Biden announces new sanctions against Russia

The United States announced on August 24 this year new sanctions against Russia, US President Joe Biden said in a statement on Ukraine’s Independence Day.

,,Restrictions are imposed on those who forcibly took thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia’’, he said.

The list of names of people who fell under sanctions has not yet been published.

On July 29 this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia did not kidnap, but saved Ukrainian children by evacuating them from the war zone.

,,Removing children from the war zone in Ukraine is absolutely legal. In addition, their relatives are announced sooner or later, there have never been any obstacles to this, there are not and, of course, there never will be. We have been widely blamed since the start of hostilities for alleged kidnappings. These are mostly ,,false statements’’ coming from Kyiv’’, Putin said.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued in March this year an arrest warrant for Moscow leader and Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova. They, as stated in the case, "are allegedly responsible for war crimes, which consist in the illegal deportation of the population (children) from the occupied territories of Ukraine to the Russian Federation’’.

In response, Dmitri Peskov, the spokesman for the Russian president, said that Moscow does not recognize the competencies of the ICC, and any decision by it is null and void from the point of view of law.