U.S. Department of State
https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-a-press-availability-14/SECRETARY BLINKEN: Good afternoon.
Today is the seventh day of President Putin’s full-scale war against Ukraine.
The assault continues by land, by air, by sea.
And as I noted in my remarks to the UN Human Rights Council just yesterday, Russian strikes are hitting schools, hospitals, residences.
They’re destroying critical infrastructure which supplies millions of people across Ukraine with drinking water, with electricity, with gas to keep from freezing to death.
Buses, cars, ambulances being shelled.
Yesterday, Russian strikes in Kyiv struck the capital’s main television and radio tower and destroyed part of the Babin Yar Holocaust Memorial.
Apartment buildings outside of Kyiv were hit, partially collapsed.
A huge explosion occurred in the main square of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.
These aren’t military targets; they are places where civilians work and families live.
Kharkiv is one of the largest Russian-speaking cities in Europe.
It’s fewer than 50 miles from Belgorod, its sister city in Russia.
And Belgorod is where the missiles against Kharkiv were likely fired.
President Putin, among the many false justifications he’s given for invading Ukraine, has cited the need to protect against an imaginary threat to Russian ethnic and Russian-speaking peoples.
How is assaulting and bombing the population of Kharkiv – again, one of the largest Russian-speaking cities in Europe – advancing that purported goal?
As President Zelenskyy said after the assault, there was never a border between Kharkiv and its Russian sister city. The two cities are joined in the hearts of the Ukrainian and the Russian people living on either side.
Among the great damage we see from war, we’re seeing that in Kharkiv. We’ve also seen that the International Court of Justice has announced that it will hold hearings on Russia’s actions.
Already, the human costs of the Kremlin’s unwarranted, unprovoked, and unjustified war on Ukraine are staggering.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians have been killed and wounded.
There are now more than 874,000 refugees who have sought safety in nearby countries.
Millions of Ukrainians still in Ukraine are sheltering wherever they can – including children receiving cancer treatment who are now living in the basements of Ukraine’s children’s hospitals, with doctors and nurses doing their best to care for them as explosions boom overhead.
This is shameful.
The numbers of civilians killed and wounded, the humanitarian consequences, will only grow in the days ahead.
In the face of this violence, the courage of the Ukrainian people is inspiring the world.
As President Biden said in his State of the Union address last night, the response to Russia’s war has been unity – unity among world leaders, unity in Europe, unity among people gathering around the world to protest President Putin’s war of choice, including thousands of people in Russia and Belarus coming out to protest peacefully even though they know what they risk in so doing.
Because the Biden administration dedicated its first year to repairing and rebuilding our alliances and partnerships in Europe and around the world, and because we spent the better part of the past several months raising alarms about looming Russian aggression, declassifying and sharing our intelligence nearly in real time, and relentlessly exposing President Putin’s lies, we were ready.
In fact, one reason why we’re seeing the unified response now is because we made the decision late last year to publicize to the world what we knew was underway and the playbook we were convinced Russia would follow.
I went to the UN Security Council two weeks ago to walk through, step by step, the pretexts for war that we were sure President Putin would invent and the subsequent military invasion that he’d planned to order.
And that’s precisely what he did – while Russian officials continued to deny it right until the invasion began.
Seeing that duplicity and premeditated aggression play out exactly as we predicted has generated outrage and solidarity across Europe and around the world.
And that’s turned into unprecedented action.
We said that if the Kremlin ordered an invasion, we would help Ukraine defend itself while imposing costs on Russia.
Last week, the President approved $350 million in military assistance to Ukraine to help with the armored, airborne, and other significant threats it now faces.
That brings our total security assistance to Ukraine in the past year to more than $1 billion – more than in any previous year.
Over the past several days, I authorized the expedited transfer of U.S.-origin defensive equipment from allies to Ukraine, and we are coordinating efforts to get this equipment – including anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry, as well as small arms and munitions – into the hands of Ukrainian fighters, who are defending their country with skill and determination.
We’re sending humanitarian assistance to the people of Ukraine as well.
Three days ago, we announced nearly $54 million in additional support, on top of the more than $300 million we’ve provided in recent years.
USAID has deployed a Disaster Assistance Response Team, our top international emergency responders, to lead the U.S. humanitarian response in coordination with European allies, partners, and international organizations. And USAID Director Samantha Power was, as you know, just in Poland along the border with Ukraine a few days ago, along with other senior officials from the State Department.
And we’re working to support the frontline countries – including Poland, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia – that have welcomed hundreds of thousands of refugees, including many children, elderly people, people with disabilities, all of whom are fleeing Ukraine to escape Russia’s violence and facing harrowing journeys to reach safety.
We and our allies and partners will work to keep people safe, manage the flow of refugees, keep border crossings open, and provide critical supplies.
At the same time, we’re holding Russia accountable, including Russia’s economy.
Back on December 1st, I said that Russia would face massive consequences for attacking Ukraine, including severe and lasting economic costs.
The United States and more than 30 allies and partners, representing more than half the world’s economy, have made good on that commitment with powerful sanctions and export controls on Russia, including additional actions just today.
We’ve now sanctioned most of Russia’s largest financial institutions and its sovereign wealth fund.
The European Union removed key sanctioned Russian banks from the SWIFT international payments network.
We’ve restricted Russia’s ability to seek funding beyond its borders.
Thirteen of the most critical Russian state-owned enterprises, including Gazprom, are now extremely limited in raising money through the U.S. market.
We’ve imposed sanctions on individuals, including President Putin, other members of Russia’s security council, and elites and their family members.
And we and our allies and partners are launching a task force to identify, track down, and freeze the assets of sanctioned Russian companies and oligarchs.
We will freeze and seize their yachts, their private jets, their opulent estates in world capitals.
Today, we’re also imposing sweeping sanctions on Russia’s defense sector.
In total, 22 Russian defense-related entities will be designated, including companies that make combat aircraft, infantry fighting vehicles, missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, electronic warfare systems – the very systems now being used to assault the Ukrainian people, abuse human rights, violate international humanitarian law.
We’re also imposing export controls on Belarus to hold the Lukashenka regime accountable for being a co-belligerent in President Putin’s war of choice.
We will choke off Belarus’s ability to import key technologies.
And if Lukashenka’s support for the war continues, the consequences for his regime will escalate.
All told, these sanctions and restrictions have had a powerful effect on Russia’s economy.
The value of the ruble has plummeted; the Russian stock market closed at – as fear of capital flight rose; interest rates more than doubled; Russia’s credit rating has been cut to junk status.
The value of President Putin’s “war fund” has vanished.
And by choking Russia’s access to technology, we’re delivering a blow to its economy and military that will be felt not just now, but for years to come.
More at link.
