On Thursday, President Biden announced more sanctions on Russia in response to Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine.
The sanctions aim to cut exports to Russia, block the assets of four major Russian banks, and target individual Russian “elites.” For now, the US and its allies are not trying to cut Moscow out of the SWIFT international payment system.
Biden claimed the sanctions he announced, combined with the ones he imposed earlier in the week, are tougher than cutting Russia from SWIFT. He said the sanctions would “limit Russia’s ability to do business in dollars, euros, pounds and yen to be part of the global economy.”
“This is going to impose severe cost on the Russian economy, both immediately and over time. We have purposefully designed these sanctions to maximize a long-term impact on Russia and to minimize the impact on the United States and our allies,” Biden said.
The president reiterated that the US is not sending troops to Ukraine to fight Russia, but said he would order more troops to Eastern Europe. “Our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine but defend our NATO allies and reassure those allies in the east,” he said.
Biden said he authorized the “deployment of ground and air forces stationed in Europe to the eastern flank” and “additional US force capabilities to deploy to Germany as part of NATO’s response.”
Earlier this week, US troops and military hardware were sent to the Baltic nations as the US and NATO are reinforcing areas near Russia and Ukraine, what they call their “eastern flank.”
President Biden said that he has “no plans” to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin at this time.
The Russian attack on Ukraine came amid soaring inflation and rising gas prices. US officials have said Americans should expect to feel some economic pain due to the US sanctions. Biden said he would try to “limit the pain the American people are feeling at the gas pump.”
