Several leaders fear that an exclusion from the courier and payment network is more harmful to Europe than in Moscow.
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Mystery of the European decision-making process: it was believed, in the night of Thursday, 24 to Friday, 25 February, that a very symbolic sanction that would have targeted directly Vladimir Putin could have been decided by the Heads of State and Government. Due to divergence or in-depth analysis of the consequences of such a decision. Error, at least according to the official version advanced a few hours later: the twenty-seven would have realized, at the end of the summit they held in Brussels, that they were in reality all agree to clearly designate the Russian president and freeze its assets in Europe. However, they would not have wanted to modify in extremis a “massive” plan of restrictive measures to aim in particular the economy, the banking sector, the transfer of technology, transport, etc.
Questions about the “massif” character, or not, of the penalties – the second – adopted Thursday and the criticisms made by the Ukrainian authorities have undoubtedly weighed on the approach of the twenty-seven. In Kiev, President Volodymyr Zelansky had pleaded for much more severe measures and thought that his fellow citizens were now left “alone to defend the country”. In Warsaw, Donald Tusk, former President of the European Council was virulent: “In this war all is true, madness and cruelty of Putin, the Ukrainian victims, the bombs falling on Kiev. Only our sanctions are false.”
Does Vladimir Putin have, in fact, goods in Western Europe? “I ignore it, but it is applied to him the same treatment as other people,” said Friday, the High Representative Josep Borrell, thus demonstrating the essentially emblematic scope of a decision that was endorsed during a Extraordinary meeting of foreign ministers. Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister, will also be sanctioned. The two officials are not forbidden to stay in the Union.
In London, the Government of Boris Johnson had ensured, in the wake of European ads, that the United Kingdom would, too, be “impending sanctions against President Putin and his Minister of Foreign Affairs, in More of the penalties package announced yesterday “. A spokesman for Russian diplomacy, cited by the Agency RIA, said Friday that these decisions reflected “absolute impotence” of Westerners.
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