President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared he was going to combat ‘Russian terror’ and the kidnapping of Ukrainian children during warfare. He also sanctioned 108 individuals, including a former prime minister and education minister.
He declared in his nightly video address on Saturday, ‘We are increasing the pressure of our state onto them and each of them must be held responsible for what they have done,’ following the issuance of equivalent orders by his office bearing his signature.
Zelenskyy did not link any particular group of people or individual to any single transgression. The decrees ranged from five years to ten years in prison for non-profit organisations, one of which was referred to in English as the ‘Russian Children’s Foundation.’
In his speech, Zelenskyy added that people who ‘in various ways help Russian terror against Ukraine’ were on the list, as well as ‘those involved in the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children from the occupied territory.’
Many of the recently sanctioned individuals were citizens of Russia, and some of them had already received separate or comparable punishments in the past.
Among them were former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and Dmytro Tabachnyk, the former minister of research and education whose Ukrainian citizenship was revoked in February.
Azarov has faced a number of sanctions, including having his money and property frozen under former President Viktor Yanukovich. In 2014, following a crackdown on street protests in Kyiv that resulted in the deaths of over 100 protestors, the two men left Ukraine for Russia.
Sergei Aksyonov, the leader of Crimea that Russia installed, and Leonid Pasechnik, the leader Putin chose of Luhansk, the eastern Ukrainian territory that Russia took in 2022, were among the other people punished on Saturday.
Post Your Comments