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The West strengthens its arsenal of sanctions

The EU, in coordination with the United States and the G7, imposes restrictions on Russia in the WTO and begins the process to kick the country out of the IMF and the World Bank

The barrage of sanctions does not stop. The isolation strategy that the West pushes against Russia is being reinforced. The European Union, in coordination with the United States and the powers of the G7 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom) join hands again to achieve the objective of condemning the invading country to the status of an economic pariah on the globe. And in what is now the fourth shot to its waterline, Russia is going to lose favored nation status in Western markets, hurtling it into nothingness; to run out of the benefits it enjoys as a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

This, for practical purposes, could mean – the steps have not yet been finalized – increasing import tariffs, charging extra quotas to products from Russia and even vetoing their commercial transit among the 146 members of the WTO. “Russian companies will no longer receive privileged treatment in our economies,” reinforced the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

And there is not everything. The next step will be to kick Moscow out of the major multilateral financial institutions, including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Closing the faucet to any potential line of financing or loan. “Russia cannot seriously violate international law and, at the same time, expect to benefit from the privileges of being part of the international economic order,” they stress from Brussels.

Russia attack, live |  Last minute of the war in Ukraine

Next week, in addition, the G7 finance, justice and interior ministers will meet to coordinate new punishments against oligarchs and people from the Russian political elite. Brussels already has a kilometric ‘black list’ that includes 862 names and 53 entities.

And against them especially another punishing measure is directed: no luxury goods from the countries that sign the punishments will be allowed to be exported to Russia. “Those who support Putin’s war machine should no longer be able to enjoy their lavish lifestyle while bombs are falling on innocent people in Ukraine,” Von der Leyen stressed.

Add to that, explicit import bans on key products in the iron and steel sector, which would deprive the Eurasian country of “billions of revenue” from exports. Or the formal slam on European investments in the Russian energy sector. And that includes everything from money to technology transfer. Everything.

Guns for tractors

And what has been Putin’s response? While this fourth round of sanctions between Paris, Brussels and Washington was underpinned on Friday night, the autocratic leader and his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, brought their natural alliance to cooperation in the sectors hardest hit by Western punishment. A pact that already existed de facto but that was expanded with, among other exchanges, new Russian military equipment for Minsk, and more exports of agricultural machinery, buses and other industrial goods to Moscow.

It stressed the threat of causing the fall of the International Space Station. And also in the toll that European citizens will end up paying for one of the objectives that their governments have set for themselves: to end energy dependence (read: needs of 30% of Russian oil and 40% of gas).

“It is not known at what level prices will skyrocket, but it is already clear that the EU will end up paying exorbitant amounts,” Nikolai Kobrinets, from the Russian pan-European cooperation department, assured this Saturday, adding that “we are ready for a tough confrontation in the energy sector”.

Italy confiscates the world’s largest sailing yacht

142 meters long, 25 meters high and worth close to 530 million euros. These are some of the data that accompany the ‘SyA’, the largest sailing yacht in the world that this Saturday was seized by agents of the Italian Finance Guard in Trieste. Its owner, the Russian oligarch Ande Igorevich Melnichenko, chairman of the Mining Commission of the Bureau of the Board of Directors of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs and ranked 95th among the richest men in the world according to ‘Forbes’ magazine . His wealth is estimated at 16 million euros. Several yachts and other properties of wealthy businessmen targeted by international sanctions have been seized in different countries in recent weeks.

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