add to it. Ireland wanted to go further. And I think we’ll end up going further.”

Galvanised

“I’ve been in politics for nearly 25 years. I’ve never seen anything that has galvanised the European Union in the way that this has, in terms of the sense of unity, the sense of urgency, the need to respond,” he added

Earlier, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said a package of European Union sanctions on Russia agreed overnight will not stop the current invasion of Ukraine.

The 27 leaders agreed to slap sanctions on the Russian finance, energy, and transport sectors and impose asset freezes and travel bans on key figures associated with the regime, to be finalised by officials throughout Friday.

But they stopped short of the hardest-hitting measures that had been called for by the Ukrainian government along with a phalanx of eastern European member states, with the support of Ireland.

“People can argue one particular type of sanction versus another but in its totality, what was decided last evening, is very strong,” the Taoiseach told journalists.

“On its own, it’s not going to stop what has been a deliberate, premeditated decision of President Putin to launch this brutal attack on the Ukrainian people. To attain some sort of historic ideal he has in his head about restoration of empire, harking back to a bygone era.”

He described the sanctions as “the largest and most severe ever adopted” that would “hit hard” over the medium term.

“It’s a very comprehensive range of measures, covering finance, covering industry, covering trade, energy, and transport, and they will have impact. They will not stop Russia now.”

“There will be a price to be paid for this,” by EU economies and citizens, he added. “This is going to be a long haul.”

Meanwhile, Minister of State for European Affairs Thomas Byrne has said Ireland’s solidarity is with Ukraine and that this does not affect neutrality.

He said: “Ukraine wants to be democratic, it wants to set its own destiny. We support that. It shouldn’t be bullied by anybody. It will make its own decisions.”

He said Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney was in Brussels for talks with his European and US counterparts on the situation.

“We do not want war in Europe. I think that would be absolutely disastrous,” he said: “The Ukrainian army is very, very strong.

“The Ukrainian people are very, very proud and I don’t think they’re going to allow Russia simply just to roll in the tanks and take over.

“They’re getting military support from other countries.”

Swift payments

Ukraine's foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba appealed for international leaders to block Russia from the Swift international payments system as the European Council met. To those opposed to the move, he said "the blood of innocent Ukrainian men, women and children will be on their hands".

But major European countries including Germany, France, Italy and Hungary opposed the move, which would cause deep complications for states that need the system to make payments to Russia for its gas and oil supplies on which they rely.

The EU also stopped short of cutting off imports of Russian gas and oil outright, which would be likely to exacerbate high prices and a tight supply.

Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki tore into such payments for fossil fuels as a funnel of money to the Russian regime to fund its war chest.

“President Putin is taking the money from us, from the Europeans, and he is turning this into aggression, invasion, he is destabilising the whole of Europe,” Mr Morawiecki said.

‘Disgraced themselves’

Former president of the European Council Donald Tusk, who heads the EU’s largest pan-European political group, said that “those EU governments, which blocked tough decisions... Germany, Hungary, Italy, have disgraced themselves”.

Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskiy joined the gathering of the 27 leaders remotely, and said he had appealed for them to give his country a pathway to Nato membership, before vowing to remain in Kyiv even as a top target for assassination as Russian forces close in.

“Today, I asked the 27 leaders of Europe whether Ukraine will be in Nato. I asked directly. Everyone is afraid. They do not answer,” Mr Zelenskiy said in a statement.

“We are not afraid of anything. We are not afraid to defend our state. We are not afraid of Russia.”

The Taoiseach said that EU leaders had reckoned with the reality of the limits of what they could do.

“I think there’s a fundamental vulnerability that democracies have. We think rational, we think balanced. We always pursued a diplomatic track,” Mr Martin said.

“We believe in the UN Charter, president Putin doesn’t,” he continued. “But the irrational, unacceptable and unjustifiable behaviour of president Putin, I don’t see as a failure of democracies. Rather, I see it really as the fault of an authoritarian leader who is captivated by some ideology that harks back to the days of empire, which we cannot accept.”