Live updates: West hesitant on cutting off payment system
The latest on the Russia-Ukraine crisis:
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BRUSSELS — European Union leaders pledged Thursday to impose tough economic and financial sanctions on Russia, but there is a lack of consensus within the West over cutting the country off the SWIFT financial payment system.
The Belgium-based cooperative is used by more than 11,000 institutions globally. It shuffles money from bank to bank, and removing Russia from it would likely also have an impact on European economies.
Ukraine has requested the move. While the head of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, said EU sanctions need to include the exclusion of Russia from the scheme, many EU leaders remain unconvinced.
Dutch Prime minister Mark Rutte, for instance, said such a decision would also hurt European economies. Rutte said it should be a last-resort measure that could be decided at a later stage.
“A number of countries are hesitant since it has serious consequences for themselves,” he said.
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BUDAPEST, Hungary - Several thousand demonstrators gathered in front of the Russian embassy in Hungary’s capital on Thursday to denounce Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and demand that Hungary’s government cut its close ties with Moscow.
Waving the flags of Ukraine and the European Union, protesters chanted for peace and an end to the Russian attacks, and demanded that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban pull his country out of its business dealings with Russia.
The demonstration in Budapest was organized by a coalition of six opposition parties that have united to unseat Orban and his ruling Fidesz party in parliamentary elections April 3.
That coalition’s candidate for prime minister, independent conservative Peter Marki-Zay, criticized Orban for his close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and urged the prime minister to “take a clear stand on Hungary’s commitment to the European Union and NATO, our allies.”
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BRUSSELS — Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, said he spent his day “reaching out all over the world” to organize a united front against Russia.
Borrell carried his two phones upon arrival at the urgent meeting of EU leaders held on Thursday evening in Brussels.
He said he called more than 20 countries.
“The African Union, (countries in) Latin America, in Southeast Asia, India, Japan, .... a lot,” he said.
Borrell added that the sanctions he prepared with the EU’s executive arm that were agreed by leaders in retaliation to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will start having effect once adopted by the EU Council during a meeting of foreign affairs ministers scheduled Friday.
The EU said sanctions will cover “the financial sector, the energy and transport sectors, dual-use goods as well as export control and export financing, visa policy, additional listings of Russian individuals and new listing criteria.”
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PARIS — French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Thursday that sanctions that the European allies are discussing to impose on Russia are “massive and aimed at asphyxiating Russia’s economy”.
Measures that will be taken against Russia are “very massive, very strong and I believe they will be very effective,” Le Drian said in an interview with the French broadcaster TF1.
France is working with allies in NATO and at the United Nations on getting an international consensus to isolate Russia following President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department has at least temporarily withdrawn its remaining diplomatic presence from Ukraine.
The department says a core group of essential personnel who had relocated from the capital of Kyiv to the western city of Lviv near the Polish border earlier this month will now work from offices in Poland rather than on Ukrainian territory.
Earlier this week, the department had instructed those diplomats to work in Lviv during daylight hours but to spend their nights in Poland.
The department says they were ordered late Wednesday not to make the commute back to Lviv to work beginning Thursday until further notice.
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VIENNA — The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency says it has been informed by Ukraine that “unidentified armed forces” have taken control of the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear plant, adding that there had been “no casualties or destruction at the industrial site.”
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi called for “maximum restraint” to avoid actions that could put Ukraine’s nuclear facilities at risk.
“In line with its mandate, the IAEA is closely monitoring developments in Ukraine with a special focus on the safety and security of its nuclear power plants and other nuclear-related facilities,” he said in a statement.
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