The European Union moved to slap tougher sanctions on Russia as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said hundreds of foreign tanks are operating in his country and pleaded for EU help.
“Ukraine now is a subject of foreign military aggression and terror,” Poroshenko told reporters in Brussels before a summit today with leaders of EU member states. “Thousands of foreign troops and hundreds of foreign tanks are now on the territory of Ukraine.”
EU leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande are meeting in Brussels to elect a new president and foreign-policy chief of the 28-nation bloc. They are also meeting with Poroshenko, who held talks earlier today with EU President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Barroso.
The meeting is being held as Ukraine’s armed forces are retreating in some areas after NATO said Russia deployed troops and advanced equipment in Ukraine. “We have many places where situation is difficult now,” Oleksandr Danylyuk, an adviser for Ukraine’s defense minister, told reporters in Kiev today. Russia denies that it’s involved in the war in eastern Ukraine.
Russia Sanctions
EU leaders will say they’re ready to impose new sanctions on Russia, according to draft summit conclusions obtained by Bloomberg News. “Sanctions will certainly be strengthened,” French President Francois Hollande said today. Finland’s Prime Minister Alexander Stubb said he expects leaders to make a decision in principle and let European Commission officials work out concrete measures, as they’ve done on previous occasions.
The EU and the U.S. already have slapped visa bans and asset freezes on Russian individuals and companies, and since July have imposed steadily tougher sanctions targeting the country’s energy, finance and defense industries.
Steps could include banning syndicated loans to targeted Russian companies, tightening restrictions on debt-market financing and extending an arms embargo to existing military contracts, which would halt the sale of two French Mistral helicopter carriers to Russia for an estimated 1.2 billion euros ($1.6 billion), according to four European diplomats involved in the deliberations who requested anonymity to discuss them.
SWIFT Measures
Banning Russia from the Brussels-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, the messaging system for most international money transfers, isn’t under consideration at this point, two European officials said. Yesterday, a British government official had said the U.K. will press EU leaders to consider blocking Russian access to the messaging system.
“We need militarily to support and send military materials to Ukraine,” Lithuanian Prime Minister Dalia Grybauskaite told reporters before the meeting. “Ukraine is fighting war on behalf of all Europe.”
Poroshenko called for military and technical assistance from the EU.
Barroso said that more than 1 billion euros in loans could be released to Ukraine in the coming months. This is part of the 11 billion euro package announced earlier.
“We are ready to consider further financial assistance should additional needs be identified by International Monetary Fund during its next review mission,” he said.
Fighting Spreads
As fighting intensifies in easternmost Ukraine, 28 Ukrainian soldiers withdrew from a rebel encirclement near Ilovaysk and the troop pullout from the area is continuing, the Interior Ministry in Kiev and Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said today.
Government forces destroyed five separatist military vehicles and six Grad multiple rocket launchers. A Ukrainian Su-25 ground attack plane was shot down by a Russian missile, the Defense Ministry said in a Facebook posting.
The death toll in the conflict is almost 2,600, the United Nations said. A total of 765 Ukrainian troops have been killed in the fighting, the government said. Seventy-five rebels have been killed in the past 24 hours, Lysenko said.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has called for parliament in Kiev to consider North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership to protect against Russia seizing more territory after its annexation of Crimea in April.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen this week reaffirmed a 2008 Bucharest summit pledge that “Ukraine will become a member of NATO” if it so wishes and provided it fulfills the necessary criteria.
To contact the reporters on this story: Daryna Krasnolutska in Brussels at dkrasnolutsk@bloomberg.net; Patrick Donahue in Brussels at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net; Volodymyr Verbyany in Kiev at vverbyany1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net; Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net Leon Mangasarian, Patrick Henry
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