Latest war in Ukraine: Live news as Russian economy ‘on the brink of collapse’

The United States and its allies will impose new sanctions on Wednesday, including sanctions on Russian banks and officials and a ban on new investments in Russia, the White House said. This came after officials in Washington and Kyiv accused Moscow of committing war crimes in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.

The sanctions will increase restrictions on financial institutions and state-owned enterprises in Russia and will target Russian government officials and their families, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Tuesday.

“Tomorrow we will… in coordination with the G7 and the EU, announce an additional comprehensive package of sanctions that will impose costs on Russia and send it further down the path of economic, financial and technological isolation. ‘ said Psaki, noting that the G7 and the EU accounted for about 5 percent of the global economy.

The measures will “weaken key instruments of Russian state power, inflict acute and immediate economic damage on Russia, and hold accountable the Russian kleptocracy that funds and supports Putin’s war,” she said.

She declined to comment on reports that the sanctions would hit Putin’s daughters.

Grim images are emerging of Bucha, including a mass grave and bodies of people shot at point-blank range, leading to calls for a tougher crackdown on Moscow and an international investigation.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday, without providing evidence, that the killings were not an arbitrary act by a rogue entity but part of a targeted Russian campaign to commit atrocities.

Russia, which says it launched a “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24 to demilitarize and “denazify” its neighbor, denies attacking civilians and said the deaths were a “monstrous fake” that staged by the West to discredit it.

A senior French official said earlier on Tuesday that the European Union is also likely to impose new sanctions on Wednesday. The Wall Street Journal The reported Sberbank could be among the target banks.

Two European diplomats said the final sanctions package was still being drafted and would be announced in a coordinated manner on Wednesday.

Psaki said Washington will continue to put pressure on other countries, such as India, to comply with sanctions and play a “constructive” role in holding Russia accountable.

Due to the war and Western sanctions, experts are forecasting a decline in the Russian economy of up to 15 percent.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russian troops of “cutting out civilians’ tongues” in Ukraine, alongside a list of gruesome atrocities.

Speaking to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, Zelenskyy told council members about alleged attacks carried out by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces “just for fun” in recently liberated cities in Ukraine.

Mr. Zelensky, who appeared via video link, described how, after being tortured, civilians were shot in the back of the head, blown up in their homes with grenades and crushed to death in cars by tanks.

A woman was “raped and killed” by Russian forces before they allegedly burned a swastika on her dead body, a Ukrainian MP claimed.

Lesia Vasylenko, a politician from the Holos party, shared on Twitter a graphic image of what she believed to be the “tortured body of a raped and killed woman.” The photo appeared to show a woman’s torso with a Swatsika burned and scratched on it.

The White House says Russia’s financial system is “close to collapse” following global sanctions in response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Press secretary Jen Psaki said how quickly Russia begins defaulting depends on decisions the country makes in response to sanctions outcomes.

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The UK and EU are on a collision course over lucrative gas exports that fund Russia’s attack on Ukraine after Brussels ignored a request to set a “clear timetable” for supplies to stop.

The conflict will come to a head at this week’s G7 meeting, when Liz Truss will confront her fellow foreign ministers calling for much tougher sanctions that would send Moscow’s economy “back to Soviet times,” she writes Rob Merrick.

In Poland, the Foreign Secretary said she would urge Western allies to join Britain in banning Russian ships from ports, sanctioning more Russian banks and targeting the country’s gold.

A total of 3,846 people were evacuated through humanitarian corridors from Ukrainian cities on Tuesday.

That’s slightly more than the 3,376 who fled on Monday, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said in an online post.

Under fire and rockets, medics are risking their lives to treat Ukraine’s 250,000 people living with HIV, fearing the war could set back their efforts by decades, reports say Bel Trew from Odessa and Zaporizhia.

The governor of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region said on Tuesday that in some villages recaptured by Russian forces, up to 20 people out of about 120 residents died during the occupation.

“They had a village of 120 people – 15, 17, 20 people died. If you compare that proportionally with Bucha, it’s the same loss, maybe even more,” Governor Oleksandr Starukh said on national television, referring to the killings of civilians in the city of Bucha in the Kyiv region.

He did not share what evidence they had or name specific villages. Russia denies attacks on civilians.

Cats, dogs, hamsters and kangaroos are among the animals rescued as the effects of the conflict are being felt far beyond human populations, reports said Sophie Barbarani.