By Janet Ekstract
İSTANBUL (GOLDENHORN AGENCY) – U.S. President Joe Biden has called for Russia’s removal from the G20. He made the statement on Thursday, at a press conference after his meetings on Ukraine at the extraordinary NATO Summit in Brussels. Biden echoes the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison who called for Russia’s ouster from the UN Security Council just one day ago. Biden raised the issue with other world leaders at the summit. The G20 is an intergovernmental group of 19 countries and the EU who work on major global issues. Biden said if other nations disagree, he will request that Ukraine leaders be allowed in for conversations. Ukraine’s ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya recommended Russia be removed from the Security Council. Currently, Russia holds the presidency of the Security Council which many view as ironic, considering the circumstances.
Meanwhile, a senior official in the Biden administration told the press that it appears that Russia isn’t interested in peace: “So far, we have not seen a serious readiness on the part of Russia, certainly, to engage in a ceasefire or even necessarily to engage in serious conversations.” The official added: “Certainly, if we get to that point, we can look at a broad range of scenarios. But for right now, the focus very much remains on getting to a ceasefire so we can support the people that are suffering.”
To that end, the Biden administration and the EU have created new sanctions and a new plan to make sure those sanctions are not evaded. The G7 and the EU plan to announce a new sanctions evasion initiative “designed to prevent circumvention or backfilling of our unprecedented measures,” a senior official at the White House explained. The official said the plan will include “closing down avenues, for example, for the Russian Central Bank to prop up the ruble. It could be through growing our coalition of countries to deny cutting-edge technology to Russia, or through preventing Russia from designating crony banks to do their business abroad.”
Further measures, the official explained, include using the initiative “to share information and coordinate our responses to prevent the emergence of any safe haven for Russia, whether it’s in China or any other country.” He added the purpose now is to “fully disarm its war chest by making sure its foreign reserves serve no purpose in propping up the Russian currency.” The official also said that the G7 and the EU will continue efforts to prevent Russia’s Central Bank from using international reserves “by making clear that any transaction involving gold related to the Central Bank of Russia is prohibited.” He added that the U.S. and the G7 will “join together” in telling international organizations and multilateral forums to “no longer conduct their activities with Russia in a business-as-usual manner.” The senior official also highlighted that Russia’s “borrowing privileges” from the IMF and the World Bank are suspended as well as any other benefits and privileges Russia once had as a participant in the international economic order.
According to senior White House officials, the sanctions “caught the Kremlin by surprise.” They explained that Putin said “these sanctions are delivering a profound blow, they’re causing “unprecedented” pressure.” The officials said that now Russia is experiencing a contraction of 15 percent in its economic gains while more than 400 private sector companies have quit doing business in Russia. Analysts reported that over 200,000 people emigrated from Russia in the past month with more expected to leave. Their conclusion is that “Putin will be left with a strategic failure of his own making.”
